The Dark Night of the Soul

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Chrysalis Tarot Art by Holly Sierra

The Greek word for messenger is ángelos (angel) and the angel pictured on our Nine of Scrolls bears an important message for us. These troubled times are punctuated by free-floating anxiety that often morphs into devastating despair. Since our anxiety is likely to get worse – much worse – it may be somewhat cathartic to step back, meditate and focus on what is really happening – the proverbial “Big Picture.” Perhaps by doing so we will become less afraid of the unknown. In these times, fear is our greatest enemy.

I underscored cathartic above to highlight my intention to return to the concept. Catharsis can be nuanced in many ways. In both psychology and spiritual formation the term implies releasing repressed fears, along with other unhealthy emotions, notably guilt, into the luminescence of conscious awareness where they can be examined.

In spirituality this process is called The Dark Night of the Soul. It is a controlled crisis; the painful death of an individual’s ego symbolized by the tombstone pictured (above left) and then followed by a whole new understanding – a rebirth. The Dark Night teaches us how Divine Guidance – not we ourselves – molds and shapes our lives – giving birth to a completely new perception of reality.

I described this process of self-emptying (kenosis) in the Chrysalis Tarot Companion Book: “The objective is to overcome the belligerence of ego by baring the heart to inspiration from the Otherworld. The unseen realm wills nothing for us; it simply desires to be heard so it can guide us.” A hardened ego prevents us from hearing our own inner voice.

We must understand that everything – our thoughts, words, actions, memories, etc. – are pure energy and influence reality. As Einstein put it, “Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.” This is why it is so important to keep negative emotions in check.

The mythic Hero’s Journey as explicated in Chrysalis Tarot is a spiritual journey to transformation called metanoia, a Greek word that implies dramatically changing one’s worldview or Zeitgeist – the ‘Spirit of the Age.’ The ego is ill-equipped to deal with the disorder of chaos and today’s dizzying change, much less the deceptions and manipulations that characterize and threaten our present age. The ego wittingly opens the mind to all sorts of nonsense and foolishness. The armor required to come to terms with today’s crazy world is to choose a spiritual discipline such as meditation, prayer, yoga, or tarot that will help you to evoke order from chaos and hear Divine guidance spoken to you from beyond this world.

A further note regarding energy. As Einstein noted, everything is energy, particularly electromagnetic energy/radiation. The Earth’s magnetic field, for example, is weakening at what was previously thought to be 5% per century. In reality, it’s 5% per decade.

The magnetic North Pole is moving at an alarming rate of 25-miles per year. It’s wandering off toward Siberia. There are signs of a polar or geomagnetic reversal, a phenomena that has happened 183 times over the past 80-odd million years of Earth’s history.

There’s a reason I delve into electromagnetic energy in this blog about the Dark Night of the Soul. I’ve been developing a thesis I call The Gaian Hypothesis. We find ourselves, I believe, at a inflection or tipping point in human history, a concerning imbalance between positive and negative mindsets and unhealthy (electromagnetic) energy such as fear, hate and anger.

Viewed as the monomythic struggle between Good and Evil, evil is very close to overtaking good on a global scale. This has far reaching implications for our species and planet. The Dark Night is the Atonement* encountered at the 11th Stage of the Hero’s Journey (see chart below). In order to return to our Normal or Ordinary World (12th Stage), we must become transformed into a better version of ourselves; into a greater self-awareness called higher consciousness.

Collectively humanity must endure a Dark Night of the Soul. Our guardian angel is Gaia.

More about The Gaian Hypothesis in our next blog.

  • Atonement means to cause to submit to or accept something unpleasant; to reconcile our consciousness with a Higher Consciousness. (Don’t dwell on the religious connotation of forgiveness of sin. Regard atonement as positive affirmation not negative indulgence.)

© Toney Brooks, 2022

Wetiko – The Mind Virus

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“Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.” ~ Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life

The Native Americans called the evil spirit that invades the human psyche thereby causing negative psychic epidemics, Wetiko. We’ll return to this concept directly.

“Shatter the frozen sea inside us.” That’s how novelist Franz Kafka described what may be called a disabling belief system. The disabling beliefs that concern us here are those unconscious ones planted in our minds by bad actors who employ mind control techniques to manipulate individuals, groups and societies.

A significant portion of the adult population in America harbors disabling beliefs of which they are mostly unaware – beliefs that obscure truth. The common beliefs or thought forms among this minority impede their attaining higher consciousness and enlightenment for they no longer possess critical agency, having wholly succumbed to groupthink. It is self-evident that groupthink suppresses individuality and creativity. It obfuscates one’s sense of self and stunts spiritual growth.

“Man does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious,” wrote Carl Jung. In other words, we must summon these sinister and controlling programs from the darkness of the subconscious mind into the light of universal consciousness. Those experiencing at least some degree of cognitive dissonance and haven’t made up their mind on climate change, for example, should consider this in order to expose new ideas to reason, logic and critical thinking. (By the way, the carbon-driven “climate emergency” is the greatest scientific fraud in history.)

Many, perhaps even most victims of mind control, are simply unwilling to change. They are fearful of the inevitable pushback. They grew comfortable nursing their groupthink delusions and prefer not to be rattled. They have fully compromised their self-identity. Fair enough: examining one’s unconscious mind is at best disturbing and can even be painful. Chrysalis Tarot was crafted to engender introspection increase self-awareness.

Other people are different. They invoke the advice of Einstein: “Question everything.” Being told what to think is anathema to them, especially when things just “don’t add up.” They willingly risk being censored and gas lighted on social media and ostracized by friends and family. Only they can hope to attain true enlightenment, the “narrow path” that alludes to reality-based objective truth, e.g. only women have human babies, and not reality subjugated to false dogma demanding ‘correct’ beliefs.

“Gratitude and positive thoughts build on each other, creating a positive, upward spiral.” ~ Physicist Nassim Haramein

“Wetiko is at the very root of the collective madness and corresponding evil that we, as a human species, are collectively acting out on the world stage,” wrote artist Paul Levy. “Our sense of identity molds us, while we are at the same time the ones crafting our identity. What we don’t want is to let Wetiko forge our identity for us.”

How does one defend against Wetiko, against its lies, deceptions and disabling beliefs? By rejecting the false-self and asserting our own true nature, which is spiritual in essence. By remaining positive in a pernicious sea of negativity.

Levy advocates developing your innate creative gifts: “For once we connect with our calling, find our authentic voice and express our creative nature, Wetiko has no place to stand.”  

In addition to Paul Levy’s excellent piece on Wetiko, which is here, writer William Hubbard, from whom I borrowed this blog’s title, also penned an informative and interesting article on Wetiko that can be read here. I highly recommend both to you.

To “shatter the frozen sea inside you,” I also recommend meditating on this Chrysalis card, particularly this symbolism. Herne’s right hand, the one holding his sword, points to three stars. That’s part of the constellation Orion, an asterism known as “Orion’s Belt. These three stars point to a dimmer star called Sirius, which was hugely important to the Ancient Egyptians.

In addition to meditating on Herne the Hunter, I invite you to research Orion’s Belt and Sirius and see what you come up with. Please share your insights in the comments section and please consider subscribing to the Chrysalis Tarot blog by entering your email address below. WordPress will never spam you.

© Toney Brooks 2022, Chrysalis art by Holly Sierra.

The Banality of Evil

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The title of this blog, The Banality of Evil, is a phrase coined by philosopher Hannah Arendt while covering the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. She notes that evil does not come from a Cosmic Boogeyman but rather from actions normalized by unthinking and uncaring robotic human beings. Good and Evil exist in our world side by side, ofttimes in precarious balance. Whenever evil overtakes good bad things like world wars and natural catastrophes that threaten human existence are more likely to occur.

I believe we find ourselves at such a bifurcation point today. Humanity today can easily slide into tyranny and authoritarianism – into abject existential evil – or alternatively we can bring about a higher level of consciousness that eschews conflict between nations.

Snow Spirit (above left) lived during an age we know very little about – the Paleolithic or more specifically the Upper Paleolithic. It’s a epoch that ended around 12,000 years ago at the same time the last Ice Age ended. The world of Snow Spirit ended suddenly and violently. There are two theories why. Almost overnight our planet warmed by as much as 15 degrees and sea levels rose by 300-400 feet. All the wooly mammoths, mastodons, and other large mammals went extinct, a layer of soot called the Black Mat that dates to this catastrophe blanketed the world.

The first credible theory is that a comet hit Earth, but no crater has been found. The second theory holds that a giant CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) from the Sun caused a humongous solar storm and was responsible for the destruction. As you might have guessed, Chrysalis favors this latter theory.

Geologist Robert Schoch described it this way: “Plasma hitting the surface of Earth could heat and fuse rock, incinerate flammable materials, melt ice caps, vaporize shallow bodies of water creating an extended deluge of rain, and send the climate into a warming spell. The release of pressure that follows the melting of thousands of meters-thick ice sheets can induce earthquakes and even cause hot rock under pressure to melt and erupt to the surface as volcanoes. The world was in chaos…”

Chaos. Disorder. These are words indelibly affixed to existential Evil.

Until around 1954 students were taught civilization began in Mesopotamia some 6,000 years ago. We were taught Ancient Egypt was the crown jewel of that civilization, a civilization that built the Giza pyramids and Sphinx around 2,500 BCE. We were taught civilization had then progressed gradually one step at a time forward through human history, a theory called uniformitarianism. The Bible stories about a Great Flood and Plato’s account of Atlantis were myths, we were told.

Archaeologists then discovered the Sphinx was actually built before 10,000 BCE. The ruins at Göbekli Tepe were discovered, ruins that date to ~9,000 BCE. There’s another site in Turkey that even predates Göbekli Tepe. Clearly there was an advanced civilization that had been leveled by some cataclysmic event during the Upper Paleolithic. The floods produced by this Biblical 300-foot rise in sea levels, let alone the “fire in the skies” – constant lightning strikes spawned by horrendous solar storms – would have wiped out most life on Earth and altered the face of our planet. Forever.

Perhaps Snow Spirit was present at that time. Perhaps, through Chrysalis artist Holly Sierra, she has presented herself to us today as a motherly warning. Remember, consciousness is nonlocal and timeless; knowledge of these events linger in our subconscious minds.

From the beginning, Chrysalis was intended to be a prophetic tarot deck. We foresaw this upcoming paradigm shift and the concordant opportunity for unparalleled advancement – a quantum leap in the evolution of human consciousness and rational spirituality. Among the Cadre of Evil opposing us are those who engender chaos: staunch materialists. These lost sheep worship political religions like Marxism, fascism, communism and socialism. They speak of globalism, a New World Order and Great Reset.

They believe the universe is random and that everything is either matter or energy. For them consciousness doesn’t exist; the spiritual realm is but a childish illusion. Control and absolute power season their sinister dreams of global domination.


Negativity by Nyrn-Aeh for Deviant Art

Humanity today is set upon a crossroads – a tipping point. “The Ten of Spirals (top right) beckons you to listen to your inner voice and trust your instincts and intuition. Doing so will produce a Moment of Truth when you can declare, “Enough!” Whether you pray, meditate or contemplate, the time has now arrived to do so – incessantly.

Pray that humanity will escape the horrors and tyranny that threaten us. Eschew these dark forces. Renounce the demonic negativity that seeks to manipulate us all: fear, hate, confusion, division, narcissism, manipulation and mind control. We don’t have a great deal of time remaining! Armageddon is at our door.

Theosophists note the square root of 1% of a population can neutralize negative manipulation and effect positive change. In America, that’s 1,800 people. This is known as the Maharishi Effect.

© Toney Brooks, The Ides of March, 2022

A Goddess For Our Times

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From The Greenwood Tarot by artist Chesca Potter

In this follow up piece to my previous blog featuring Snow Spirit (Elen of the Ways) we offer a glimpse into the goddess traditions of Old Europe, the mysticism of the Magical Forest, our ancient ancestors and why they matter to us today.

When I first contemplated this topic, I asked Holly about her inspiration for Elen of the Ways, pictured in the gallery at the end of the blog, and she shared this:

It seems to me that Elen often assumes a shrouded quality. As with other forest creatures she appears furtively and unexpectedly. One will find themselves in a sunlit glade and sense some movement there and quite suddenly, she will come into view; dappled in sunlight, as fresh as spring and then, just as abruptly, she disappears! 

When Holly first displayed on Facebook her image of Snow Sprit, a.k.a. Elen of the Ways, at the time I was researching what we refer to as The Paleolithic Period or Early Stone Age. This period lasted over 2.5 million years and ended around 12,000 years ago. Holly noted in our correspondence that she perceived Snow Spirit as a Paleolithic goddess, a synchronicity that captured my full attention.

We know very little about Stone Age religion, let alone paleolithic goddesses. What we do know has been inferred partly from the period’s rock art and cave paintings. Clearly, the religion of early hunter-gatherer societies was shamanism. Snow Spirit as crafted by Holly is a woman shaman – a shape shifter – appearing in her goddess aspect with her animal familiar.

Paleolithic shamans were healing women who would isolate themselves in the forest to hone their spiritual connection to Mother Earth. I personally believe that Snow Spirit’s theophany to Holly (a manifestation to a human of a god or goddess) is to help us not only to heal ourselves but also to regain control of our conscious minds, which is being severely tested today. There is an existential threat to our own civilization: a pervasive, even psychotic disconnect from reality, a disconnect that is decidedly wicked and decidedly destructive. (More on this topic in future blogs.)

The Greenwood Tarot, Holly’s inspiration for Snow Spirit, was reimagined in 2003 as The Wild Wood Tarot by its original author. Elen was once again presented as The Ancestor, a major arcana card symbolizing spiritual instruction. I think it’s important to remember that our ancient ancestors lived in the Paleolithic period, whether in Europe, Africa or in some other part of the world home to early civilization and that we still are very much interconnected with them and their gods via nonlocal, omnipresent consciousness.

The rock art pictured above comes from Chad in Northcentral Africa where some of the most important African archeological sites were discovered. The gallery below presents The Wild Wood Tarot’s depiction of The Ancestor, Holly’s Snow Spirit sketch and The Watcher from Chrysalis Tarot representing woman shamans and the wise benevolent Spirits of the Forest.

Interestingly, Holly’s Snow Sprit is accompanied by a wolf. Accordingly, we might infer that Wolf is Snow Spirit’s spirit animal or familiar¹ and be inspired to wonder how Wolf’s spiritual attributes align with what I’ve written here about shamans and spiritual consciousness. By the way, all spirit animals are our protectors, however Wolf, like Snow Spirit herself, is our supreme protector. Snow Spirit is indeed a goddess for our times. We need all the protection we can get.

¹ “Animal familiars are fellow travelers on this earthly plane. Nothing more. Nothing less. Certain spirits will return to us time and again because we are as familiar to them as they are to us. We are drawn together. Perhaps they are connected to a higher existence and were sent here to keep an eye on us and keep us company. Perhaps they are spirits which were drawn to us and our myriad possibilities. Or perhaps they’re just exceptionally aware animals.” – Claire, PaganCentric.org

© Toney Brooks, 2022

Whispers of Snow Spirit

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Elen of the Ways, a.k.a. Snow Spirit © Holly Sierra

Snow Spirit is an enigmatic goddess who has traveled eons to make her presence known to us in these troubled times. In Platonic parlance an eon, in addition to being a very long period of time, points to a power existing from eternity; an emanation or phase of the supreme deity.

In this case, “supreme deity” alludes to the Great Goddess, mother to all the Mother Goddesses throughout history, of which there are many. Every culture has had it’s own. Even Islam, a rigidly monotheistic culture, worshiped Al-Lat. Her name means The Goddess. Al-lat was a moon goddess, the wife of Allah, moon god to the Arabians.

In Judaism, the feminine presence of God who dwells among us is called The Shekinah, translated as “caused to dwell.” It was the Glory of the Shekinah who led the Israelites out of the desert. In Jewish mysticism she is said to be “in sorrowful exile” going on now for 2,500 years or so.

We mention The Shekinah (a.k.a. the Divine Feminine) 8 times in the Chrysalis Tarot Companion Book. Here’s my personal favorite:

“The exile of the Shekinah finds its cultural analog in the separation
of the cosmic soul (Psyche) from human conscious awareness
(ego). This is a predictable consequence of a materialist worldview
that insists upon the primacy of matter and pigeonholes consciousness
as a mere function of matter—specifically, a function of the gray
matter inside the human skull.”

In Chrysalis, we believe (1) in panpsychism – everything in the physical world possesses some degree of consciousness; (2) in non-local consciousness – that consciousness exists independent of the brain, and (3) that consciousness is the timeless and eternal Ground of All Being – a metaphor for the Absolute or the Great Goddess.

Artistic interpretation by Velizar Simeonovski

It’s little wonder that in these days the Great Goddess chooses to come to us from a cave in Southwestern France 13,000 years ago as Snow Spirit.

The Upper Paleolithic culture of that time was called the Magdalenian Culture. The actual engraving (shown in this link) in Trois-Freres cave is androgynous. Since the cave was re-discovered in 1914, the logical assumption at the time was the engraving depicted a male sorcerer in the form of a therianthrope (part human, part animal) as shown in the artistic interpretation on the left.

Holly’s drawing of Snow Spirit corrects this error – the Magdalenian Culture was matrilineal and matriarchal and accordingly they would have evolved female deities and female shamans.

You can learn more about the Magdalenian Culture and Magdalenian Girl, whose skeletal remains rest at the Field Museum in Chicago here.

The incarnation of Snow Spirit we’re most familiar with is Elen of the Ways, a Celtic Welsh goddess. Here’s what mythologist and artist Judith Shaw wrote about Elen:

“Elen of the Ways is She who guides us on these paths of change. Like so many Celtic Goddesses, She is elusive, shimmering, changeable. She endures through the ages, shifting into what each time needs Her to be. She is an antlered goddess who rules the Ways, the Roads, the Passages of human life, both physical and spiritual.”

I personally believe that restoring Elen and Snow Spirit to conscious awareness will help guide and protect our journey through the murky corridors of the present paradigm shift, which is becoming murkier with each passing day. Paleolithic goddesses are enigmatic because we know virtually nothing about them. We are able, however, to infer and intuit certain characteristics, attributes and symbology as well as glean their whispered messages – consciousness is timeless.

For example, the Paleolithic Magdalenian Culture existed on the cusp of the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age. Magdalenian Girl’s fragile world was changing as radically as ours is today. Her own paradigm shift and its lessons for us will be the subject of our next blog.

Blessings.

Forensic bust of Magdalenian Girl, The Field Museum, Chicago, by artist Elisabeth Daynes

© Toney Brooks 2/2/22

Chrysalis and the Spiritual Dignity of Tarot

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Holly Sierra and I, co-creators of Chrysalis Tarot, were thrilled back in 2014 when the Tarosophy Tarot Association announced Chrysalis as recipient of its prestigious Deck of the Year award. Tarosophy places great emphasis on the spiritual dignity of tarot, so for us this recognition was both humbling and immensely gratifying. From its inception, we aimed specifically to make a worthy spiritual contribution to tarot’s growing body of work.

When we first placed Chrysalis on the drawing board, neither of us had heard the phrase spiritual dignity of tarot. We simply had hoped to accomplish our spiritual goals for Chrysalis within the context of the age-old mythology and spiritual teaching called The Hero’s Journey.

Analogous to the Hero’s Journey is the Quest for the Holy Grail, a universal legend symbolizing self-transformation, the personal metamorphosis that inspired the name Chrysalis. Mythologist Joseph Campbell called the grail legends the foundational myths of Western civilization. The grail quest is a quest to discover the Authentic Self. The Hero’s Journey allegorizes this struggle that occurs between the authentic (spiritual) Self and the ego, the ultimate self-sabotager.

We sought also to create a deck well suited to the emerging worldview or paradigm shift that’s been unfolding for some 25 years and is now (2022) at a tipping point. This shift traces its shallow roots to the Neo-Pagan and New Age Movements; its deep roots to the turbulent social upheavals of the ’60s that advanced civil rights, women’s rights and ecology, epitomized in Chrysalis by the Green Man and Gaia archetypes.

Although not New Age per se, the secularity of Chrysalis dovetails with several New Age Philosophy tenets, most notably holism and humanism. Creating a definitively secular deck was another of our goals; we dared not burden Chrysalis with dogmatic religious frameworks, iconography or esoteric symbolism. Neither did we want to create a deck that bowed to archaic institutional hierarchies that represented absolute civil and spiritual authority; in Chrysalis all spiritual paths are equally valid and respected; personal responsibility is paramount. Chrysalis is not about conformity of dogma or “correct beliefs,” but rather about questioning all beliefs and using innate critical thinking skills.

Chrysalis abhors patriarchy, even hierarchy. We strove for overall balance between our deck’s yin-yang energies without social stratification (one reason for replacing the “court cards”). We pushed the envelope to accomplish a masculine-feminine balance and promote personal spiritual empowerment. For example, when we refer to “the divine” in Chrysalis we generally refer either to the divine feminine or to the androgynous divine child within. The Divine Child (pictured above) is both an Otherworld archetype and a Chrysalis major arcana card.

In Chrysalis, the Otherworld is the name we gave to the abode of archetypes, ancestors, faeries and myriad other benevolent spirits, including shamanic spirit animals. It’s corollary is often called the Akashic Field.

We engage this Otherworld via 22 major tarot archetypes and other archetypes unique to Chrysalis. This extended family includes our replacements for tarot’s traditional court cards, an ensemble of medieval troubadours we call The Troupe. Members of The Troupe, who are also archetypes, variously represent spirit guides and ancestors along with the querent’s personal characteristics and personality traits. They also can symbolize helpful individuals, often strangers on their own journey who the querent might meet along the way. All Troupe members have personal spirit animal attributes known as familiars illustrated on their cards. Totems or spirit animals also are found on Chrysalis cards.

Morgan le Fay as The Sorceress

Otherworld engagement via archetypes, an aspect of tarot renowned psychologist C.G. Jung found fascinating, is accomplished through shamanic-style communication between the Collective Unconscious (the Otherworld) and the personal unconscious mind. Information streamed from the Otherworld resonates during a tarot reading and is interpreted intuitively – tarot is not an exercise in code breaking. Chrysalis regards the 78 tarot cards as symbols of multivalent potentialities that mean different things to different people at different times in their lives.

Archetypes of the collective unconscious have resonating frequencies and are quantumly entangled with the personal unconscious; the stronger the querent’s personal bond with a particular archetype, the stronger the resonance. As Nicolai Tesla wrote, “[We should always] think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” Everything in nature vibrates on a specific frequency, including the Otherworld archetypes.

In adapting Chrysalis to the new connected-universe worldview, we first had to identify this worldview’s salient characteristics. First and foremost, it’s characterized by belief in a living, interconnected and interdependent universe. In this living universe, we become co-creators and function as biological circuits (feedback loops, if you will) connected to a vast Web of Life, as Fritjof Capra termed it. Capra’s Web of Life includes everything in the cosmos; everything is energy, including matter and information.

Secondly, the new worldview is both spiritual and material as well as scientific. It provides a groundwork for a new rational spirituality. Although this notion places Chrysalis at odds with classical Newtonian mechanics, it is complementary with quantum mechanics and the New Science of unified physics. This New Science of unified physics is both holistic and holographic. It views contemporary notions of a dead-universe separated from reality as a dangerous illusion, a fact sadly borne out by human history.

Thirdly, Chrysalis emphasizes the importance of healing through selfless compassion. Having compassion and empathy for others, as well as for ourselves, provides a powerful instrument for healing. Moreover, compassion and empathy unite us rather than separate us. Tarot cannot assist with personal transformation unless it also helps heal a broken psyche. To that end many Chrysalis cards evoke healing and Chrysalis is often described as a healing deck.

Among the many changes Chrysalis makes to traditional tarot, a schema well over 100 years old, is the elimination of limiting belief structures and strictures that engender fear, anxiety or negativity. All pose significant stumbling blocks to self-transformation and healing.

Any self-transformation modality is, by definition, a dynamic spiritual enterprise. To claim spiritual dignity, it must therefore afford spiritual efficacy. It cannot lay legitimate claim to spiritual efficacy unless it’s friendly to beginners and readily accessible. That is a tall order for tarot, which at least today remains an esoteric system tethered to the existing patriarchal, dead-universe (material) worldview. Tarot, however, is constantly evolving and gaining greater awareness and acceptance among an increasingly enlightened public starved for rational spirituality in a living universe.

The Tarosophy Tarot Association aims to make tarot a widely accessible wisdom tool for personal empowerment and personal growth, a goal Chrysalis Tarot wholeheartedly supports and emulates.

© Toney Brooks, 2015, 2022; Chrysalis Art © Holly Sierra

“Useful Idiots” (Updated and Republished)

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saul-alinsky

A slight departure from our customary Chrysalis Tarot -focused writings, but one with a single yet important purpose; namely to shed some light on the agitating noise and manufactured disharmony we’ve witnessed since the 2016 election and shows no hint of subsiding.

As I’ve written, the world is experiencing the birth throes of a new paradigm – a new worldview or zeitgeist. This cultural revolution has been proclaimed far and wide for many years; it has been anticipated by those we call prophets – those who possess “eyes to see and ears to hear.” A search for “paradigm shift” on Google returns over 8-million hits. The emergent, nascent paradigm, whose characteristics we have only glimpsed, is influencing the events advancing global change. If you can’t articulate at least a rudimentary appreciation of this New Paradigm, making sense of current events is rather daunting. 

It remains to be seen if this new paradigm lives or dies. If it lives, it can usher in a new Golden Age. If not, the pain we will inflict upon ourselves depends upon how well we as a species – and as civilized nations – can command the inevitable winds of change. We’ll eventually make it to a new Golden Age, but there are two routes. Clearly, even those with the most stunted spiritual antennae recognize that humanity’s present course – the status quo – is unsustainable. And this mild assertion has nothing whatsoever to do with the scientific hoax known as a “climate emergency.”

Since the politics of the day is so incendiary, we turn to the politics of the past to make some useful points. This is where the somewhat sinister looking character pictured above enters the picture. He is one Saul Alinsky. He died in 1972 at age 63. As spiritual symmetries and synchronicities would have it, Alinsky’s story includes intriguing parallels to today’s slippery political landscape. 

Alinsky was born in Chicago in 1909 to Jewish immigrants from Russia. Wikipedia calls him an “American community organizer and writer.” He wrote a book in 1971 called Rules for Radicals, which is still considered the bible for community organizing. William Buckley once referred to him as an “organizational genius.” Among his disciples are Barrack O’Bama and Hillary Clinton, et al. Clinton wrote her thesis on Alinsky.

Let’s recount a few of Alinsky’s ideas that he termed “power tactics,” as outlined in his Rules for Radicals, and draw the obvious conclusions.

Here are 5 from his list of 13 (emphasis is mine):

  • Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
  • A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.
  • Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose (think COVID-19).
  • The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.
  • Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

No one can rationally deny that today our society is being polarized for political gain.

Alternatively, perhaps it’s simply better to accept legitimate change, adapt and then move on. America, by the way, also has a rulebook, along with a few suggestions for being a “good American.” It’s known as the Constitution. Dissent and civil disobedience are Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights we all cherish. Wanton disrespect and lawlessness, flames fanned today by Marxist propaganda, not so much.

16-kaliWe live in the Age of Kali, whose ongoing cosmic mission is change through creative destruction. “May you live in interesting times,” the sage cursed. Chrysalis Tarot fans are familiar with Kali, even if we sometimes don’t fully understand her intent or immediately recognize her footprints.

For those who are unfamiliar, Kali is an archetype. Like other archetypes, she resides in the human psyche. Chrysalis Tarot is first and foremost about “archetypal psychology” and the Collective Unconscious. Chrysalis does not promote fortunetelling. We designed Chrysalis to increase individual self-awareness and higher consciousness, as symbolized by Kali’s necklace of skulls, so we might make informed choices.

The “tower” in the image symbolizes the human ego, which is in constant tension with the Higher Self. They are inversely proportional; as ego decreases Higher Self or spiritual awareness increases. This transformative experience is described as spiritual growth, awakening or enlightenment, which are essential to seeing things clearly – to being able to think and reason clearly and critically. Not to be a Useful Idiot married to an ideology rather than to reason.

The Bible calls to mind the theological doctrine of eschatology. In metaphysics, as opposed to religious dogma, this doctrine refers to the study of, and reasons for, profound changes that precede a cosmic evolution of consciousness or paradigm shift. You cannot separate eschatology from paradigm shifts or the evolution of consciousness. Eschatology – the theology of End Times – is a macrocosmic (universal) absolute that informs microcosmic (human) understanding.

The old paradigm, the current dominant worldview, is fading away; the perigee of its demise represents what is often called the “End Times.” What worldview will replace it? The Alinsky-style totalitarianism of a New World Order with problems so humongous that only Big Government can solve them? May God forbid it! 

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Two thousand years ago there was another birth – another paradigm shift – that gave name to what we now call the “Common Era (CE).” Back then, before the present era became common, the eschatology of John the Baptist, a Jewish prophet, was apocalyptic.

The eschatology of Jesus, another a Jewish prophet and John’s cousin, was about the coming of a “New Kingdom” (a new paradigm). Paradigm shifts always reconcile and reset what’s known as the tension of opposites. A tension of opposites, say freedom vs. slavery, is like stretched rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle, to paraphrase Morrie Schwartz.

It is not my intention to preach yet another facile Sunday School lesson by making references to John and Jesus. I’m a spiritual naturalist, after all, who considers organized religions to at best be a harvest of instructive metaphors and mythologies, not of literal, absolute truths. I wish simply to remind the reader that at its core, the situation today in America and the world is spiritual in nature and far more complex than the threadbare left vs. right political polemics or sectarian religious zeal one might believe.

“In political parlance, a useful idiot is a term for people perceived as propagandists for a cause whose goals they are not fully aware of (such as Marxism) and who are used cynically by the leaders of the cause.” ~ Wikipedia

On a positive note, one name being given to the New Paradigm is Re-Enchantment.  The best primer I’ve come across on the subject is titled, “The Re-Enchantment of the World,” by Morris Berman. It’s available inexpensively in mass market paperback. 

In 2022, I’ll begin a new series on the metaphysical aspects of re-enchantment and how Chrysalis Tarot might be useful in understanding and perhaps in transitioning to this new world view. 

N.B. For additional insight into the term “Useful Idiots,” I recommend this piece from an excellent Word Press blog called Sheeplywolves. 

© Toney Brooks, 2017, 2021

Who is Mary?

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Bartolome Murillo’s The Assumption of Mary (detail), circa 1680. The Hermitage, St Petersburg.

In the Chrysalis schema, Mary is the ultimate archetype of the Great Mother Goddess. (The Vatican, on the other hand, does not see it this way.) Other deities that represent the Divine Feminine and who are included in the Chrysalis pantheon include the primordial Earth Goddess, Gaia, Ariadne, Brighid, Kali and Bastet. Such prominent inclusion of the Divine Feminine archetype and consequently her energy are very important aspects that set Chrysalis Tarot apart.

We chose today to publish this blog since yesterday, Sunday August 15th, the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary was celebrated. The Assumption is an important feast day in the church and also a date Chrysalis users should cement in their conscious awareness. Chrysalis considers the Assumption of Mary an apotheosis; she should be regarded by us as an integral, inseparable aspect of the Divine, which sadly is viewed by our civilization as entirely patriarchal. Patriarchal societies always evolve patriarchal gods.

Were we to define “Chrysalis mysticism,” the Divine Feminine would be its foundation stone. In Jewish theological thought, particularly mystical Kabbalism, the Divine Feminine is known as the Shekinah. It was the Shekinah who led the Jews out of exile – her divine presence dwelled with and within them and often was symbolized as a blinding, extraordinary light, just she is on a number of Chrysalis cards, for example, Storyteller, Chrysalis Tarot’s unique interpretation of the Shekinah.

Joshua passing the River Jordan with the Ark of the Covenant (1800), by Benjamin West.

Whenever we derive genuine inspiration from a reading and are honestly unable to attribute the inspiration to our own ego, the Shekinah is speaking to us via one of her many spiritual surrogates and archetypes.

Much more about the Shekinah can be found in the Chrysalis Tarot companion book. This is from Tali Goodwin’s Introduction:

“I was also able to appreciate how it [Chrysalis] wove seamlessly the spiritual
essentials drawn in other decks, particularly the presence of the Shekinah,
such an intrinsic yet barely mentioned mystery of the Waite-
Smith and Waite-Trinick Tarot images. I am impressed by how such
concepts are here raised from religious constraints and placed in a
space from which we can all draw, universally and compassionately,
through the images of the deck.”

© Toney Brooks, 2021

Mass Psychosis

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“The mind craves distraction so much that it becomes quite adept at forging illusions. Illusion is the ego’s trick to prevent you from becoming a seeker of truth.”

That quote comes from our Chrysalis Tarot Companion book. The Illusionist card emphasizes what can happen to a person – even to a society – when the quest for truth and objective reality is abandoned. When we sacrifice facts to feelings and dogma, religious or political, we are on the road to delusion.

In the world today we bear witness to a pandemic of delusion, a psychic epidemic so grisly that this warped condition of the psyche presents a clear and present danger to humanity itself. Delusion is a psychogenic disorder – one caused by the mind; there is no physical infectious agent.

What societal conditions allow widespread delusion to metastasize into full-fledged mass psychosis? The answer is a simple: Fear plus hate and division festering among an ill-informed and insecure population with an astonishingly low self-awareness.

Psychiatrist Joost Meerloo argued in his book Rape of the Mind:

“. . .the totalitarian systems of the 20th century represent a kind of collective psychosis. Whether gradually or suddenly, reason and common human decency are no longer possible in such a system: there is only a pervasive atmosphere of terror, and a projection of “the enemy,” imagined to be “in our midst.” Thus society turns on itself, urged on by the ruling authorities.”

The most menacing “infectious agent” employed by “the ruling authorities” is propaganda, a witches brew concocted of lies and twisted truths. Our media is filled with it! Such propaganda seeks to divide society. That portion of society still able to think critically and seek truth is bemused while the mentally ill and deluded portion is enraged: they simply cannot bear to have their false worldview – which is their religion – questioned.

A Chrysalis enthusiast once asked if Chrysalis was “anti-Catholic.”

I responded that Chrysalis isn’t about “correct beliefs” but rather about personal growth – the process Carl Jung termed individuation. Tarot can be a useful adjunct to all religious beliefs, as Jung explained:

“These four functional [personality] types [represented by tarot’s four suits] correspond to the obvious means by which consciousness obtains its orientation to experience. Sensation (i.e. sense perception) tells us that something exists; thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you whence it comes and where it is going.”

Sensation = Stones; Thinking = Scrolls; Feeling = Mirrors and Intuition = Spirals.

Arthur Waite, mystic and co-creator of the Rider-Waite tarot, noted tarot provides a gateway to universal truths embedded in the Collective Unconscious. Chrysalis holds that the Divine Child archetype symbolizes your Higher Self and consequently is your personal spiritual director and co-seeker of truth – your inner voice.

While Chrysalis may be agnostic regarding religion, we stand in firm opposition to dogma. We believe dogma – political and religious – stymies personal and spiritual growth and hinders critical thinking.

Past societies that suffered mass psychosis include the authoritarian societies of the 1920s and 30s. Leaders of authoritarian societies (Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, et al.) do not concern themselves with seeking truth, rather they seek power and authority over every aspect of daily life. Frankly, America’s political class act a good deal like the evildoers of the 20s and 30s.

“Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious” [Jung] wrote, “that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.” ~ Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life

Chrysalis Tarot was crafted to help you effectively integrate (become consciously aware of) the powerful forces of your psyche via keen discernment, critical thinking, humility and intuition. Note that the emotions of mass psychosis are all low frequency emotions: fear, hate, divisiveness and anger. Don’t expect truth from this lot – only lies.

© Toney Brooks, 2021


The Paradigm Shift and Bitcoin

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Botticelli’s Primavera is probably one of the most recognizable paintings in the world. It is emblematic of the paradigm shift that birthed our Modern World. Primavera calls the Uffizi Museum in Florence her home. The painting’s timely theme is the arrival of spring, which is one reason it headlines this March blog. Actually, this article is as much a macroeconomic newsletter as it is a Chrysalis blog. We’ll turn to the news and editorial sections directly.

But first, to reacquaint you with Primavera we start on the left side of the painting with the first of the nine figures in the orange-grove party scene. Carefree Mercury, the messenger of the Gods, seems preoccupied in a world of his own as he announces, “Spring has arrived!” by pointing to transient clouds. The Three Graces frolic merrily in a circle in front of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty who occupies center stage as Cupid aims his arrow from above. Flora, the fertility goddess of spring and youth, wears a garland of festive flowers, a floral dress and sprinkles rose petals on the ground.

These last two figures suggest one reason this artwork is particularly relevant to Chrysalis. Flora is depicted being transformed from the nymph on her left by Zephyr who marries and transforms her. (The Medicis, a wealthy Florentine banking family, commissioned this painting as a wedding gift.) Zephyr, who personifies the west wind, hovers above the nymph to symbolize the transition to springtime. Today, Primavera recalls to mind a paradigm shift to those better days we know as the Italian Renaissance, a movement that began in the 15th century and transitioned the Middle Ages into the modern world of enlightenment. Nothing escaped change.

The paradigm shift which Chrysalis was conceived to prophesize is the shift from the modern world to whatever comes next. Future generations will define it. But lets not bog ourselves down in murky modernization theory.

The goddess Flora has a sister named Fauna, as you likely guessed. Fauna is the fertility goddess of wildlife and the woodlands. In Chrysalis we conflated Flora and Fauna to beget Gaia, who oversees all life in Earth’s biosphere. In fact, Gaia is both a goddess and a scientific theory, as we detailed in the Chrysalis companion book. Gaia Theory posits that she maintains optimal conditions to support life in Earth’s biosphere.

All life on earth contributes information and energy to Gaia’s feedback loop. For reasons sufficient unto herself, Gaia presides over the transitioning of our society to green energy. We should embrace that truth whether we accept the prevalent theory of anthropomorphic (human caused) catastrophic global warming or not; the metaphysics of the proposition are what’s important, not the politics.

In fact if Gaia repeatedly appears in your readings, she might be imploring you to focus more on the big picture. Whatever the issue, there is usually a bigger picture worth considering. You will not discover truth in political slogans intended primarily to manipulate your mind and control your behavior. Chrysalis is about developing and using critical thinking skills with divine assistance from archetypes of the Collective Unconscious who speak to us via our inner voice.

In addition to Gaia, we should assign additional attributes and qualities to two other Chrysalis cards. These two cards are important when coming to grips with the New Paradigm and the creative destruction that will accompany it. In financial circles, “creative destruction” is now expressed as “disruptive technology.” That’s not only more sanguine but it better describes what’s really happening – the facts on the ground, so to speak.

Money

We – the world – are rapidly moving toward a cashless society. The tipping point or Minsky Moment lies in the offing. It is being called The Great Reset. The Great Reset is necessary because all global currencies are in a massive state of decline well past a point of no return. For example, 40% of all dollars printed in the 200+ year history of the U.S. have been printed in just the last 15 or so months.

The card below signifies the enormous amount of energy – 70% of it green energy – at work in cyberspace. It’s name is Bitcoin and it will provide the monetary transportation/impetus needed for the Great Reset. Bitcoin is backed by enormous amounts of energy and, to repeat myself, 70% of it is green energy. If you see this card popping up in your readings, it’s urging you to inform yourself with the basic facts of blockchain technology and crypto currency.

One rather pleasant consequence of the new paradigm’s cashless society powered by digital currencies is there will be no debt. All debt will be wiped out by the Great Reset, although the central banks may seek (unsuccessfully) to utilize debt as the monetary bedrock of the future paradigm.

This card asks you to recognize that the Great Reset, as well as Bitcoin itself for that matter, are trains that have already left the station. Resistance is futile, although some “old timers” who remain mired in the old paradigm will continue to fret about “how are we going to pay for all this stimulus?” We aren’t.

If new paradigms promised smooth rides, we might not have designed Chrysalis as “transformational technology.” The folks who will at least have a smoother ride are those able to heed their inner voices and silence the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) constantly shouted by the world around us.

Remember, the media are clueless so do your own research. Draw your own conclusions.

Aeolus (left), Master of the Four Winds, is a card and a mythology you should get to know better. It was Aeolus who guided Odysseus safely home to Ithaca. We picked Aeolus to be the cover art for our Chrysalis companion book:

“Aeolus is pictured on the Nine of Spirals with an astrolabe, a device used at sea for navigation. An astrolabe measures not the speed or direction of the wind, but rather the position of heavenly bodies such as the moon and stars.

“On the Nine of Spirals, the astrolabe foresees the gentle breeze of the Age of Aquarius entwined with the last snarling gusts of the Age of Pisces. The ramifications of such a shift are stupendous!”

Aeolus chose Zephyr, the west wind, to guide Odysseus home just as Botticelli chose Zephyr to symbolize the transition into springtime. Allow Aeolus to help you navigate the turbulent winds and waters of the paradigm shift we clearly see in the offing.

© Toney Brooks 2021