Ghost Adventures

The other day, while giving a tarot reading in a booth in the St. Louis Bread Company to a client, an older woman walked up to us and said, "a Ouija board! You're fooling with the Devil!" She couldn't have been farther off, and I gently corrected her, told her it was the tarot, not Ouija, and that as she could see, no spirits were lurking about us.

Many times, I am asked if I am a medium, or if I talk to spirits. In an older blog, I had posted about some Ouija experiences (my joke being that the Ouija does not believe in me--I've never been successful with it). Because psychics and tarot readers are always lumped in with the spirit world, I wanted to make some clarifications and share what I know.

Tarot, which shares the framework of the Qabalah, therefore reflects Qabalah power whether one studies Qabalah or not. Qabalists believe that we all share part of the same great spirit just by virtue of being alive. I call this great spirit God. The psychologist Carl Jung called it the "Collective Unconscious." You call it what you want. But with this in mind, we all have a piece of God, or this higher consciousness--great power within ourselves. Tarot and Qabalah are about harnessing our God power and making a positive impact on ourselves, our loved ones, and the world through higher understandings.

So--ghosts, demons, and spirits:

I have heard of people plagued by poltergeists. Qabalah teaches that poltergeists, very specifically, are repressed energies that manifest outside of an individual. When this crazy kind of playful or even destructive energy appears, it comes from someone unwilling to face deep inner issues. These repressed feelings will come out, one way or another. In the average person, they might come out in the more traditional manner of self-sabotaging behavior or addiction. But Qabalah teaches that there are the handful who dissociate so much from their own energy that they push it outside of their own bodies.

Occasionally, when I am sleepy and there is nothing on television, I'll watch that cable TV show, "Ghost Adventures" on the Travel Channel. I am always disappointed. It's mainly a chance for that Zak guy to show off his muscles and stupid hair. But I digress. I do not dispute that Zak and his gang are actually hearing muffled voices (which they painfully strain to identify as saying something relevant), bumps, thumps, and the occasional flying or falling object. This is psychokinesis in action. Psychokinesis is basically when mental energy is so concentrated (and collected, among the group of them) to cause physical disturbance. Spoon bending, table turning, levitations, great strength in times of emergency, and all the other physical unexplainables would fall into this category. They simply wish for it so much that it becomes reality.

We are all far more powerful than we realize.

The Jewish Torah, which shares a great deal with Qabalah (Kabbalah, in this case) warns against the ease in which one can fall into misusing the occult. Deuteronomy 8:10 discusses divination through "charmed" natural instruments. The Jews believe that direct conversation with the dead interferes with this life and a relationship with the living God. The practicing Jew, and the Kabbalist/Qabalist/Cabalist, therefore does not seek to conjure dead spirits. Qabalists do, however, actively use astrology, astral projection, linguistic numerology and alchemy--all practices to find the divinity and God-power within one's self. I suppose this might be the difference between "black magic" and "white magic."

When one plays with Ouija boards, or crystal balls, dowsing or scrying, automatic writing, or any other number of occult objects designed to communicate with a spirit world, this "channeling" is really finding a way to open up to the subconscious. Ouija and the like get dangerous when one dwells too much in the subconscious, either losing touch with reality, or not taking responsibility for actions, shifting responsibility over to the spirit world. The subconscious can bring to light revelations that the conscious mind is simply not ready to handle. Facing God (full reality) can be frightening.

So, do I believe in a spirit world? Absolutely--but please understand that the tarot is not really a part of that, outside of the fact that the spirit world is a part of everything. When you make an appointment with me, I am not conjuring spirits, lighting candles, saying incantations and the like. The reality is that I am usually sitting opposite someone in the Bread Company, or speaking to you over the phone, interpreting cards in the way one might interpret dreams. It is part a counseling session too, with my sharing advice as the Qabalah would direct. I believe Marianne Williamson when she says, "The Devil is all in your head--and that's the worst place he could be."




© Julia Gordon-Bramer 2012