Jemma Foster was living on a narrowboat called Xanadu in east London during the first lockdown when she decided to build something that could not exist on a screen. Wild Alchemy Journal, published through her experimental botanical studio Mama Xanadu, is a large-format print publication that explores nature, science, and esoterica through text, art, scent, and augmented reality. Each issue is dedicated to one of the classical elements — earth, fire, water, air, and aether — and navigates it across three planes: the physical-material, the mental-emotional, and the spiritual-energetic. It sounds like a lot. It is.
The first issue, Earth, set the template: seventy-two lithographically printed pages on recycled Oxygen Offset paper, wrapped in a folded double-sided poster that serves as both dust jacket and collectible artwork. The format was inspired by an art pamphlet Foster found in a gallery in Bogotá. Inside, essays on mycorrhizal networks sit alongside visionary art inspired by Hilma af Klint and Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, and every page can be scanned with the Artivive app to unlock short films, animations, meditations, and sound installations. The Aether issue pushed further still — a giant B1 double-sided print that folds into origami Platonic solids, with a playable fortune-teller artwork by Daniel Martin Diaz.
The environmental production is as intentional as the content. Wild Alchemy Journal prints with 100% offshore wind electricity, uses FSC-certified stock, wraps in biodegradable laminate, and employs belly bands made from Favini Crush corn paper — a material that replaces tree pulp with GMO-free corn waste fibers. The contributors are a global collective of artists, academic researchers, and occult practitioners, many drawn from Foster's existing network and expanded through Instagram discovery and gallery conversations.
This is not a magazine for casual browsing. Wild Alchemy Journal demands participation — scanning, folding, smelling, listening — and rewards it with an experience that collapses the distance between reading and ritual. Each issue is produced in limited runs, often Kickstarter-funded, and they sell out. For readers who find the boundary between science and mysticism more interesting than the territory on either side, this journal is one of the most ambitious print objects being made today.
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