Episode 17 - Failing Yields the More Interesting Fruit - with special guest Eliza Swann

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 felt. Britten and Natasha invite listeners into the concept of "skilled feelership" - the practice of honoring and developing one's intuitive abilities as a skill, rather than seeing it as a fixed trait. They explore the reclamation of feminine power, intuitive development, and the collective shift happening in 2025 and beyond. With weekly episodes and monthly guests, Crystal Ballers’ primary goal is to support listeners in staying present to their power no matter what astrological and energetic shifts are present.