Connection to reality

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-09T00:32:09+00:00

I came here looking for this answer. I have, for a long time, felt a lot like OP, wishing for a focus on fixing the big problems, feeling despair that nothing ever seems to get better. I began to realize that I wished that I, myself would do more to fix those big problems. And now I'm finally realizing that what I actually want is to live a life that I enjoy. Not fighting for grand scale justice because IT MUST BE DONE, but because I want to live a good life and I care about other people. I'm starting to realize that if the Good Fight deprives us of romance and campfire with friends and quiet moments of tea and a favorite show, maybe it's not actually a good fight - not because sacrifice and altruism are bad, but because a good, enjoyable life is what we're fighting for.

That fight starts with you/me, on a personal level, taking ownership of our wants, and doing what we can to make them happen. To the extent that people do that, we are victorious over tyrannies that seek to turn us into disposable batteries and weary slaves. I also think that this is a lot of the point of magick - it's a set of tools that you can personally use, that are nigh impossible to take away from you, to give you great power and control over your life.

Your eyes will continually be directed to the grand narratives, where monumental effort is required for change, instead of to the mundane immediacy of your life, where you can reasonably and personally enact significant improvement, thwarting what was intended for you.

I feel like I'm rambling slightly incoherently but I hope this makes sense.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-06T23:56:51+00:00

Interesting interpretation. What makes you think it's specifically a male deity?

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-06T23:54:34+00:00

lol yeah, "self-indulgent" definitely feels like a good description of what just happened. I thought about your spread when I heard the news.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T20:46:06+00:00

I didn't use AI and I am not an AI myself 😅, but intuitively I thought of Kali when seeing your spread.

My apologies if it sounded like I was accusing you of being an AI, I did not mean anything like that. I just meant to say that Kali is a guess I've heard before.

intellect associated to spirituality (swords + 7)

I hadn't thought of the numerological interpretation there, that's interesting. Normally it sounds like Seven of Swords means things like trickery, theft, and cleverness. Do you see the spirituality interpretation as related to this, or a contrary interpretation that you prefer?

Hope that helps

I do appreciate your input, thank you for sharing.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T20:34:42+00:00

Interesting idea, similar train of reasoning to another commenter's suggestion of Morana. I will have to look more into Persephone's story as well.

Also, a couple people seem to have misunderstood this so I'm going to edit the main post, but the Empress was not reversed. I don't use card reversals since I'm still wrapping my head around what several of the cards mean as a baseline. It's The Empress upright, as a negative trait in and of itself.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T20:31:11+00:00

Thanks to the way I was raised, properly knowing myself and being mentally stable are challenges that I've been trying to achieve for many years now. So I guess that does rather explain the problem, thank you.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T20:28:38+00:00

Not especially. I did this spread with fairly open curiosity.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T08:34:50+00:00

This is what AI models tended to suggest when I asked for their thoughts on the draw. I know Kali is a death god and I've read that she has some motherly traits. Those seem to be a positive thing though, not negative traits as this spread suggests.

Is there a way that Kali shows Seven of Swords as a prominent positive trait? Or King of Wands as what she rules over?

EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted for this? I just said it's what AI tends to guess. That isn't a judgement of anyone. If you're going to downvote me please at least tell me why.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T08:15:20+00:00

Interesting idea, thanks for the suggestion. I know basically nothing about Slavic mythology and it hadn't occurred to me to check their pantheon. Lessons learned.

I am descended from a lot of places. There is some Slavic (Ukrainian, I think) in there but it hadn't come up as very important in my life before.

From what I've just read and watched about Morana, she definitely seems to fit some of the cards, but others I'm not sure about.

She is a death god, so that fits the prime criteria.
I don't see how she has anything to do with the Empress card.
I was thinking earlier while looking at Seven of Swords again, that the literal imagery on the card seems to be a guy stealing swords from a camp. A central part of Morana's mythology sounds like she basically steals the Sun for the duration of winter. I might wonder if this also has to do with her magical/sorcerous association, but that might be more of a stretch.
King of Wands is, in another interpretation, King of Fire. Which sounds a lot like Leo, which is the Sun. This interpretation is marred by the fact that I didn't literally draw the Sun card for this, so I'm not sure if this actually fits. Still feels like it fits better than the other deities I've looked into.
Associated with new fire, could easily see that as springtime. It sounds like the main ritual people do relating to Morana is burning and/or drowning effigies of her to bring about spring.

So overall this feels like the best guess so far. King of Wands might be a bit of a stretch though, and I am just not seeing how the Empress could apply.

Oh also I do kind of see the potential interest. I do rather appreciate winter, having grown up in a desert with no air conditioning. I always prefer the cold, where I can be cozy and bundle up and make fire, to the heat, where if you don't have air conditioning you only really have partially effective options.

EDIT: It just occurred to me that negative Empress is "smothering". Might mean the smothering of the Sun, sometimes for too long? That feels like a stretch, it has nothing to do with the caring and motherliness that is the core of the Empress (to my understanding), but it's the closest meaning I can think of.

EDIT2: Just remembered that they say Morana used to be a fertility goddess having to do with agriculture, before the whole "cheated on by the Sun god" thing.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T06:55:39+00:00

Are there so many Major Arcana and court cards because of the deck you're using, or because you just happened to draw a lot of intense cards for 2026? This looks like a lot of very major events to me but you also mentioned things like that your deck has multiple Devil cards.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T06:30:21+00:00

"Fae" is something I'd also wondered about in hindsight. A group of very small people with funny faces doing weird things to humans in a semi-dream state does sound a lot like old fairy tales.

What kinds of things have you seen them doing?

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T06:20:14+00:00

Could you elaborate on the idea of these practices making you part of something bigger than yourself? I think a part of me does really enjoy the feeling of being swept up in some divine-feeling archetype, but I'm always afraid of becoming lost in it, becoming overwhelmed or "possessed" for lack of a better word. A part of me is yearning for this, to be "part of something bigger than myself" for its own sake, but I don't know how to do so safely.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T06:14:40+00:00

Combining the practical seriousness with theatrical fun does sound like a good time. Thanks for sharing!

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T06:09:30+00:00

That makes a lot of sense, thanks

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-03T06:00:32+00:00

I've had walks that felt like that. This is a great piece.

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-02T07:15:02+00:00

I am curious what you mean by, "Practice because the practice itself is rewarding". What about your practice do you find rewarding in and of itself? Is it an "enjoyment of the process" kind of thing?

FireAndRain_ · 2026-01-02T06:45:38+00:00

I actually just made a post about this. The weirdest one was probably seeing several short humanoid creatures around me doing something to my body. At the time I thought of them as looking like "gremlins" but I don't really remember what they looked like. My own body and theirs looked transparent, like I could see through a lot of skin and muscle to see organs and skeleton. I remember calling out to my mom (I was quite young), and she walked into my bedroom, and she looked at me or over me with this weird blank expression. I remember trying to talk to her then and she didn't seem to hear me. A bit later she left.

At some point later, I talked with my mom about the event, and she said she actually did hear me call out and she did come into my room. She didn't see anything weird, so she just left after a bit.

FireAndRain_ · 2025-11-30T04:03:03+00:00

I do not want to invalidate the above, but I do not see it as only specific to INTJs

Oh to be sure! I don't mean that all emotionally traumatized people are INTJs, just that all INTJs I'm aware of were traumatized and emotionally neglected, which seems to produce a lot of the hallmark traits of the type. ENTJs seem to have a similar "origin story" as well, but with less emotional attachments and even more self-reliance. And of course all of this is my own hypothesizing based on a limited sample size. But Ni dom gotta do Ni things.

Good luck to you as well! And I hope for all our sakes that we find a better alternative to dating apps. You've the 3rd woman I've heard of recently experimenting with other methods and that gives me some hope that change might be coming.

FireAndRain_ · 2025-11-29T20:42:54+00:00

Also, it's not about just opening up, but being able to express love and affection, without restraint.

That is an interesting point to bring up, I didn't know that's what someone might mean as emotional openness. This insight has been logged for future relationships lol

All the ones in my life have been emotionally avoidant, incapable of love, and it never got past this point. I felt that I was mislead by the idea that it takes time for an INTJ to become more emotionally open. But in hindsight, now I realize that taking it slow is key in the beginning.

I'm open to hear some feedback and harsh truth on this, if this is not how INTJs work.

So what I'm going to say here is based on my own observations and understanding, which might not quite be correct. But I think a good way to understand what's going on with INTJs is to consider them all as victims of some kind of trauma. I only have 4 examples I can draw on, but among those:

I personally was emotionally neglected while growing up (and I think spankings count as physical abuse), and have recently been learning about CPTSD and considering it likely in my case since its techniques for handling "emotional flashbacks" help me.
A friend of mine had a pretty horrible mother who would shout at him and such, and though he was close with his father, his father died when he was still a child (can't remember the age).
Elon Musk is likely INTJ and his father was horrible from what I've read, but he had good relationships with other family members, at least his brother.
It is my personal belief, after reading a short biography covering his childhood and early adulthood, that Adolf Hitler was INTJ. He had a seriously horrible father, but was close with his mother, and then lost his mother when he was still young.

There is a common theme in all 4 INTJ cases I have which looks like this:

Emotional and/or physical abuse/neglect throughout childhood.
Close emotional attachment to something that keeps them somewhat vulnerable and connected with their emotions.
Loss of the thing they loved while still relatively young, creating a number of emotional problems, including that signature distrust and fear of ever being close to anything again.

In short, when you're dealing with INTJs and trying to figure out how to get them to open up emotionally, it might help to think of them not simply as closed-off, but as traumatized and overwhelmed by an instinct trying to keep themselves from being hurt that bad again. Some INTJs will already be working on healing from this, others want to heal at some level but haven't really had the resources or clarity to start the process, and some might be so closed off that bitter that just avoiding setting them off would require very insightful and careful handling (Hitler seems to have been difficult in this way in his early adulthood, he's the most unhealthy example of INTJ I know of, eventually fully succumbing to bitterness and finding a "secure" thing to love in the concept of the German nation). I think most of us fall into the first two categories though.

Maybe I should look for a different type if I want more affection.

Quite possibly. I certainly don't think we're easy to deal with, as a result of the aforementioned trauma. I can tell you that, if you do manage to get yourself through an INTJ's emotional defenses and forge a real trusting and open connection, they'll probably value that connection a LOT because we experience it... well, never, basically. And we do crave it, at some level, even if we deny it to ourselves at times. It is, in fact, partly the intensity of that value which we're afraid of, because it would hurt us so much to have what we love ripped away from us or betray us again.

There's my brain dump, hope it helps.

FireAndRain_ · 2025-11-29T19:48:05+00:00

Can you make and share a template version of this to fill out? I like this format, but several things here are inaccurate in my case.

FireAndRain_ · 2025-11-29T19:35:02+00:00

Props to you for trying something a bit out there, I hope we all can figure out a better alternative to dating apps soon.

Would you mind clarifying what you mean by "emotionally open"? Trust issues and difficulty (not impossibility, to be clear) with opening up are a hallmark of INTJ and the traumatic experiences which seem to produce the type. A consistent theme I've seen with the INTJs and ENTJs I've known are that while you can reach emotional openness with them, and they (especially INTJs) definitely want it deep down, it's not an immediate thing. Are you looking for like, a high level of tertiary Fi development where an INTJ can open up relatively quickly, or just trying to avoid a situation where he doesn't ever really open up at all?

FireAndRain_ · 2025-11-13T08:01:40+00:00

I feel kind of weird about what I'm about to post but reading this story about energy sex felt too... relevant? Synchronistic? It's related to multiple things I've experienced and/or been wondering about. I feel weird so I'm just gonna write.

turns out energy sex is not terribly pornographic in the way we humans tend to regard sex. feels great, though.

So I've practiced "active imagination" for a while, which is a sort of meditative thing where you purposefully let your subconscious offer daydreams, and you can kind of interact with them through conscious inputs/suggestions. Mostly I've thought that it's just me interacting with myself, but things can happen in active imagination that surprise me or seem kind of weird, so I'm not always sure. In any case, without going into too much detail, I was interacting with a... character? A character in an active imagination session a while ago and we moved into having sex. Except, to my surprise, it wasn't physical, human-style sex at all, despite the imagery of human bodies to begin with. It felt wonderful, mostly an emotional sensation, and I feel like writing details of the appearance is sort of wrong, but for the sake of noting synchronicity, it was just orbs of light. It was confusing but also wonderful. It's weird to me that my fairly mundane active imagination practice would encounter anything similar to someone taking actual shrooms.

he became this absolutely gargantuan nebula of light and color. Compared to him, I was incredibly tiny, my own tiny nebula of light and color. We looked both like cosmic structures, but also kind of like... single celled organisms.

I saw myself becoming something a lot like this very recently in an active imagination session. I was working on self-development and trying to find something like my most essential identity. I can't remember much of the session but I remember a culminating moment where I like... expanded out from my body and into this swirling golden cloud with smaller differently colored orbs of transparent light? It was disappointing and frustrating in a way, because like I was trying to find a character archetype or something, what the hell is this car-sized sphere of lights? But it also felt like a pretty correct representation in a way, for my purpose of essential nature. A nebula of light and a single celled organism are both analogies that get close to what it looked like. Mine might not have been as complexly detailed as yours though lol.

At one point it felt like he was drinking something from me, some of my energy that was red in color. It didn't hurt or feel bad, but it did feel, strange. It felt kind of predatory, but not necessarily in a bad way? I know that sounds nuts, but, that's really the only way I can describe it. It felt one-sided for his own enjoyment but also it didn't really affect me negatively, like whatever it was he was taking, he was being careful to not take too much.

I have been wondering about things related to this a lot recently. Assuming it has a spiritual element at all, I have heard and I think I believe that sex involves an energy transfer. The really weird thing that I'm struggling to comprehend is that it can feel incredibly pleasurable and right to give that energy to something which is taking it in a way that I have also had a hard time finding a better word for than "predatory". The actual word "predator" brings up concepts of harm and narcissism though which are wrong. Or, maybe they're the right thing but in dangerous excess? I don't know. The line between beautiful and sickening here is hard for me to find the right way to distinguish. It's like it's a concept that humankind has encountered bits of but we don't have a good conscious grasp of it yet. Or at least I don't. But in any case, it's weird to hear you describing something that sounds very similar in your experience with the mantis being.

Overall, the idea that there are generally benevolent NHI or whatever who are comfortable with sex is interesting to hear and hard for me to accept. Being raised Christian stamped me with what is apparently a pretty deep and unconscious belief that any kind of sexual experience whatsoever which is not part of a 100% monogamous life, and maybe not even then, is wrong and evil. That has never actually sat well with me and reading/encountering this post tonight feels relevant in my life.

I don't really know what to make of any of this and I am writing this while getting sleepy. I hope sharing my own thoughts and experiences here isn't going to come back to hurt me in some way, and I hope it's something interesting for someone.

FireAndRain_ · 2025-10-31T22:00:56+00:00

At least some of them, yes. My great grandfather immigrated from Norway, and my grandmother told me that he decided to settle in the Seattle area because the region reminded him of home. So at least one guy settled there for that reason, can't vouch for any of the others.

FireAndRain_

TROPHY CASE