Welcome to Open Alchemy, my offering to all the aspiring students of the path. Hopefully you find something here that helps you in yours.

My name is Daniel, and I absolutely hate writing about myself. But in the interest of transparency and context for these teachings, let us suffer through a brief biography together.

I’ve spent my life searching out the roots of today’s spiritual traditions to find their commonalities instead of their differences. That journey began as a child, spurned on by two significant events: beginning martial arts when I was five, and inheriting my grandfather’s library when I was eight years old. My Sensei was Zen Buddhist but had a love of Taoist literature and made me study the Tao Te Ching, I Ching, and Japanese Zen books. He taught me the Eight Brocades, how to meditate on the Dantien, how to circulate energy for self healing, and a unique version of inner-heat breath practice he learned when he was in Japan in the 1950’s. While learning those from him my grandfather passed. He was poor, destitute even, but had assembled a library of books on meditation, breath practices, energy work, herbs, and hermeticism. And so at eight years old my brother and I were sitting in our bedroom with a book about mysticism open to our left, and a Webster’s dictionary between us to learn all the new words. The internet wasn’t around in most homes yet and the phone was something you kept plugged in the kitchen, so it was old fashioned study.

By the time I was twelve most of my closest friends were Hindu, as we had a large Indian community in my town. I would go to their local mandir and study the Puranas and Gita. So it became that in a small southern town a twelve year old boy born to an Irish Catholic family and raised as a Protestant was wearing a dhoti, chanting sanskrit and tossing offerings into a ritual fire.

At that same time a gentleman who had been associated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn took interest in this strange picture and began tutoring me in Hermeticism. We would meet on Wednesdays in a private room at our local library and would discuss whatever book he had lent me, going over notes and asking questions. This continued for two years, when he moved away for a job. At fourteen I was then studying Yoga, Hinduism, Taoism, Hermeticism, and Zen.

When I was twenty and finally had a few dollars in my pocket I began traveling to meet masters in these various traditions. I’ve since been blessed with initiations into several branches of each of them, and apprenticeship to excellent teachers. I taught throughout my twenties and then when an opportunity arose to live next to my Tibetan teacher I took it, learning the language and helping translate sadhanas. I also decided to take a ten year break from teaching, which I had done in some form or another since I was sixteen.

Those ten years have passed now. Much of it was spent digesting these traditions to the fullest extent possible and meditating on how they formed a unity. I consulted masters and teachers from across the world, sharing with them the same techniques I give in the practice manual available on this site, getting their thoughts on how best to blend these ideas. I believe, I hope, that the end result is an approach that makes sense of the bouquet of teachings I’ve experienced. My intention now is to introduce people to the path in a way that makes sense to our global context for these teachings, and that encourages appreciation and insight instead of sectarianism.

Looking at it so laid out I can’t help but wince at the shallowness of it. To you it’s just words on a page. “Ah, he learned from different traditions.” For me it is the damp smell of caves and the cold wrapping my bones in the darkness. The sting of scorpions, the withering hunger of long fasts, the burning sand of a desert in summer. The laugh of a beloved teacher. The death of one. But so goes life. I can no more truly show mine to you than you can show yours to me. Instead, I will try to give you the rose that bloomed from all that soil.