Welcome to Crystal Ballers, a podcast celebrating the audacity to create our future now, with your hosts Natasha Levinger (she/her) and Britten LaRue (she/her).
This week, Natasha & Britten are thrilled to welcome special guest, Eliza Swann aka Emerald (she/they). Eliza is an alchemist, teacher, poet, author of The Anatomy of the Aura and the upcoming 2026 release The Alchemical Imagination, and found of Emerald School, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring alchemy as a living, transdisciplinary practice for contemporary artists, thinkers, and seekers.
In this episode:
- Eliza used to run an art school for witches called Golden Dome
- Recently opened Emerald School, which uses Eliza's own teachings, centered around alchemy
- Eliza's definition of alchemy
- Alchemy gets you in touch with the world's soul as a facet of your own soul
- How Eliza recognized when it was time to let go of the Golden Dome
- Alchemy teaches you about balance
- The role of grief in alchemy
- Alchemy is fundamentally about failure
- This year scientists accidentally created gold while trying to replicate the Big Bang
- What can arise while trying to achieve the unachievable
- A redefinition of failure altogether
- How capitalism frames so many endings as failures
- "A good death bring a village together; a bad death tears a village apart."
- Practicing science without tending to soul and spirit will cause harm
- Some products of the combination of scientific inquiry and religious initiation
- Ceremony called The Opening of the Mouth by Gnostic mystic Zosimos
- The lineage of alchemy from ancient Egypt to western chemistry to the mysticism revival to Carl Jung and beyond
- Alchemy is for artists
- Astrology is a sister science of alchemy
- Alchemical heritage is heavy with women, queer, and non-binary practitioners
- The principal deity of European alchemy is non-binary
- Alchemy is a very gender queer art and it is not shy about it
- Current attempts by men to dominate and de-queer the space
- Disrupting the binary is part of the ethic of alchemy
- Eliza is preventing burnout today by gardening and slowing down
- The realization of how deeply unhealthy institutional education can be
- How dragons helped usher Eliza into teaching alchemy
- Leaning into trust, benefit of the doubt, forgiveness as a vital antidote against cruelty
- Poisons and antidotes grow together on the forest floor
- Trusting even when it feels risky
- Eliza's book of sonnets called "The Green Mary"
- Poetry shows you how powerful you are
- Watching her journey to finding her wife through her own poetry
- And more
Plus...
- Spots are open for Awakening, Natasha's one-on-one mentor program.
- Mystics Making Money is Britten's new course and registration is now open! Learn more or sign up here.
- If you like this podcast, please leave a 5-star review and tell your friends about us!
Eliza/Emerald's Info:
- Eliza's website: elizaswann.com
- Emerald School website: emerald.school
Mentioned in this episode:
- Eliza's appearance on Natasha's other podcast, Getting to Know Woo
- Alchemist Brian Cotnoir
- The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam
- Poet Alice Notley
- Poet Bernadette Mayer
- Poet Hilda Doolittle
Crystal Ballers is a weekly podcast hosted by mystics Natasha Levinger and Britten LaRue. Inspired by Pluto’s shift into Aquarius, it’s space to celebrate the audacity to create our Future now. In a world that minimizes the subjective experience, it takes swagger to validate our dreams, desires, and visions in co-creation with the unseen, the unexplainable, and the fe
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