Alchemy of Language, Changing Maps, Changing Worlds

Part IV

That is the power of language: it can liberate, and it can exile. A single word can open doors, or it can slam them shut. The danger here is an over-identifying with a label can shrink life into a pot too small for the roots. There is always more to a person than a diagnosis. The danger is when the label becomes the map and the map becomes the territory.

Words are alchemical. Jung spent the later years of his life immersed in alchemy’s symbolic language of transformation. James Hillman went further: it isn’t only alchemical imagery that matters, but alchemical language itself.

Hillman: if I am neurotic, I am neurotic in my language. The words I use, the rhythms I repeat, the metaphors I cling to these reveal where psyche is stuck, where life is narrowed. Alchemical language is poetic, fluid, imaginal. It loosens the rigid tongue. It offers new symbols, new possibilities and restores what was repressed.

This rests on the notion, that do not experience the world directly, only through the maps drawn by our nervous system and those maps are shaped by language.

Change the language, change the map.

Change the map, change reality.

Is it that simple? Try it out…..

Notice the difference between saying:

• I must rest.

• I should rest.

• I could rest.

• I will rest.

Each phrase carries a different reality, for example,

‘I must rest’ is a command, we have no choice.

‘I should rest’ is a command with a spoon of guilt. who says I ‘should’ rest?

‘I could rest’ is an option and can be a nightmare of the indecisive types.

‘I will rest’ When will you rest? No specified time.

Language is not only how we describe the world, It is how the world enters us. The British colonisers knew this when they beat Irish out of children. Jung knew this when he turned to alchemy. Milton Erickson knew this when he used words to re-map the nervous system.

And we know it too, deep in our bones: when a single word of kindness undoes a day of hardness, when a poem awakens something we thought was lost, when silence itself becomes a form of speech.

Take one thing you long for right now. Speak it aloud in different ways:

I must…

I should…

I could…

I will…

Which phrase feels like medicine? Which feels like the old stick of the bata scoir?

“Words so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I’m not saying you must invent new spells or tonics that magically deliver the life you want. I’m not promising that language alone will transform everything. What I am pointing to is this: when we use language more artfully when we weave our conscious experience into words that fit, that breathe, that open possibilities — life itself begins to feel different.

As a hypnotist, I work with words and help people rearrange how they view their lives by using them as portals and moving them around. It’s ironic as I would be described as dyslexic, despite that affliction, I have an affinity with words. Language is not the whole story, but it is a powerful tool for change.

We still have a few places left on The Life Changing (SAP) Sacred Alchemy Practitioner Training Course starting in Jan 2026. This is the final SAP to be delivered in this format. All the learning material will be available but delivered differently. Click for more info SACRED ALCHEMY PRACTITIONER TRAINING

Love,

Alexia X

My 1-2-1 work is getting busy. If you want to work with me, please get in touch for a free consultation to see if we are a fit. MY WEBSITE