Tarot Cards – Page 4 – Just the Tarot

The Hidden Difference: How Empathic Readers and Psychics Use Tarot Differently

A comparison between psychic and empathic tarot readers, explaining how psychics use tarot as a focus for intuitive insights, while empaths interpret emotional and energetic patterns for guidance.

If you’ve had more than a few Tarot readings, you’ve probably encountered a reader who, “pulls,” the cards for you. They may mix or shuffle the deck a few times and then they pick some cards which are supposed to represent you and your situation. They lay those cards out and then interpret them for you.

There’s a real question in my mind whether we can even properly call that technique a Tarot reading. Still, it illustrates the difference between two highly different styles of reading cards: the psychic approach and the empathic approach.

PSYCHIC TAROT READERS: USING THE CARDS AS A FOCUS TOOL

Psychic Tarot readers tend to use the cards as a tool to focus their extrasensory abilities. Think of the classic movie scene where a gypsy woman is huddled over a crystal ball and utters a pronouncement like, “You are going to meet a tall dark stranger and have incredible sex in a variety of nearly impossible positions.” There’s no suggestion that the crystal ball is talking to her or texts are appearing inside of it. Rather, she’s using it to focus her attention on receiving messages from spirit guides or opening herself to intuitive flashes.

In the same way, a psychic reader might pull The Tower card out of the deck and say something like, “Towers are tall buildings and that’s what I’m picking up on. I’m seeing a tall building in your future and there’s something wrong with it. I’m getting that you’re thinking of buying a house and I’d caution you about any two story house you look at it.”

Now, that interpretation HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DEFINITION OF THE CARD. Not even close. That doesn’t mean that the reader is wrong, though. If you’re dealing with a genuine psychic, she may be totally right on.

But it’s not a Tarot reading. It’s a psychic reading using Tarot cards as prompts.

Put another way, the knowledge is coming from the reader and not from the cards. That’s a major clue that you’re dealing with a psychic reader – they deemphasize the actual definitions of the cards and substitute their own. The images on the cards are actually much more important to them than the definitions because the images are what trigger their psychic flashes.

EMPATHIC TAROT READERS: READING EMOTIONAL AND ENERGETIC PATTERNS

Empathic readers tend to take a much more traditional approach.

First of all, they want YOU to handle the cards as much as possible, rather than simply picking out the cards for you. This is a recognition that there is some sort of a synchronistic link between the cards and the person who’s receiving the reading. It’s almost like the cards have to get to know the person – they need to pick up your unique vibrations and then the cards will match those vibrations and give you a reading.

An empathic reader will also rely much more heavily on structure and definitions. He’ll use readings with predetermined positions such as past, present and future. He’ll have a set of definitions that won’t change simply because he’s getting a different, “impression,” of what the card should mean. In the example of drawing The Tower card, he’d tell you that some cataclysmic event is about to occur in your personal life, but he won’t mention two story houses.

In one sense, an empath’s Tarot reading might seem to be a little psychic because she will connect deeply with the emotional and energetic state of the the person receiving the reading. Rather than receiving psychic downloads, an empathic reader will sense the feelings, fears, and desires of the client and interpret the cards in a way that reflects these energies.

Because empaths absorb emotions, their interpretations of the cards mirror what the client is going through. For instance, they might sense the client’s anxiety over drawing The Tower card and interpret it as need for an emotional breakthrough, rather than pure destruction. In that sense, an empath’s Tarot reading might feel more like a therapy session than a psychic prediction because they’re much more heart focussed.

WHICH TAROT READER IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

Both types of readings are perfectly valid, but one or the other might be preferable for us. It depends on what we’re looking for.

If we’re looking for guidance about what may happen in the future, then a psychic reader may be the better choice. That’s assuming, of course, that we’re convinced that the person we’re dealing with is a genuine psychic.

We’d approach that type of a reading in precisely the same way that we’d approach a psychic reading without the Tarot cards. After all, the cards are just there to focus the psychic’s abilities. We might go to a psychic to try to establish communication with a loved one who’s passed over. Or perhaps we feel a need for direction from a spirit guide or angel and can’t communicate directly with them ourselves. The psychic is the channel and the cards are secondary, so we’re not really looking for the wisdom of the Tarot itself.

A reading with an empath, on the other hand, would be much more oriented toward trying to make sense of our daily lives using the cards and their actual definitions. Empaths process information in patterns and so they’d be looking at all of the factors in our lives and trying to stitch them into a coherent whole.

A reading with an empath is also much more about how we feel about what’s happening to us, rather than just predicting events. After all, that sensitivity to other people’s emotions and energy is what empaths do best.

In either case, we always need to remember that a Tarot reading is just a snap shot in time. It’s about what MAY happen if the current circumstances continue. Nothing in a Tarot reading is written in stone and we have the ability to change the outcome by changing our behavior.

Blasted Towers, Bad Ju-Ju, and the Unluckiest Card in the Tarot

A look at the five unluckiest cards in the Tarot deck.

I recently received an email from a reader who asked, “What’s the unluckiest Tarot card?” I had to scratch my head about that one because the whole concept of good luck versus bad luck can get pretty complex. Nonetheless, there are some Tarot cards that can always be considered harbingers of bad luck

THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, REVERSED

The Wheel of Fortune, Reversed, is the most obvious choice for a, “bad luck,” card. We actually talk about luck in terms of good fortune and bad fortune and that’s what this card is all about. It depicts life as a wheel, where sometimes our luck is ascending and expanding and sometimes it’s descending and decreasing. When The Wheel of Fortune, Reversed, shows up in a reading it indicates that we’re in for a patch of bad luck.

The Kybalion, which is a book about Hermetic Magic, compared it to the pendulum of a clock. The pendulum swings first in one direction and then back in the other. Life can be seen in much the same way: sometimes we’re swinging into really good luck and then we swing back into a period of bad luck.

The obvious underlying message is to just hang on, because things will inevitably change. When we can stand back and look at good luck/bad luck as a rhythmic cycle, then periods of ill fortune will affect us much less severely. We just need to stay centered and calm and wait for the cycle to reverse itself.

THE TOWER

Also known as, “the lightning struck tower,” and, “the blasted tower,” The Tower would probably be my pick as THE unluckiest card in the deck.

“Just the Tarot,” by Dan Adair – complete definitions, layouts, and instructions for reading Tarot cards, available on Amazon.

At it’s most severe level, it can indicate that everything that you’ve loved and invested in is about to be blasted right down to the ground. The last time that I had it showing up in my personal readings, my life partner died, I lost my house, and I was involved in a horrible law suit over the probate of the estate. It can be that bad, depending on the other cards in the reading, but it usually isn’t.

On a mundane level, The Tower is usually just a powerful warning that we’ve gone down the wrong path and the Universe is about to provide a course correction. Perhaps we’ve been treating our fellow employees badly and – Shazam – we’re suddenly fired or demoted. Or perhaps we’ve been emotionally abusive or neglectful of our lover and they leave us for someone else.

In my experience, there’s always a level of hubris involved with this card. We’re not only taking things for granted, but we’re also being arrogant. We’re assuming that everything is under our control and the Universe is going to show us that we’re not.

The most positive message in this card – which we usually fail to appreciate at the time – is that we get to completely start over. It’s like that line from, Me and Bobby McGee: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” When our lives (or our projects or relationships, etc.) have been blasted right down to the foundations, we have the freedom to consciously design something new and better.

DEATH

Even if it isn’t the unluckiest card in the deck, Death definitely wins the award for the creepiest card in the Tarot. In her wonderful book, “Fortune Telling by Tarot Cards,” Sasha Fenton puts it in this perfectly understated, British way: “This card usually puts the wind up people when it appears . . .”

Yes.

Now, first of all, I have never seen the Death card appear before someone’s death. It will pop up after someone has died, but it’s usually just a comment on what’s happened. It’s more like, “Well, you’ve lost someone you loved, so you’re dealing with death and grief.”

What it can indicate, though, is that there’s going to be a radical, life changing turn in events in a person’s life. The querent is suddenly going to find herself going in a completely different direction than she has in the past. In an emotional and spiritual sense, it really is as if their previous life has died and they’re off in a completely new direction.

I knew a woman who had been happily married for 15 years, had a home, a loving husband, and 2 kids. She woke up one morning with this thought ringing in her head: “Shit, I’m not in love with him anymore and I hate my life.” Within six months she’d obtained a divorce, turned custody of her children over to her ex-husband and was working as a river guide in West Texas. That’s the kind of radical change that we’re talking about here.

Whether that kind of change is good luck or bad luck is just a matter of interpretation. If it’s something that we consciously plan, we usually view it as good fortune. If it was something that was forced on us by circumstance, we may think it was bad fortune.

JUSTICE, REVERSED

I’m a little hesitant to include the Justice card in this list because it has more to do with people and circumstances than luck per se. Nonetheless, it’s frequently seen as bad luck so I’ll stick it in here.

Classically, as you might guess from the image, Justice has to do with the legal system. If we’re involved in some sort of litigation and Justice is upright, it can mean that we’ll prevail. If it’s reversed, it can mean that we’ll lose.

On a personal level, it can mean that the people around you – your family, co-workers, boss, etc. – are making judgements about you and they’re not good if the card is reversed.

Losing a court case can obviously be seen as bad luck. Or it can be seen as a sign that we have a bad case, a bad lawyer, or a bad judge. In the same way, having people we care about judging us harshly can be seen as being treated unfairly. Or it might be that we’re being jerks and we need to clean up our acts.

Justice, Reversed, can be a sign of a bad luck to come, but it also serves as a warning. It’s saying, “You’re about to have some bad luck, so you need to take a careful look at your own actions before that happens.”

TEN OF SWORDS

It doesn’t take but a glance at the Ten of Swords to realize that there’s some serious bad ju-ju happening here. If we’re lying face down stuck full of swords like a human pin cushion, something’s a little wrong. This card can indicate treachery, deceit or a very, very bad ending to a relationship or a job.

The suit of Swords symbolizes our personal power. That’s the way that we project ourselves out into the world. There’s nothing innately wrong with that. Whether it’s standing up to a school yard bully when we were kids or pushing hard for a project we really believe in at work, there are always times when we have to be a bit aggressive.

But . . . when we’re overly and chronically aggressive, that puts us into a power cycle. We’re trying to dominate other people and run over their emotions and desires. We become the school yard bully instead of the person standing up to the bully. We see this mentality frequently with primitive men who brag about being the, “alpha dog.” It’s dominance for the sake of dominance, rather than for the sake of getting anything done.

The message of this card is the old cliche’: live by the sword, die by the sword. If we’ve been treating other people harshly, if we’ve been abusive in our love relationships, or domineering in work relationships, we’ve got some bad karma heading our way.

So those are the top five, “bad luck,” cards in the Tarot deck. There are, of course, other cards that may indicate bad fortune in one aspect or another of our lives, but these are the red flags. And, of course, we should always remember that a Tarot reading is just a snap shot in time. It tells us what’s likely to happen, but we have the free will to change it.

How to Choose an Oracle Deck

Factors to consider in choosing an Oracle deck.

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with Colette Baron-Reid’s Wisdom of the Oracle deck lately. They seem to be highly accurate and the illustrations are really magical.

There are, of course, about 80 kazillion different decks out there by now, so it can be difficult to decide which one to get. On average, they’re about 20 bucks a pop, so it’s not like most people can order a dozen of them and figure it out later. If you’re in the market for a new deck, here are a few things to consider.

ARE THEY REALLY ORACLE DECKS?

That’s not as silly as it sounds. There are quite a few decks that really have nothing to do with, “fortune telling.” For instance, Louise Hay has several decks like, “Heart Thoughts Cards: A Deck of 64 Affirmations,” which are collections of affirmations printed on separate cards. They’re lovely, inspiring thoughts, but they have nothing to do with predicting the future or understanding the past.

“Healing the Inner Child Oracle: A Transformative Quest,” is another example. It’s a charming deck that offers words of solace for anyone with a wounded Inner Child, but it isn’t in any sense, “oracular.” Basically, what we’re looking for in an oracle deck is one that’s capable of saying, “You are here. This is how you got here. This is what’s going to happen if you keep on your present course.” If it can’t fulfill those simple parameters, it’s not an oracle deck.

DO YOU TRUST THE AUTHOR?

A little bit of research can tell us a lot about the author of a deck. Some basic questions we can ask are: is the author experienced? Does the author have some sort of psychic ability that would lend her credence in designing a deck of cards? Is the author in a positive flow of energy?

Colette Baron Reid, for instance, is a psychic and has been reading cards professionally for 25 years. (Check out her web site here: https://www.colettebaronreid.com/)\]. For me, personally, the fact that she’s gone through some serious shit in her life and emerged with a positive message and positive energy adds greatly to her credibility.

We can contrast that with Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot deck. It’s a well designed deck and Crowley had a deep knowledge of occultism. He was also deeply involved with black magic, sacrificed animals in his rituals, and was a heroin addict. I wouldn’t want his deck or his energy anywhere near my house.

IS THE DECK MAGICAL?

This is obviously highly subjective. The question here is, “Does the deck call out to your Deep Mind?” Does it stir something inside of you that resonates and feels magical?

I would answer, “absolutely,” with Baron-Reid’s deck. The illustrations are by Jenna DellaGrottaglia and her art is like something channeled from another world. The second I picked up the deck I could almost feel it vibrating in my hands.

They’re whimsical, thought provoking, and perfect illustrations of the situations we find ourselves in on a daily basis. You can see more of her art here.

On the other hand, we can look at cards like those from Doreen Virtue’s original angel decks and feel a resounding, “Blechhh.” They’re really just Hallmark greeting cards compiled into a deck. Despite the fact that they sold in the hundreds of thousands, they’re flat and low vibration.

ARE THEY ACCURATE?

Although this is, of course, the most important question, it’s hard to ascertain without actually buying one of the decks and trying them. We can try to get a, “feel,” for them by reading the reviews on sites like Amazon, but even those can be highly suspect.

If you’re just starting out on your card reading adventure, one indicator you might use is how long the deck has been around. Decks that don’t work tend to disappear fairly quickly. The Waite Tarot deck, for instance, is pretty much the gold standard for accuracy and was first published in 1909. The much, much older Marseilles deck has been used for centuries, but is a little more difficult for beginners to work with.

In the limited period of time that I’ve been using Baron-Reid’s deck, I’ve found it to be highly accurate. I inquired, for instance, about the outcome of the presidential election here in the U.S. and drew a card titled Conflict and Chaos. Perfect.

WHAT ARE YOU USING THEM FOR?

Finally, it’s good to consider how we’ll actually be using the cards. If we’re deeply into metaphysical inquiries and are looking for the underlying currents in life, we might want to go for a deck that relies heavily on archetypes. One example is Baron-Reid’s Goddess deck. Or we might want to go straight to the source and use an archetype deck like this one from Caroline Myss.

I tend to use my cards much more for mundane inquiries than for metaphysical explorations. In other words, my questions are more like, “What in the hell am I supposed to be doing this week?” And less like, “What is the meaning of life?”

Which is another reason why I particularly like this deck. The cards are mainly flat out, practical, day to day advice, like, “You need to get more rest.” Or, “this venture isn’t going to work so make a u-turn.” Or, “use your imagination, not your logic.”

We can achieve much the same result by taking a classic Tarot deck like the Waite deck and simply removing all of the Major Arcana (archetype) cards. When we use only the Minor Arcana, we’re only looking at the mundane, practical factors in life. That’s kind of a hassle but it works.

Ultimately, the deck you choose will be all about you. If it calls out to you, if it resonates with your vibrations, if you trust it, that’s your deck.

The Moon, Processing the Election, and Summoning a New Reality

Processing the craziness of the U.S. election and waiting for a new world to manifest.

MORE THAN JUST THE BLUES

So how are you doing out there after this crazy election? If you’re a liberal, an empath, or an intuitive, you’re probably feeling puzzled, sad, angry, depressed, and – to a certain extent – scared.

And, unless you’ve just sworn off rationality (like the other half of the country) you’re probably trying to figure this out. What in the HELL just happened? It’s more than just a normal case of post-election blues. It’s a need to restore some sense of sanity to our daily lives.

YES, THEY REALLY ARE CRAZY

The first thing to acknowledge is that, yes, the Trumpsters really ARE crazy. There’s an old argument that says, “A million people can’t be wrong.” But they can be and frequently are. Millions of people supported Hitler and Stalin. Millions of people supported the Catholic church raping and burning and murdering it’s way across several centuries. Not only is there not truth in numbers, there’s frequently collective insanity.

DEFINING CRAZY

If you joyously embrace something that’s going to fuck you up, you’re crazy. We recognize that fact with addicts who stick the needle in their arms one more time or alcoholics who pick up a bottle again. Bi-polars who quit taking their meds. Abused spouses who go back to their abusers. If we choose self-destruction, we’ve left the realm of sanity.

In my lifetime, there has never been an election where more people voted against their own self-interest. Women voted for a man who wants to end their control over their own bodies. Latinos voted for a candidate who calls them murderers and rapists. So-called Christians voted for a serial adulterer who’s violated nearly everything that Jesus ever taught. And on and on. They’ve chosen someone who is going to destroy their lives, therefore they’re crazy.

TRYING TO RESTORE BALANCE

One of the first things that we do when we’re confronted with a whole lot of crazy is to try to restore a sense of balance and sanity. There must be some reason why they acted so crazy, right?

That’s our rational, left-brain, linear thinking trying to understand why they acted as they did. A sense of sanity is very important to human beings. It makes our environments predictable, it makes our lives orderly and meaningful. More than anything else, it gives us a sense of safety and we need a sense of safety to function.

This is why we’re seeing all of the post-election analysis. “What is it that women really wanted? What issues are really important to minorities? What message was rural America really trying to send?”

PROCESSING CRAZY

The sad truth, though, is that if we try to process non-rational behavior from a rational perspective, it just makes us crazy. There are million reasons out there for why different people voted for Trump.

I couldn’t bring myself to vote for a woman.

I didn’t like her laugh.

I’m paying too much for groceries.

I’m worried about immigrants.

I’ve always voted for Republicans.

I hate liberals.

He didn’t REALLY mean all of those things he said.

Any and all of those reasons pale in comparison to the reality of voting for a senile, hateful, con artist who announced that he intends to be a dictator and end democracy as we know it. When we put the reasons next to the results, they’re all crazy.

THE MOON CARD AND CRAZY

The Tarot card, The Moon, is all about crazy. It shows a dog and a wolf baying at the Moon, while a crustacean crawls out of a dark pool. It illustrates that even our domesticated dogs still contain the genes of the wild wolf and our brains still contain the primitive, crocodile brain that motivates hatred and fear. The light of the Moon illuminates but doesn’t delineate. We see a shape on the ground and we don’t know if it’s a snake or a rope.

What happened in our last election was all about illusions, delusions, and trickery. It was the wolf snapping it’s ravenous jaws at our doors and the crocodile gnashing it’s teeth. It was a cultural and spiritual disaster. It was crazy to the max.

CREATING ALTERNATIVE REALITIES

So if we can’t use our rational minds to really understand what just happened, what do we do? Well, we ask for answers and wait for alternative realities to emerge.

We need to give our subconscious minds – which are also our links to our higher selves – time to process all of this craziness. What we just got was the equivalent of a massive data dump. We just now found out that over half the country supports a very evil (yep, I’m going to use that word) agenda. It contains racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and fascism. We simply can’t assimilate all of that data at once.

What we CAN do is to actively engage with our subconscious minds (and thus our higher selves), ask for answers, and wait for them to emerge. That means doubling down on meditating, prayer, lucid dreaming, reading Tarot cards – whatever our particular means is of creating a dialogue with our subconscious and higher selves. That means actively asking for answers.

IT TAKES A LITTLE WHILE

As we know, the subconscious mind doesn’t have a drive-through window. We can’t just cruise up and order an answer to all of this with a side of onion rings or fries.

We also know, though, that our subconscious minds, our higher selves, and our guides and helpers are infinitely creative. Right now, at this very moment, they are weaving together a tapestry that will contain the answers we need. As spiritual seekers we don’t drive out the darkness – we bring in the light. The light will start to emerge over the next couple of months and it will emerge through us.

Thought-Forms, Astral Pornography, and The Ace of Wands

Are our thoughts actually energy forms?

A few years ago I was reading a fascinating book called, “You Are Not Your Brain,” and the authors made a statement that was positively shocking to me: “To this day, scientists and psychologists cannot agree on exactly what a thought is.”

At first blush, that sounds completely ridiculous because we all know what thoughts are. They’re . . . um . . . they’re like . . . these little things that jump up in our heads and live in our brains, right?

There . . . I solved that one. You’re welcome.

Seriously, though, there really isn’t a good working definition of what a thought actually is. There’s a sort of reductionist explanation of how our nervous systems and brains produce thoughts. We can hook someone up to a brain monitor and see which parts of their brains light up with activity when they’re thinking about a particular subject. Perhaps their fear center – the amygdala – lights up because they’re thinking of something really scary. Or their prefrontal cortex – the thinking brain – lights up because they’re doing some heavy problem solving.

That doesn’t really do anything but describe the process of making the idea, though. It doesn’t tell us what the finished product is. That theory – that the brain makes ideas – exists cheek by jowl with the stimulus/response model where something in our environment makes us think certain things. Perhaps we see a picture of Donald Trump and we think, “Ohhh, scary clown,” which makes us think of circuses which makes us think of Stephen King horror novels about murderous clowns which makes us think about our overdue library book.

That concept seems to be counter-intuitive when we think about . . . well . . . intuition. When we have intuitions or flashes of insight, it feels as if they’ve popped right up in our brains without anything else making them happen. When someone asked Einstein how he invented the theory of relativity he said, “Oh, it just dropped in while I was playing the piano.”

For centuries, human beings viewed some types of ideas in just that way: as something that came into our minds from an outside source. That’s why the word, “inspire,” means to have something breathed into you. The notion was that something out there – perhaps the Universe or the Gods or the fairies – inserted the idea into your mind.

That’s what’s portrayed in the Tarot card, The Ace of Wands. Wands represent ideas and this is an idea or thought coming into the world in its purest form of mental energy. It’s, “divinely inspired.”

That STILL doesn’t tell us exactly what an idea IS, though. It’s just talking about it’s source, rather than it’s contents.

Now, the Theosophists and Victorian occultists had very specific ideas of exactly what an idea is. They viewed ideas as thought-forms, which is to say, individual little packets of energy produced by our brains and emotions and auric fields. And – important point – they felt that they were independent of the human being once they were produced.

We’ve all seen those cartoons where there’s a person having a thought that appears as a bubble with text in it, hovering over the character’s head. That’s a convenient way to visualize what the Theosophists were talking about. Every time that we have a thought, it’s like our bio-field – our brains, emotional energies, energy bodies – are extruding a little, tiny thought-form bubbles that exists outside of us.

Most of the bubbles don’t last very long because they don’t contain much energy. Let’s face it, many of us are NOT thinking about the theory of relativity while we play the piano. Instead, we’re having really profound thoughts like, “Where’d I put my car keys? Need a cup of coffee. Gotta walk the dog. Did I do the laundry?” So these are little bubbles that appear for a moment, pop, and disappear.

When the thought forms are really heavily charged with energy, though, they stick around. How do they get charged? Well, through emotions and through repetition.

Suppose you just went to bed with someone and you had a super-duper, unbelievable, I-think-my-ears-just-fell-off orgasm at the exact moment that you thought, “I love you.” That, “I love you,” thought is super-charged with energy and it will last. Ditto, if you’ve been badly shocked or frightened by something. The more intense the emotion, the more of an energetic charge the thought-form has and the longer it will exist.

We can also charge the thought-forms with energy by thinking of them over and over and over. On a positive note, we can see that happen when someone thinks of their lover constantly, as we tend to do in the early stages of falling in love. The obsessive thinking keeps adding energy to that same, “I love you,” thought-form and makes it’s last. On a negative note, we can see the same pattern with chronic anxiety and depression. Constantly thinking of things that frighten us or make us sad just increases the charge in the thought-forms and so the depression will linger long after the original cause.

Two of the early Theosophists, Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, published a book called, “Thought Forms.” It had illustrations of the forms as they emerged from people’s auras, as seen by psychic mediums. Here’s one of a peaceful thought:

And here’s one of an angry thought.

I would have liked to have seen one of a horny thought – sort of astral pornography, I guess – but the Victorians didn’t roll that way.

So is all of this true? Maybe. It certainly forms the basis for much of what we call visualization and manifestation, as well as the concepts of either cursing or blessing someone. I’ll be writing more about that in the immediate future but for the time being it’s a fun concept to play with. What if our thoughts are actual things that exist in our personal energy space and exert an influence on us and those around us? How can we change the negative thought-forms and increase the positive-forms? Can we pick up someone else’s thought-forms, much like a virus?

Before you dismiss the idea out of hand, remember what we started off with here: the most preeminent psychologists and scientists in the world have absolutely no idea what a thought is. The theory of thought-forms is just as good – and maybe better – than most of their theories.

Remember that my e-book, “Just the Tarot,” is still available – dirt cheap! – on Amazon. In fact, I’m sending thought-forms at you right now. You should buy this book . . . you should buy this book . . . you should buy this book . . .

How to Lighten the Fuck Up by Fooling Around with Magic

A Quick Look at the Playful Nature of Magic.

Magic.

What is it, anyway? We talk about magic a fair amount. We say that something, “felt really magical,” or we, “feel a lot of magic,” when we’re with another person,” or a solution to a problem appeared, “just like magic.” But what, exactly, is it? Is it just a feeling, or is it a real thing that exists in the world independent of our feelings?

In The Magician card, we see a person channeling magical energy from, “above,” into the material plane. He’s using his concentration, his will power, and his skills to pull that energy into what he wants to manifest.

Which, of course, is a major clue. Magic is an energy, just like light, sound, radio waves, or solar flares. What’s more, it is it’s own energy, meaning that it’s distinct from other energies.

We tend to get it mixed up with other energies, because it appears coincident with them. When we’re madly in love with someone, it feels magical, and so we tend to mix magical energy up with being in love. When we’re joyous, it feels magical, and so we tend to mix magic up with great happiness. But magic is it’s own energy that appears with joy and love, but isn’t just joy and love.

We can see an analog of this with emotions and brain chemicals. When we have a lot of serotonin in our bodies, we feel happier. When we have a lot of cortisol and adrenaline in our bodies, we feel more stressed and anxious. But . . . happiness causes serotonin to appear and serotonin causes happiness to appear, so it’s a definite, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” situation. They’re not equivalent – they just appear at the same time.

Reductionists would have us believe that serotonin = happiness, but it’s not true. Antidepressants, which increase serotonin levels, can be a very effective band aid for depression, but they pretty much have to go along with good therapy to deal with the underlying problems. If we don’t build in the therapy, the happiness goes away when we stop taking the antidepressants because – guess what? – the things that were making us unhappy are still there.

In very much the same way, magic appears in our lives coincident with love and and joy, but the love and joy don’t cause the magic. Nor does the magic cause the love and joy. They just appear at the same time.

There are some other clues we can find that point to what magic actually is. Two major markers that appear in our lives when we’ve got magical energy flowing through us are synchronicity and serendipity. Synchronicity and serendipity are really just short hand for, “life is easy.” Solutions to our problems appear out of nowhere. People, places and things that feel like gifts from the universe manifest with no effort at all.

And, “life is easy,” is really just short hand for, “life is light. Life is playful. Life is fun.”

Which are some more major clues about what magical energy really is. In the same way that magic tends to appear when we’re joyous or in love, magic tends to appear when we’re happy and playful. It’s almost as if the universe is saying, “You know, you really need to lighten the fuck up if you want me to play with you. I get that you’re all sad and dour, but it’s a drag and I can find someone else to hang out with.”

So magic is an energy that tends to appear in our lives when we’re loving, joyous, happy and playful. It doesn’t cause them and they don’t cause magic, but they definitely appear at the same time.

Which brings us to another card, The Fool.

The Fool is FULL of magic. He’s dancing along at the edge of a cliff and he really doesn’t give a fuck about the danger because he’ll just float right off into the air and keep dancing. His little dog is picking up on his joy and dancing right along with him, in just the way that dogs always will.

Now, the interesting thing about The Fool is that he’s the Zero card in the Tarot deck. Every other card has a number, but The Fool is Zero. Which means that he doesn’t belong anywhere and he belongs everywhere. We can literally take any card in the Tarot deck, drop The Fool on top of it and things will start to get better. Even extremely bad cards like Death and The Tower start to improve the second that we bring in magical energy.

There are people in the world who will tell us that life is insane, tragic, and brutal and that there’s very little to be optimistic about. And, when we look at the daily news, it can be hard to argue with that view. Believing in love, joy, playfulness, happiness and lightness can seem downright . . . Foolish.

But that’s the point. No matter how bad the situation may be, if we start to drop The Fool on it, if we start to increase the magic in our lives, it will get better.

Magic brings love, joy, happiness, playfulness, easiness, and lightness with it.

Yes, please. I’ll have some of that.

My e-book, Just the Tarot, is still available on Amazon at a price that’s SO reasonable that it would be downright Foolish not to buy a copy.

Toxic Masculinity, The Inner Marriage, and Percolating Testicles

On the exterior level, the Two of Cups obviously represents two people who are falling in love. On a deeper level, though, it represents the Inner Marriage, the harmonious joining of the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine in one person’s Soul. In a sense, it represents learning to fall in love with yourself. Or maybe your Self.

I was watching an interview about that the other day and I got plumb confused. The speaker was discussing the way that her Tantric Tradition deals with the Yin/Feminine and Yang/Masculine energies that we all contain. I followed the beginning of it with no great problem. Obviously, every human being incorporates both Yin and Yang and we give greater or lesser expressions to those energies at different times in our lives.

Then she got off into some territory where I felt like I needed to make a chart to keep track of it all. She said that every person has a Yin and a Yang, but women’s Yin have a Yang within the Yin and men’s Yang have a Yin within the Yang. The Yang in women’s Yin is apparently centered at the birth canal, because that’s where they project their being into the world. The Yin in men’s Yang is located in their testicles because that’s where they hold life and sort of . . . . um . . . percolate it.

It all just seemed really complicated.

Now, I want to be clear that I’m not in any way making fun of that tradition or denigrating it. In fact, I was really impressed that someone had invested that much time and effort thinking about testicles because most of us are perfectly happy to let them just hang around without analyzing them too much. Men, in particular, consider their testicles as really good buddies, despite the fact that they seem to cause a lot of problems in the world.

What came through to me, though, is how much more women have advanced than men in thinking about all of this. Despite the recent legal set-backs in reproductive rights, the women’s movement remains relatively robust. Women continue to question and examine their roles in society and try to sort out their emotional energies. The men’s movement on the other hand . . . um . . . oh, that’s right . . . there IS no men’s movement.

Well, there IS a sort of a men’s movement, but it’s pretty horrifying. It seems to be based on the idea that men have a divine right to be belching, farting, weight lifting, muscle car driving, gun toting swine and that anyone who questions that is a bitch or a fairy. If you type, “Toxic Masculinity,” into the YouTube search bar, here are a few of the videos that come up:

THE WAR ON MEN

START INCREASING TOXIC MASCULINITY LIKE A REAL MAN

THE RISE OF WEAK MEN: BREAKING DOWN TOXIC MASCULINITY IN AMERICA TODAY

THE INSIDIOUS TOXIC MASCULINITY MYTH IS HARMING HUMANITY

Here’s a screen shot from one of them that kind of says it all:

Ironically, there’s a female side to that story, as well. Under the same topic we find vids (by women) with titles like:

DON’T BE A SIMP: WOMEN LIKE BAD BOYS

WOMEN HATE MEN WHO ARE IN TOUCH WITH THEIR, “FEMININE

SIDE”

WHY WOMEN CRAVE DOMINANCE

and my personal favorite: MEN TRY TO GUILT US BY BEING,

“NICE.”

So there seem to be a fair number of women who don’t want any Yin in their Yangs. Men, of course, take note of that and process it as, “Yeah, I know they SAY they want sensitive men but I’ll never get laid by being evolved.” And, really, we even see quite a few, “feminists,” who are still dating knuckle draggers because it, “just feels right.”

Despite all of that, I still see a fair amount of hope on the sexual horizon. For one thing, we virtually never see a debate over what it means to be a REAL woman. Women seem to be pretty accepting of each other’s life choices now days and career women and lesbians are just as welcome in the tribe as homemakers and mommies.

Kansas City Chiefs football player Harrison Butker recently got into some serious trouble by suggesting that women are much more fulfilled by having babies than they are by having careers. A lot of Yins suggested cutting his Yang off, but it really hasn’t been that long since that would have been considered normal speech.

Up until the late 1960s, it was commonly accepted that the only, “natural,” role for women was producing babies until their uteruses fell out. A corollary to that was the widely held stereotype that only women who had large breasts were truly sexy, a belief that must have made most women feel fairly uncomfortable.

Thankfully, a huge amount of the sexual stereotyping around women has fallen away. Unfortunately, men seem to still be stuck at first base, he said, using a very masculine, butch sports metaphor. So what is it going to take for men to dribble their balls down the court and kick one over the goal posts for a home run?

Well, first and foremost, it’s going to involve men actually claiming that Yin side of their nature and saying, “Yes, REAL men have sensitivities and emotions and needs and men who don’t have them aren’t real in any human sense of the word.”

And, second, it going to involve more women letting go of that toxic stereotype, as well. As long as women continue to have sex with emotionally primitive men, men will continue to be emotionally primitive.

I mean, why wouldn’t they?

The Magician, Apples and Bears and Cat’s Eye’s Marbles

The role of paying attention in magic.

Not too long ago a friend asked me, “Well, what IS magic, anyway?” And it’s hard to explain, you see, because magic is all about bears and apples and cats eye marbles.

We encounter images like The Magician Tarot Card or Hollywood depictions of wizards and witches and we think that magic is very mysterious and as rare as a mustache on a frog. It’s certainly nothing that those of us who are ordinary mortals will encounter, unless we trip over a bottle with a genie in it.

Not true. Not true . . . magic is everywhere. We just don’t pay enough attention to see it.

I live in the mountains of Northern California and one of the things that comes along with mountains is bears. Yes, large, furry, fearsome, 500 pound ursine critters with giant claws and paws and huge, scary teeth.

But it’s not so bad. For the most part, bears mind their own business and humans mind theirs and seldom the twain shall meet. You might occasionally step out on your back porch at night and say, “Oh, shit, it’s a bear.” No problems. The bear stares at you, you stare at the bear, you slowly step back into your house, close the door and repeat, “Oh, shit, it’s a bear.”

I don’t doubt that the bear is probably standing in the yard thinking, “Oh, shit, it’s a human.”

The one time that bears can become problematic is in the Autumn when they need to fatten up before they hibernate. During that brief period of time, they will destroy anything that lies between them and food. If you have a shed with trash cans in it, they will rip the roof off to get to the garbage. They will eat goats and sheep if you leave them lying around at night. They’ve been known to tear the doors off of cars because the owner left a bag of dog kibbles inside. And they love, love, LOVE apples, which coincidentally ripen at exactly the same time that the bears get hungry.

When my partner, Carol, and I first moved to the mountains we purchased an old ranch style house. It was built in 1950 and several generations of several families had lived in the house before us. The deserted tree houses and forgotten toys lying in the weeds were testaments to the fact that many children had lived in that house and romped around on the surrounding property.

One of the things we were most excited about was that we had our very own apple grove on the hill behind the house. There were about a dozen, gnarled old trees and we were thrilled when they burst into beautiful white and pink blossoms during our first Spring there. The aroma of the blossoms was like something out of heaven. Fat, black and yellow bumble bees buzzed and droned from blossom to blossom and life was mellow.

As the summer progressed and the apples began to form and grow, we fantasized about harvesting them in the Autumn. We knew we’d make apple pies and apple fritters and apple butter. Perhaps we’d buy a small wine press and make apple cider or bottle apple vinegar. Maybe we’d fill the bathtub with apple sauce and just squish around in it.

Oh, we were feeling very organic! We were living in the country and we had a huge crop of apples coming ripe on our little farm. Which actually began to worry me a bit, as I strolled through the grove, counting the apples. I realized that, even on those few trees, there were hundreds of apples. Maybe thousands. It slowly began to dawn in the recesses of my mind that maybe thousands and thousands of apples coming ripe at the same time might not be such a swell idea. What in the holy hell were we going to DO with all of them?

It was right about then that I first heard about the bears.

One of our new neighbors dropped by unexpectedly and I was standing in the yard with him pretending that I liked it when neighbors dropped by unexpectedly. He was chewing on a match stick, eyeing the apples trees critically and he said, “Best keep all of them apples picked up when they fall or you’ll draw every bear in the county.”

Gulp. “Bears? We’ve got . . . bears?”

“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “The goddamned county is full of goddamned bears. Better not go out at night without a gun or they could tear you apart. Of course, they’re not near as bad as the mountain lions. The goddamned mountain lions like to jump out of a tree, bite your head and crush it like a goddamned egg. Goddamned, son of a bitch bears and mountain lions. Best keep those goddamned apples picked up or you’ll be goddamned sorry.”

All of which leads up to the fact that I could not, in fact, keep the goddamned apples picked up despite frantic, manic efforts. Apples fell like rain and covered the ground. They fell into the rain gutters on the house. They fell into pots full of flowers. They fell on my head and shoulders as I rushed through the apple grove with a rake and wheel barrow. They were everywhere. Whoever said that an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree never had a goddamned apple tree.

Now, I only mention this because of the cat’s eye marble.

As it turned out, the neighbor was right about the apples and the bears. There came the inevitable night when the dogs were howling and there was much huffing and puffing and the sounds of branching snapping in the apple grove. When I ventured out the next morning, several of the trees had been thoroughly trashed. The goddamned bear, not content to eat the goddamned apples that were on the ground, had ripped down dozens of branches and they lay broken and scattered around the grove.

As I stood there, muttering to myself and examining the humongous mounds of bear shit, there was a loud cracking noise to my immediate right. One of the larger branches had been broken nearly in two when the bear scaled the tree and it suddenly sagged almost to the ground.

And there, partially embedded in the wood at the point where the branch joined the tree, was a single cat’s eye marble.

I reached over and easily pulled it loose from the tree branch. As I stood there staring at the marble in my hand, I felt a shiver run up my spine and the hair on my neck stood on end. I realized that at some time, many, many years ago, a child stood by that very tree. Perhaps it was getting dark and her mother called her in from playing. Perhaps she was leaving a gift for the fairies. For whatever reason, she had carefully balanced a marble at the convergence of the tree and branch and then forgotten about it.

Through the years, the tree grew and grew and the branch gradually enveloped the marble, holding it there safe inside of the tree. Until I happened to be standing exactly next to the tree at the exact moment that the tree branch broke and revealed its treasure.

I felt as if the ghost of a small child was standing right there next to me, handing me that cat’s eye marble and saying, “Look what I’ve got, Mister.”

And that’s magic.

The odds against that happening are staggering. It’s impossible. Can’t happen.

But it did.

The thing about it is that I didn’t cast a spell or wave a wand at the tree or ask the elementals to perform a magical feat. It just happened and I was paying attention, so I saw it.

Maybe it was the ghost of that long ago child, but more likely it was the Universe laughing and saying, “Look what I’ve got, Mister. Can you see? Are you paying attention?”

Magic is out there. It happens all of the time. We just have to learn how to see it and when the Universe asks us to play with it, gather up our marbles and go.

*. *. *

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT MY E-BOOK, “JUST THE TAROT,” IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON FOR LESS THAN THE PRICE OF WHOLE BAG FULL OF MARBLES. YOU SHOULD BUY A COPY – IT’S MAGICAL!

Atheist Tarot Readers, Defective Jesus, and Finding a New God-Person

The pragmatism of polytheism.

I have a friend who is an atheist Tarot card reader and it tickles me no end. I like to rag on her a bit and ask her, “Who do you think is answering your questions when you do a reading? Maybe atheist angels or agnostic spirit guides?”

Which generally earns me a dirty look or a shrug. She reads Tarot cards. She’s an atheist. It’s not up for discussion.

Now, she’s kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is that she was reading Tarot cards for many years before she became an atheist, so she knows that they actually work. When you sit down with a deck of cards and do a reading, you get answers and the answers are generally (not always) right on.

The hard place is that she went through a series of very painful life experiences that led her to conclude that there’s no God and that religion is nothing more than superstitious nonsense. That conclusion wasn’t arrived at in a frivolous manner because she was genuinely suffering in her life, she prayed for help, and nothing much happened.

It’s a pretty simple equation, right? We’re told that there’s some sort of a God-person out there, that he loves us, and that if we’re in trouble he’ll come zooming in and rescue us. So, if we do our part by (a) getting in trouble and (b) praying for help and the God-person doesn’t do his part by (c) zooming in and rescuing us, then it’s logical to conclude that the God-person either doesn’t exist or else he’s pretty useless.

I’m actually very sympathetic with my friend, the atheist Tarot reader, because I had a similar experience when I was in my mid-forties. My father had just killed himself, I lost my job and had to declare bankruptcy, my house was repossessed, and my mother developed Alzheimer’s Disease.

All of this happened within a one year span of time. My life went from being perfectly normal to being a total shit-burger in the wink of an eye. I was so chewed up by life that I had to look up to see the bottom and if it weren’t for bad luck, “I wouldn’t have had no luck at all.” Life had chewed me up, spit me out, and then stomped on me with hob-nail boots to be sure I’d stay on the ground.

I was living in Texas at the time and there’s a fundamentalist christian under every rock and behind every cactus in Texas. It was probably inevitable, then, that one of them said, “Dan, you just need to get down on your knees and pray to Jesus for help.” And I did. I was raised up in the catholic church, so the concept of praying to Jesus wasn’t exactly foreign to me and I thought, “Well, shit . . . what do I have to lose?” Nothing.

So I commenced praying and I prayed and prayed and prayed and asked Jesus to help me in my misery and travails and – SHAZAM! – nothing happened. No heavenly hosts of angels appeared, Jesus didn’t invite me for a walk in the garden and no one anointed my fevered brow with soothing oils. I continued to be royally fucked.

But, unlike my friend, the atheist Tarot reader, I didn’t throw my hands in the air and declare that God is dead and it’s just a cold, hard universe. Instead, I analyzed my situation and thought, “Well, I’m in trouble, I prayed to the God-person to come zooming in and help me, and nothing happened. Obviously, I have a defective God-person. He’s not working, so I’ll just send him back. I need to find a God-person who can get the job done.”

I did a lot of research on Gods and Goddesses and finally settled on Hecate’, the Goddess of the Cross Roads. She seemed like a good fit because I was definitely at a cross roads in my life and I needed to know which way to turn. I prayed and prayed and prayed and asked Hecate’ to help me in my misery and travails and – SHAZAM! – something happened.

In fact, quite a bit happened, just like magic. I met a woman on line, fell in love with her, moved to California and we lived together for 19 years. My life went from being an absolute shit-burger to being wonder-full in the wink of an eye.

Now, I’m not writing all of this as some sort of an anti-Jesus screed or to praise the wonders of Hecate’. I know a few christians who swear up and down that Jesus answers their prayers and they seem like nice, honest people. Maybe they got a Jesus model that wasn’t defective and he sort of works if they don’t take too close a look at him. Maybe Jesus was just a bad fit for me – could be that he doesn’t like my haircut or tie dyed shirts. I don’t know. I just know he didn’t work.

Which leads me back to my friend, the atheist Tarot reader. Like me, she tried praying to her God-person and nothing happened, nothing got better. She quite logically realized he was a defective model and sent him back. Fortunately, she was still able to hang on to her Tarot cards and say, “These DO work, so I’m not sending them back.”

The point being that we have a sort of a pragmatic, mostly unspoken, contract with our God-persons. It’s something along the lines of, “Okay, God-person, we’ll pray to you and we’ll build all of these very grandiose temple-houses for you to live in and we’ll pay the salaries of your priest-persons. You, on the other hand, will help us, console us, give us guidance, and zoom in to help us when we’re in trouble.”

Unfortunately, humans have a long history of making excuses for their God-persons. In many instances, it’s as if the God-person is on vacation when we’re in trouble, or perhaps he has Attention Deficit Disorder and it just slips his mind that we’re hanging off the edge of a cliff holding on to a single branch. In the worst instances, the God-person seems to behave like some sort of a deranged sadist who LIKES wrecking people’s lives and we just pray that maybe he won’t notice us while he’s in a bad mood.

In those instances, it’s perfectly acceptable to just say, “Okay, God-person – I held up my end of the bargain and you didn’t hold up yours. It’s been sweet, but I think we both know this isn’t working out.”

And it’s also perfectly acceptable to find another God-person. Just because this relationship is ending, it doesn’t mean that we can’t have another relationship. There’s no reason to accept the christian line that there’s only ONE God-person and that we mustn’t ever be unfaithful to him, even when he’s being unfaithful to us. What a narcissist!

It’s actually a great big universe out there and there are plenty of God-persons to choose from. If we’re stone-cold poor, for instance, we might want to talk to Lakshmi, the Goddess of Abundance. If we’re facing insurmountable obstacles, Ganesh specializes in removing them. If we’re in need of healing, talk to Tara. If we have no love in your lives, pray to Quan Yin.

I think that you’ll find that most God-persons are actually quite nice entities. For the most part, they seem to have healthy boundaries. They don’t follow you around and spy on what you’re doing. They don’t have temper fits and throw you out of the garden just because you ate an apple. They seem to have a lot of unconditional love and won’t ask you to sacrifice your first born son. And they actually work.

My e-book, “Just the Tarot,” a practical guide to reading Tarot cards, is still available on Amazon for less than you’d pay for a small order of jalapeño poppers and will last a lot longer.

THE DEVIL CARD AND THE CONUNDRUM OF EVIL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

An exploration of the notion of evil as it applies to anti-social personality disorders.

There are some people who seem to be just . . . evil.

It feels kind of icky, just making that statement. It seems like stepping into that whole judeo-christian tar-pit of demon possession and punishing, crazy gods and hell fire and damnation and sinners. We can see that idea illustrated pretty well in The Devil tarot card. Two nude people are chained to a black altar while a gigantic, scary demon bat/goat sort of a thing hovers over them. Yikes! They done been possessed by the devil!!!

Evil in that context seems like a very medieval, primitive sort of a concept. Something that you expect to hear coming out of the mouths of fundamentalist religious people who aren’t very spiritually evolved.

Still . . .there are some people who seem functionally evil.

Many of us have had the ill-fortune to encounter a few psychopaths or sociopaths or malignant narcissists. Usually – if we’re normal people – they take us completely by surprise. Many of them are extremely adept at concealing their inner natures, but they basically have NO EMPATHY. No sense of compassion. No kindness. No love living inside of them. Not even a little sprout.

It’s a shock, when we realize that. That these are people who appear to be perfectly normal on the outside (in fact, in the case of narcissists, they may be very attractive on the outside) but have nothing but a dead, arid desert in their hearts. What’s worse, many of them aren’t content with just being morally and ethically dead, they actually delight in causing harm to others. Sociopaths may be content to live and let live (as long as you don’t cross them) but malignant narcissists and psychopaths go out of their way to fuck people up. They don’t see other people as humans – they see them as prey.

It can still be difficult to get from that behavior to the concept of evil. We tend to view, “evil,” in terms of moral wrongness and choice. In other words, if we see a clear choice between loving kind behavior on the one hand and cruel, malicious behavior on the other and we choose to be cruel and malicious, then that’s evil. The evil lies in perceiving the distinction between the two behaviors and choosing the one that causes harm.

Psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists don’t seem to have that sense of choice. It’s not that they’re choosing to be evil rather than being kind, they simply have no concept of kindness. What’s more, they view that lack of a sense of compassion as a strength. They view normal people who have a conscience and try to be kind as weak and they go out of their ways to exploit that weakness.

So, in a classic sense of ethics, we can’t really see them as being evil, because they don’t have that capacity to choose between being a good human being and being a fucked up human being. They’re just fucked up. Period.

We may embrace the medical/psychiatric model and try to make excuses for them. We look at them from a normal person’s point of view and think, “How awful it must be to live in a world of no love and no kindness. Something horrifically traumatic must have happened to them to make them that terrible.”

Well, yes and no. Sociopaths, for instance, have brains that are measurably, physically different from those of normal people. They appear to have been born that way. Not all people who are born with that brain structure become sociopaths, however. It seems that something has to happen in their environment to trigger the brain into becoming sociopathic. It’s like they’re hardwired that way at birth, but someone or something has to throw the switch to activate the wiring.

Psychologists and researchers are still arguing about exactly what it is that throws the switch. It could be emotional trauma, physical trauma, horrible parents, malnutrition, all of the above or – in some cases – none of the above. A lot of sociopaths were born into wealthy, loving families. Somehow, though, they end up with NO feelings of compassion or empathy, with a total lack of the characteristics that make us fully human.

It’s important to note, though, that THEY DON’T FEEL THAT WAY. At all. They’re quite happy with the way they exist in the world and think the rest of us are fools. They don’t see themselves as lacking in basic human characteristics, they see us as weaklings.

It’s also important to note that there are apparently no, “cures,” for these disorders. There’s no way to magically change them into, “normal,” human beings. If you dig around on the internet you’ll find some theorizing that talk therapy may be effective in treating malignant narcissism, but when you ask actual therapists about that, they just shake their heads.

There is some evidence that the number of sociopaths and narcissists among us is actually increasing, but there are arguments against that. It could be that our methodology for detecting them has just gotten better. It could be that they’re just more visible because of our new world of social media.

In any case, there’s no question that they’ve always been among us. In fact, Austrian philosopher Karl Popper argued that what we call, “history,” is largely the record of the psychopaths of our species. We study people like Hitler, Napolean, and Genghis Khan, people who caused immense pain and suffering in the world and just didn’t care, but we ignore all of the millions of kind, loving souls who were trying to just get through life.

Although they are very much a minority, almost a tiny fraction of the population, they have an oversized effect on the people around them. Because of them, we tend to question the goodness of human nature. We see the world as a dangerous place and fail to see all of the love and compassion that exists in the majority of human beings.

Even worse, they frequently succeed in dragging us down to their level. Anyone who’s been worked over by a malignant narcissist will tell you that you emerge from that experience with a lot less trust of other people and with a constant question of whether the next person you become involved with will be a real human being or another monster in disguise.

So . . . we end up having to recognize that there ARE people living among us who have no empathy, no compassion, no sense of ethics, no internal moral compass, and who cause a great deal of suffering for other human beings.

We can’t really call them, “evil,” in the ethical sense of their choosing to be rotten human beings. And we can’t really use the medical model and say that they’re, “sick,” because many of them live normal, productive lives and appear to be quite happy, making everyone around them miserable. And, thankfully, we’re evolving out of that primitive model of thinking that they’re possessed by demons or they’re servants of the devil.

But there they are, walking among us like human question marks. How can you be a human being and exist in that space? If you DO exist in that space, are you still fully human? It’s truly a conundrum that currently has no solution. Until there IS a solution, they can at least serve as a contrast for the rest of us. We can look at them and realize, “That’s what I DON’T want to be.”

Dan Adair is the author of, “Just the Tarot,” available on Amazon.com at a very reasonable price.