Ancient Alchemy, Spoken Aloud

How words shape, reshape, and quietly change the nature of things

I was reading Alix E. Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January a couple of weeks ago. I’ve noticed I have entered a new phase of life over the last few years, and I prefer fiction to non-fiction. Unsurprisingly, I felt some self-judgement when I noticed the shift in my reading preferences. I wired my world to believe that self-help and spiritual books were the only things I “should” read. That is a topic for another day, though

Picture it, I had the book open, a lamp on low, the rest of the house quiet enough that I could hear my own breathing. I find reading fiction brings me to a different place. Not only does it drop me into another reality, but more importantly, it quiets my mind.

I was only about 50 pages in when I came across a paragraph that changed the temperature in the room.

I didn’t know that’s what was happening at first. I just noticed that I stopped turning the page. My eyes stayed on the same paragraph longer than usual. I read the sentences again, slower this time, and something in my chest loosened and tightened at the same time.

That familiar sensation arrived. The one that tells me something has just reached deeper than expected.

“Words and their meanings have weight in the world of matter, shaping and reshaping realities through a most ancient alchemy. Even my own writings—so damnably powerless—may have just enough power to reach the right person and to tell the right truth, and change the nature of things.”

I closed the book partway and sat there with it, my finger holding the page like I didn’t trust it not to disappear if I let go. I remember thinking how strange it was that a handful of words could do that. How they could interrupt the evening, making me feel suddenly alert, reverent, and a little undone all at once.

What struck me was the paragraph’s scope. The way it collapsed distance. Words in the world of matter. Not hovering above life. Not describing it from a safe distance. Living inside it. It landed in my body before it formed a thought.

Most of us came up thinking of language as something that comes after experience. We live something, then we talk about it. We feel something, then we name it. We go through something hard, then we find words to explain it. This quote suggested something else entirely. That words are already there, already involved, already shaping what happens next.

And not just once. Shaping and reshaping. Over and over again.

That part kept echoing. The reshaping. The implication that nothing is fixed. That reality itself remains responsive to language. That we are always participating in this process, whether we know it or not.

Then there was the phrase ancient alchemy.

Alchemy: an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting. (noun)

I felt awe there. An awe that makes you realize you’re standing inside something much bigger than you’ve been acknowledging.

Alchemy works through proximity, repetition, and time. Things sit together long enough, and something changes. Pressure builds. Forms shift. Something new emerges.

I realized I’ve been practicing this kind of alchemy with words my entire life.

For years, whenever I felt like I might be getting sick, I would say, “My mind is stronger than my body.” I said it like a small act of self-leadership. It was a mantra that steadied me in moments when my body felt unpredictable.

I said it often enough that it became familiar. Familiar enough to disappear.

What I couldn’t see then was how much that sentence was shaping my inner world. How it taught my nervous system to prioritize control. How it framed my body as something to push through instead of listen to. How it quietly arranged a hierarchy between mind and sensation.

Years later, when health anxiety took hold of my system, the awareness of that hit with a weight I hadn’t anticipated. My mind began running ahead of my body, interpreting sensation as danger, rehearsing catastrophe before context could settle in. My body followed along, doing exactly what it had been trained to do.

My mind really did become stronger than my body.

I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had simply spoken a sentence enough times that it became real. I had practiced a spell without knowing that’s what I was doing.

My dearest friend, Steph, instinctively understands the impact of language. She listens for language the way some people listen for shifts in air pressure. For over a decade, she has been reminding me to choose my words carefully. “I get to” instead of “I need to” or “I’m finding” instead of “I lost” are some of my favorites.

In all the years she had me noticing (and changing) my language, I never even considered the negative implications of the seemingly positive language I was choosing to, I don’t know, manifest a cold away? I was so focused on the small everyday word shifts that I didn’t notice my actual mantra was making life harder for me.

Words don’t wait for us to decide what they mean before they start working. They respond to repetition. They respond to belief. They respond to being spoken into a body that listens. It’s ancient magic. Quiet. Persistent. Unconcerned with our intentions.

“I am” carries particular power.

Whatever follows it tends to settle in. It becomes something the body organizes itself around. Sometimes it becomes safety or identity. Other times, it becomes a limit we forget was ever constructed.

I’ve lived inside sentences that carried me through dark seasons. I’ve also lived inside sentences that narrowed my world so gradually I didn’t notice the walls forming. Both were built the same way. Through language that stayed active long after I stopped noticing it.

This awareness changed how I listen to myself. Curiosity over vigilance. I notice the phrases that show up when I’m tired or afraid. The ones that feel like commentary, yet behave like instruction. The ones that slip in quietly and start rearranging things.

It’s changed how I listen to other people, too.

I write slowly, about the things that shape us quietly. Language. Grief. Meaning. The unseen threads that run through ordinary life.

You’re welcome to stay. Subscribing allows these pieces to reach you as they’re written, in their own time.

I think about how many lives have been altered by a few words spoken once. A teacher naming something in a student that takes root. A parent repeating a phrase that becomes a lifelong echo. A doctor choosing a word that reshapes how someone understands their body. A friend saying something at exactly the right moment. Another friend saying something at exactly the wrong one.

So much turns on language, and we rarely get to see the full arc of its impact.

I notice how easily language becomes reputation. How a story told often enough becomes the story. How people get shaped by the words used to describe them, especially when they aren’t present to respond.

I notice how events change shape depending on how they’re named. How a moment can feel survivable or unbearable depending on the language wrapped around it. How words can leave space for breath or quietly close a door.

All of that lives inside the quote, too. Words shaping and reshaping realities. Again and again.

Then there’s that last part. The part that still makes my throat tighten a little.

That even writing that feels powerless might reach the right person. Might tell the right truth. Might change the nature of things. That part feels so intimate to me, like a hand reaching across the table.

When people ask me why I write, this is the answer that comes back every time. I think about one person. Someone reading late at night. Someone holding something they don’t have language for yet. Someone who might feel recognized by a sentence and breathe a little easier because of it.

I know what that feels like. I know how a single line can rearrange an internal landscape.

Sometimes that’s all it takes. A different sentence. A softer spell.

I don’t think this means we have to speak perfectly. It does mean words deserve awareness and respect. They deserve acknowledgment of how long they stay active after they’re spoken.

Words can create. They can call something into being just by naming it. Safety. Permission. Belonging. Words can also take away. They can narrow. They can erase. They can close doors without ever announcing that’s what they’re doing.

Both happen with the same tool.

I keep returning to that quote from the book because I want to live more honestly inside its implications. Words in the world of matter. Ancient alchemy. The possibility that something written quietly might still reach exactly who it needs to reach and change the nature of things in a way no one else ever sees.

That feeling I had when I first read it hasn’t left me.

It feels like awe.

Love today,
Heather 🌸

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