Halchemist 27 Transformative Coaching
Meet Huda The Name The Method Coaching Speaking Giving Back The Touchstone Inquire
The Halchemist 27 hoopoe mark The story behind Halchemist 27

Why a hoopoe.
Why alchemy.
Why 27.

“The hoopoe sees what others miss. The alchemist knows what to do with it.”

Black-and-white childhood photograph of Huda as a toddler, wide-eyed, in a ruffled white dress
Hudhud. Already paying attention.
I · The name

To my family, I have always been Hudhud.

It’s the Arabic name for the hoopoe, a small bird with a crown of feathers that has flown through Arab, Persian, Hebrew and Greek stories for thousands of years.

And my given name, Huda, means guidance.

II · The king

In the best known of its stories, the hoopoe returns to King Solomon’s court with news of a kingdom he has never seen. The most powerful king of his age could have dismissed a small bird. Instead, he said: we will see.

The wisest king of his age
chose to look.

That story is told in the 27th chapter of the Qur’an. It’s where the 27 in my name comes from.

My work begins in that moment: when someone who has already seen a great deal decides to look again.

III · The art

The more people need from you, the fewer will tell you what you can’t see.

In the boardroom·On the stage·On the field·At the kitchen table

Alchemy is the other half of the name. The old alchemists never did turn lead into gold, but they were right about one thing: what’s precious is usually already there, buried under everything else.

Persian miniature painting of a gathering of birds beside a stream beneath a tree, on a deep blue page flecked with gold
The Concourse of the Birds Habiballah of Sava · Iran, c. 1600 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
IV · The mirror

In a 12th-century Persian poem, the hoopoe leads thirty birds on a long search for a legendary king. When they finally arrive, they find only their own reflection.

The king they were looking for was them.

V · The work

That’s the work.

Not turning you into someone else. Helping you see what’s already there, and refining it until only what’s true remains.

Huda in a cream hat and navy cardigan, eyes closed and smiling, leaning into a flowering lavender bush

The thirty birds needed a whole journey to learn this. Ali ibn Abi Talib, revered by the Sufis as the gateway to their tradition, said it in four lines.

Your cure is within you, yet you do not see it.
Your ailment comes from you, yet you do not sense it.
You think you are a small entity,
yet within you the greatest universe is enfolded.

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