Behind the Scenes
What's this all about?
Nicole Ardin is a Swiss-based writer, visual artist, and psychological counselor who thrives at the intersection of analytical clarity and everyday mysticism.
Artistic and Publishing Journey
Her journey as a creator is rooted in a lifelong passion for storytelling and independent publishing. It began with Ard de vivre, a multi-year mindful-living blog that blossomed into a vibrant community for slow living and personal growth.
Over the years, Nicole's distinct editorial voice and focus on conscious living made her a sought-after collaborator across a diverse media landscape. Her freelance portfolio spans from serving as a film reviewer for the Swiss Pokipsie Network to collaborating with corporate giants like IKEA. Simultaneously, she has remained deeply connected to independent and localized print culture, contributing art and prose to grassroots initiatives, including local pagan magazines and fellow blogging networks.
Today, her digital canvas has evolved into Ard & Alchemy—a project that marks her maturation as a writer, artist, and independent publisher. Here, Nicole weaves together her original multimedia artwork with deep-dive cultural essays, using symbolism and visual art not just as decoration, but as vital tools for self-exploration and meaning making.
Through her digital sanctuary and online magazine, Ard & Alchemy, Nicole curates spaces that honor seasonal rhythms and archetypal storytelling, empowering modern seekers to step out from behind their masks, question systemic power structures—including the patriarchy—and reclaim their personal autonomy. For Nicole, symbols are a vital language that reveals what is so easily lost in a hyper-logical world. Rather than offering easy answers, her creative publishing work is an open invitation to reflection—using art to open a door in the mind that cannot be closed again, and inspiring readers to treat their own lives as a grand, conscious, and creative experiment.
The Spiritual Journey
Deeply rooted in earth-centered traditions, Nordic shamanism, and Celtic lore, Nicole’s spiritual path is fueled by a lifelong fascination with how human beings create meaning through spirituality, traditions, rituals, and magick in the modern world. Her journey of exploration began at just eight years old on Cyprus, sparked by the myth of Aphrodite, and grew into decades of learning from diverse global frameworks and is defined above all by a complete absence of dogma.
She treats spirituality not as a rigid set of rules, but as a safe space for open-ended questioning, wonder, and profound curiosity about the world and the universe. Moving deliberately between historical research and lived experience, she sees herself as an urban guardian of ancient wisdom, who views science and spirituality as two sides of the same coin. By mapping her life to the Wheel of the Year, she honors the natural cycles and symbolic structures that run through both the natural world and modern urban spaces.