Gavin:

Congratulations Colm on the news that Hachette Livre have bought the French rights to The Secret of The Alchemist. Was this something you had planned for?

Colm:

Yes indeed, my plan was always for my book to be available in multiple languages, especially a French edition. I am a Francophile and Paulo Coelho is almost a literary hero in France where his books are extremely popular across all age groups. I wrote most of my book The Secret of The Alchemist while staying with my daughter and her family near Cannes when they were living and working there - so this is a wonderful outcome. I always knew, deep down, my book would be of interest to the French speakers.

Gavin:

Why do you think Paulo’s work and your book resonates with French readers?

Colm:

I think there is a tradition in French literature and culture that understands mythology and metaphor and the power of storytelling to touch on the deeper issues of what it means to be alive. You can blame Jean-Paul Sartre if you like! He infused French intellectual thought with his writings on existentialism - he said there is nothing to dictate a person's character, goals in life, and so on; that only the individual can define their essence. According to Sartre, "man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards". If The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho teaches anything, then it's that we are all in control of our own destiny for the better, but also the universe will ‘collude’ to help make that happen.

Gavin:

In your book you claim to reveal a ‘secret’ that’s hidden within The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; is there really a secret to reveal?

Colm:

That’s a great question and it’s exactly what I asked myself 27 years ago when I published The Alchemist in Australia. I went looking for the ‘secret’ because the story had an impact on me, and so did my meeting with Paulo Coelho himself. My book tells the full story of our encounter. The life-changing effect it had on me, meant I became aware of a powerful, almost magical shift in how I viewed myself and my life. This is the ‘secret’, if you like, and it lives within the powerful mythology of ‘alchemy’ - a concept almost completely lost and abandoned by the modern mind - and yet, thanks to Paulo, I discovered it still holds the same power it did when it emerged in Egyptian culture almost 5,000 years ago.

Gavin:

So are you saying that the secret is ‘alchemy’ and that alchemy teaches ‘self-determinism’?

Colm:

Yes, absolutely and in a very powerful and positive way. The French Revolution of 1789 was all about the rise of personal and civil freedom and was inspired by the thinking of three great French philosophers: Voltaire , Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Many people have drawn parallels between Voltaire’s Candide and The Alchemist by Coelho - in that the protagonists are on the ‘Hero’s Journey’ to find their destiny - the only key difference is the pessimistic Voltaire concludes that life is always against us and we will never achieve joy - whereas Coelho proposes the opposite.

Coelho draws upon the influence of alchemy on Professor Carl Gustav Jung, in which they both propose that life can be mastered against the odds. This is essentially more than mere optimism - it is a view of the natural world and of the world of the human psyche that always wants to transform for the better.

Gavin:

Okay, then are you proposing in your book The Secret of The Alchemist, that Coelho has created a fable around Jung’s theory of ‘Individuation’?

Colm:

I believe so! It’s of no coincidence that for the last 30 years of his life, Jung was a devoted student of alchemy and collected as many works as he could on the subject. He was drawn down this path by his efforts to understand his own dreams and later those of his patients. He even wrote a deep analysis on the topic called Psychology and Alchemy, volume 12 in The Collected Works, in which he examines the symbolism in the tradition of alchemy and how the essence of those same symbols appear time and again in our dreams.

Ultimately, the secret of alchemy lies in an understanding of the powerful impact the unconscious has upon our existence and how we can enter that part of our psyche to re-empower our lives.

Gavin:

When you say ‘re-empower’ - are you suggesting we once had an innate power to take control of our lives and we have somehow lost that? If so, how?

Colm:

I don’t think it’s so much a case of losing our power, so much as not entering into it. In other words, we each hold within ourselves the potential to drive our lives towards the realisation of our full potential, a state I call ‘true empowerment’ and yet there are inner and outer forces that mitigate against that. The fable of the The Alchemist suggests, and I have discovered this to be a reality in my own life, that by believing in and acting upon our dreams, as in aspirations, there is a force within the fabric of our psyche and across the cosmos that gave us that desire in the first place and will assist to propel us forward towards our ‘treasure’.

Gavin:

You say there’s a force! Really? What force?

Colm:

Yes! Yes, there’s force and I call it ‘unconditional Love’ - deliberately with a capital ‘L’. All the negative influences I know, whether within the human psyche, or within society can ultimately be attributed to the absence of Love. And by an absence of Love I mean the lack of compassion and a desire for the ultimate well-being of ourselves and others. I’m not referring to a sentimentalised love or even romantic love - although romantic love has a place in unconditional Love. I am referring to the energy that has driven the evolution of life itself on earth since the big bang in the cosmos that led to our existence. This is the miracle of life. This is the magic of being human. This is what has driven us to want to survive and excel and is, for me at least, the meaning of our existence. As so many wise people have said, ‘without love we are nothing!’

Gavin:

You say in your book, you have had first hand experience of a ‘magical’ life since you met Paulo Coelho. That’s quite a claim to make! Are you speaking metaphorically when you say ‘magic’.

Colm:

In a way I am speaking metaphorically, but I’m also acknowledging that when I committed to my own personal transformation, the outcomes from that decision to make my own growth towards a fulfilled life have seemed to me to be ‘magical’. The ‘miraculous’ events that I describe in my book have always been unexpected and of great importance to me as sign-posts along my life’s journey and after fifty years since I first made that decision, they still seem magical when they take place even today. Jung called these experiences ‘synchronistic’ events, and Coelho calls them Omens. Whatever we call them, they are magical because they hold immense power and significance to us when we are on the hard road of personal transformation.

Gavin:

What would you say then to anyone who perhaps read The Alchemist many years ago and is hearing about your book for the first time? Why do you think they would benefit from reading your book, The Secret of The Alchemist?

Colm:

Of course, I’d be thrilled if they read my book for one key reason: so that they can fully benefit from the truth that both Paulo Coelho and I have discovered and through my book find help in applying that truth to their lives.

Gavin:

What is that truth?

Colm:

The truth is that we can live a life of joy and power and love and real fulfillment. This is not only for the ‘fortunate few’. A life full of ‘gold’ and ‘treasure’ is the life of an alchemist and you can be the alchemist in your world if you truly want it. You can change your life and your world for the better. Ultimately, that’s the secret of The Alchemist and I trust my book The Secret of The Alchemist will assist in that quest.

The Secret of The Alchemist will be published in French towards the end of 2021 - in the meantime it’s available in English from:

fnac.com

Amazon France

International book shops