“Alchemy is believed to be an ancient process by which an alchemist turned base metals into gold. However, the alchemy of Spirit is a seemingly magical process of spiritual transformation, whereby miraculous results occur when one is aligned with God. It's where one can easily find the golden thread of truth, simply by returning home to oneself again.”

Azura DragonFaether is not officially sponsored by or affiliated with Alchemy of Spirit by Ardyce West but rather has been inspired by her work and incorporates her teachings within her practice of Dragon Alchemy and Islamic Mysticism.

West’s teachings of Alchemy of Spirit parallel the teachings of Heart Purification within Islamic Mysticism also known as Sufism.

This page serves as official clarification regarding Azura’s use of Alchemy of Spirit within her spiritual practice, content creation, mentorships and personal philosophies.

Azura’s use of Alchemy of Spirit is not in affiliation with any other organization or individuals except in reference to the work of Ardyce West.

According to Ardyce West, the alchemy of Spirit is a seemingly magical process of inner, spiritual transformation that occurs when a person completely aligns themselves with God.

While traditional alchemy is known as an ancient, physical process of trying to turn base metals like lead into gold, West redefines it for the modern seeker as a purely internal journey.

• Finding the Golden Thread of Truth: Instead of creating physical gold, spiritual alchemy is the act of uncovering your own innate, divine truth.

• Returning Home to Oneself: West states that the transformation does not require seeking external validation or look for answers outside of your own being. It is achieved "simply by returning home to oneself again."

• Manifesting Miraculous Results: When you actively align your thoughts and consciousness with God, the universal spirit, you create a shift where miraculous outcomes effortlessly show up in your day-to-day life.

• Expanding Time and Space: Drawing heavily from her two near-death experiences, she views spiritual alchemy as a way to expand your consciousness past the rigid, heavy boundaries of everyday human reality.

• Transforming Pain Into Wisdom: West teaches that the alchemist uses intuitive wisdom to actively reshape difficult life hindrances, traumas, and challenges into opportunities to live a full-spectrum, wholehearted life.

Ardyce West’s incorporation of God into her practice is deeply rooted in her background as a Licensed Spiritual Practitioner for the Centers for Spiritual Living. Because of this, she does not view God as a distant deity who sits in judgment or operates outside of humanity. Instead, she aligns with a New Thought / Science of Mind perspective, treating God as an indwelling, universal energy.

She weaves God into Alchemy of Spirit through several key concepts:

West teaches that God is an all-encompassing force, often referred to as Spirit, Source, or Universal Intelligence. In her practice, God is viewed as a system of predictable spiritual laws. Just as physical laws govern gravity, spiritual laws govern consciousness.

The alchemy happens when a person stops trying to force life to happen through human willpower and instead aligns their thoughts with this Universal Law to manifest harmony.

In traditional religious practices, praying to God often involves begging or asking an external force for help. West changes this dynamic by framing the practice as a partnership.

• The Divine Architect: You are a co-creator with God.

• Active Alignment: Instead of asking God to change your circumstances, you alter your own consciousness to match the "mind of God," which effortlessly changes your outer reality.

A core pillar of her philosophy is that God is all there is, meaning there is no spot where God is not, including inside of you.

• Spiritual transformation does not require looking upward or outward.

• To find God, you must simply "return home to yourself" and tap into the innate divine wisdom already encoded into your being.

Drawing from her two near-death experiences, West incorporates God as the anchor of the Eternal Now. She teaches that human concepts of past trauma and future anxiety are illusions that block spiritual growth. Because God exists outside of linear time and space, aligning with God allows a practitioner to step into the present moment, where instant healing and spiritual shifts are possible.

While specific denominational terms vary, her background heavily relies on a form of affirmative prayer known as Spiritual Mind Treatment. This practice moves through distinct stages to actively realize alignment with God.

• Recognition: Acknowledging that God is the only power and presence in the universe.

• Unification: Realizing that your spirit and God's spirit are completely one and the same.

• Realization: Mentally accepting that the good, healing, or wisdom you seek is already yours.

• Thanksgiving: Offering deep gratitude for the transformation before it even physically manifests.

Although Ardyce West approaches spirituality through a Western New Thought lens, her concepts in Alchemy of Spirit share profound, universal parallels with Islamic mysticism (Sufism or al-taṣawwuf). Both traditions bypass purely dogmatic, external rules to focus on a direct, internal experience of the Divine.

The teachings of West and the frameworks of Islamic mysticism overlap across several core areas:

• Ardyce's View: She defines alchemy not as transforming physical metal into gold, but as finding an inner "golden thread of truth" by removing illusions and returning to oneself.

• Islamic Mysticism: Sufism holds a famous, long-standing historical connection to alchemy (al-kīmiyāʾ). Prominent masters like Al-Ghazali explicitly wrote about this in his masterpiece, The Alchemy of Happiness (Kimiya-yi Sa'adat). In Sufism, spiritual alchemy is the process of purifying the human heart from the "rust" of worldly attachments and ego (nafs), revealing the pure "gold" of the soul's divine nature.

• Ardyce's View: Relying on New Thought principles, West teaches that God is an all-encompassing energy and that there is "no spot where God is not." To find God, one must simply look inward.

• Islamic Mysticism: This strongly mirrors the foundational Sufi metaphysical concept of Wahdat al-Wujud (the "Unity of Being"), heavily articulated by the 12th-century mystic Ibn al-Arabi. This doctrine states that nothing truly exists except God; the universe and humanity are manifestations of Divine reality. Like West's "indwelling presence," Islamic mystics point to a famous Quran verse (50:16) indicating that “Allah is closer to you than your own jugular vein."

• Ardyce's View: She teaches that human beings are "co-creators" with God. By shifting consciousness to match the "mind of God," a person can effortlessly change their outer reality.

• Islamic Mysticism: While orthodox Islam strictly separates Creator and creation, Sufi mystics talk about “Takhalluq bi-akhlaq Allah” which translates to "adorn yourself with the character traits of God." Sufis believe that humans are spiritual mirrors designed to reflect God's divine names and attributes (such as absolute love, mercy, and wisdom) into the physical world.

• Ardyce's View: West uses her near-death experiences to validate that spiritual answers are caught through intuitive wisdom and direct mystical journeys rather than external study.

• Islamic Mysticism: Sufism divides knowledge into two categories: 'ilm (rational, book-learned information) and ma'rifat (gnosis or intuitive, experiential knowledge). Islamic mystics assert that true divine reality cannot be understood through linear logic alone; it must be "tasted" (dhawq) through direct personal encounter, dreams, and spiritual unveiling (kashf).

• Ardyce's View: West anchors much of her practice in the "Eternal Now," noting that linear time is an illusion that separates us from Spirit.

• Islamic Mysticism: Sufis traditionally refer to the true mystic as ibn al-waqt, which translates literally to "the son of the present moment." Islamic mystics teach that a practitioner must not dwell on the past or fear the future, because God exists only in the absolute current moment. True spiritual alignment is achieved when you rest entirely in the immediacy of God's present presence.

Comparing Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s 11th-century Islamic masterpiece, The Alchemy of Happiness (Kimiya-yi Sa'adat), with Ardyce West’s 2020 New Thought book, Alchemy of Spirit, reveals a timeless truth: different cultures across different millennia often arrive at the exact same spiritual metaphors.

While al-Ghazali writes within a highly structured Islamic theological framework and West writes from a modern, individualized Western metaphysical perspective, both authors use the metaphor of alchemy to describe the purification of the human soul.

Both books fundamentally agree that you do not need to "create" a holy nature from scratch; you already possess it.

• West's View: West asserts that humans already possess innate magnificence. Her alchemy is a process of clearing away human misconceptions to "return home to oneself" and uncover the divine truth already encoded within.

• Al-Ghazali's View: He teaches that the human heart is a perfect mirror created by God. However, living in the physical world coats that mirror in "dust" and "rust" (sins and distractions). Spiritual alchemy is simply the act of polishing the mirror so it can reflect Divine Light.

Neither author believes you can truly understand God by looking purely outward into books or dogmas; it must start with the self.

• West's View: Her exercises are completely self-reflective. She establishes that aligning with God requires an inward turn, using your own life experiences and intuitive wisdom as the raw material for transformation.

• Al-Ghazali's View: He opens his text with the famous mystical maxim: "He who knows himself knows his Lord." His alchemy relies on first understanding your own inner character, desires, and spiritual anatomy.

While Ardyce West does not explicitly feature heavy medieval imagery like knights and fire-breathing monsters in her modern New Thought book, her core principles in Alchemy of Spirit align perfectly with the psychological and metaphysical concept of the Dragon in classical alchemical philosophy.

In classical alchemy, the dragon is one of the most vital, multifaceted symbols of the Great Work (Magnum Opus). West's teachings mirror this symbol through the concepts of the raw self, cyclical rebirth, and the guardian of inner treasure.

• Dragon Alchemy: Historically, the dragon represents the prima materia or the raw, chaotic, unrefined, and primitive matter from which all things are created. It symbolizes the wild impulses, unintegrated traumas, and base fears of the human psyche. Alchemical texts note that the dragon must be confronted because it represents the chaotic state of the soul before transformation.

• West’s Philosophy: West teaches that the "raw material" for spiritual alchemy consists of your past traumas, human limitations, and feelings of separation. Rather than avoiding or suppressing these painful aspects of human life, she views them as the necessary starting fuel. Like confronting the alchemical dragon, West requires the practitioner to dive into their raw inner chaos to extract the "golden thread of truth."

• Dragon Alchemy: One of the most famous alchemical symbols is the Ouroboros or a dragon or serpent eating its own tail. It represents the cyclical nature of life, death, and rebirth, encapsulated in the alchemical formula solve et coagula (dissolve and coagulate/rebuild). The dragon must devour its old form to be reborn into something perfected.

• West’s Philosophy: West’s entire philosophy is anchored in her near-death experiences (NDEs). Her work asks readers to undergo a metaphorical "ego death" to dissolve their rigid human identities. By stepping into the "Eternal Now," the practitioner allows their old, limited concept of self to be dissolved (solve) so they can actively co-create a new reality with God (coagula). This aligns perfectly with the self-consuming, self-renewing nature of the alchemical dragon.

• Dragon Alchemy: Alchemists frequently drew a distinction between a wingless land dragon and a winged dragon. The act of a dragon "growing wings" symbolized the merging of Earth and Heaven or taking something heavy, material, and volatile and elevating it into a spiritual, conscious state.

• West’s Philosophy: West’s New Thought approach is a practical guide to shifting from purely heavy human thinking to Divine consciousness. She teaches that you do not leave the physical world behind; rather, you pull down the "mind of God" into your daily life to manifest miracles. This synthesis of the human and the divine mirrors the winged dragon, which bridges the grounded earth with the infinite sky.

• Dragon Alchemy: In myth and alchemy, the dragon is the fierce guardian of hidden treasure or the Philosopher’s Stone. The treasure represents ultimate spiritual enlightenment, but it cannot be accessed without directly facing the dragon at the threshold.

• West’s Philosophy: West asserts that your ultimate spiritual power and inner joy are already inside you, but they are guarded by your own mental blocks, fear, and societal conditioning. The "treasure" is the indwelling presence of God. Her guided meditations and inner work act as the mechanism to bypass or transform this inner guardian, allowing you to successfully claim the "magnificence" that has been locked away within your own being.

“Ardyce West is an optimal blend of transformation and spiritual alchemy. For fifteen years as a licensed and certified transformational life coach, she has supported both men and women in living a wholehearted life through her brilliant guidance and intuition.

She is an accomplished artist, illustrator, and published author of eight books, and a captivating storyteller. She works with individuals, and also presents empowering workshops featuring her two near-death-experiences, resulting in her fascinating life, living through the grace of the Eternal Now.”

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