The Alchemy of Presence
A number of us in the Athanor have been part of another group that has been meeting on Thursdays for over 5 years now. We started at the beginning of Covid, online out of necessity, making sense of what was happening around us, testing ideas, building understanding week by week. Then, when conditions allowed, we met face to face.
For many of us, it was our first physical encounter, and yet the transition to deep conversation happened quickly, effortlessly and engendered genuine joy. It was, on reflection, genuinely alchemical, and the effect on subsequent online conversations was profound. Something had shifted. We established a rhythm: online meetings that explore and test, physical gatherings that complete and transform. The experience taught us something about conversational alchemy; about the conditions it requires and the craft it demands.
For an Athanor to function, its fire must be maintained for an extended period and materials must be kept in close proximity and tended carefully for alchemy to take place. For us, the alchemy we seek lies beyond opinions or the surface chatter of stable communities; it seeks to change the participants and the work they are able to do. Our Athanor functions as a catalyst, not merely a container, and whilst it hosts the change, like a catalyst, it remains unchanged. We can use it time and time again.
As individuals, we are the materials, developing in each other's company, but not always in the same location. We refine our individual understandings remotely, but genuine joint discovery requires something more. Physical gathering establishes its own rules: micro-obligations, attention, turn-taking, face-work, what we allow ourselves to reveal, and what can be safely named. That matters because alchemical talk usually starts with awkward truths and half-formed thoughts, whilst physical presence amplifies emotion and intention in ways that are difficult to reproduce remotely.
Remote work is important, but it tends to privilege exchanges of propositions. Co-presence better enables perception, tone and what we might call social weather; subtler frequencies which carry meaning that shape what becomes possible.
I suspect this is an aspect of intangible quality, in the Robert Pirsig sense of quality as a form of beauty. Remote work creates ideas and collisions, but turning them into something tangible requires the slower processes of time together; that precious stage when we share a similar sense of something but cannot yet name it. It requires space to percolate.
Online is easy and convenient. Creativity often requires friction, and friction requires a special type of space. Ray Oldenburg wrote of third-place environments that make conversation easy before it becomes important. They lower the activation energy, which matters for initiating alchemical talk because we often need a gentle on-ramp before asking people to risk honesty.
What emerges is a very particular craft. Something more than convening, less than facilitation. Something that understands preparation and completion as distinct phases requiring different conditions. Proximity alone does not cause alchemy, as anybody subjected to return to office mandates will testify. Those interventions mistake theatrical presence for genuine co-creation. They confuse being seen to be together with the conditions that make togetherness productive.
But preparation promotes alchemy. Exploring and testing ideas online is powerful, but completion requires presence. There is a special craft in turning enthusiastic and passionate energy into a single, more coherent form that can penetrate the challenges we are trying to address. Alchemy remains a good metaphor.
Our Thursday group experience suggests the essential conditions. Voluntary participation, a rhythm of meetings, online and off, and a sufficient degree of ritual and ceremony that create a safe space where we can do our best work. Small group scale, in our case, around eight, plus or minus two. Lastly, a different relationship with time: a kairos rather than chronos approach that celebrates timing more than time and respects the need for what is being created to emerge when it is ready, not before.
This year I intend to test this more deliberately. Following a conversation with a client earlier this year, I am convening a small group experiment: two or three practitioners, each with a client or two, meeting online and physically over a six month period. A mix of those who can put ideas into action and those who help catalyse those ideas. We will explore the spaces beyond immediate operational challenges and see what we might see together.
I think The Athanor is where we can turn conversational energy into something more tangible, something that has impact and generates movement, no matter how small. Perhaps this is where we go now: beyond exploratory conversation to the expression of ideas as action.
What are your thoughts?
Zoom will be open on Wednesday, 5:00 pm UK. Be good to see you there.
Note: There are others doing this work.
Doing it is more important than who does it. Have a look at what Colin is up to.....
Colin Newlyn
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