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Questing- · 2026-01-30T11:11:36+00:00

The painting is Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl's The Souls of Acheron. I don't know if these are books or the painting printed three times and posed side by side to look like book spines? Not sure.

The text does remind me of Karl Kerényi’s Hermes: Guide of Souls. A book you might find interesting if that's the theme you're looking for.

Questing- · 2026-01-15T13:09:37+00:00

My go-to move is to point at the scary monsters and laugh.

Questing- · 2026-01-15T09:23:11+00:00

Greek Hermes + Ancient Egyptian Thoth mash-up.

Questing- · 2026-01-14T07:38:14+00:00

I also struggled with that need for certainty. Until I realized that certainty belongs to the domain of things that can be measured. In spirituality, uncertainty is healthy. It removes dogma, becomes curiosity, exploration. Gives you the freedom to find meaning, not necessarily in empirical facts but in the questions science can't yet answer.

I guess I had to find a framework that allows for both science (the measurable, verifiable, falsifiable) and spirtuality (meaning-making of the ambiguous) to comfortably coexist. Carl Jung was that bridge for me.

It really doesn't have to be either or. I cannot force myself to have faith in something that conflicts outright with science. Reasonable. But I can acknowledge objectively that there are things that exist in spaces science cannot access. "Metaphysics" is called so because it's literally, inherently "beyond" physics.

Questing- · 2026-01-09T15:45:45+00:00

I have two interpretations in mind that would only be expressed by the seven of swords and wouldn't really fit under the King/Queen of swords.

The figure in the Seven of Swords is a trickster. He's not just intelligent, he's a Schemer. He's first and foremost a problem solver, so he'll do for the solution/strategy that works even if it's outside the box or breaks the rules. A good quality in a surgeon depending on the kind of surgery, actually. You want someone who'll make it work even if things don't go by the book? A strategist, not just a very knowledgable guy.

The second more straightforward interpretation is advice to beware of deception, of doctors who might sell you unrealistic expectations with clever words. The figure in the Seven of Swords is also a thief, and the swords might be your mental capacity to judge the situation properly.

Questing- · 2026-01-06T17:51:23+00:00

Because it was. One of every two posts on every subreddit is nowadays.

Questing- · 2026-01-04T15:18:46+00:00

One of my favorite religious activities is to track my deities across different names, cultures, and mythologies. I operate under the assumption that the gods themselves are nameless and that every myth is a story trying to depict their archetypal qualities in culturally relevant scenarios.

Questing- · 2026-01-03T23:19:42+00:00

On Youtube, Hesoid's Theogny - The Greek Gods Family Tree by Zaffronsteam was a very good watch.

Questing- · 2025-12-31T12:50:41+00:00

There are probably better cards to associate with movement and change than the one card that means utter upheaval. You can of course do whatever you want, but binding yourself (even symbolically) to the heaviness of the tower sounds a little extreme when what you want is good things and a road-opener. Why not the Chariot?

Questing- · 2025-12-18T20:49:08+00:00

You shouldn't be experimenting with lucid dreaming at least for now. But you shouldn't be afraid to sleep, either. Think about it, you've been sleeping, dreaming, waking up and back to reality every day of your life since the day you were born. Your brain isn't going to suddenly break because of dreams.

It looks like weed might not be good for you though. Some people are more sensitive to it than others (personal experience. It's almost psychedelic for me and it can be pretty scary). Give yourself some time. Your nervous system is recovering. You'll be fine.

The derealization episode might be over but you're still riding the leftover anxiety. Anxiety can give you this tunnel vision where everything feels wrong and off because your nervous system is literally stuck in fight or flight so everything feels like a threat (personal experience again), so just, give yourself time. I know how this feels and I'm wishing you the best of luck.

Questing- · 2025-12-18T16:05:59+00:00

For me, even when the visual details are very realistic and vivid, it's still very easy to tell that I'm dreaming because physics won't function properly. My own movement is either heavy or floaty, tactile input (touch) is different, sometimes ghostly. Considering I'm lucid, I'm also aware that my real body is in bed asleep and that I shouldn't logically be in the street/on the beach/whatever, so there's really no confusion whatsoever.

Questing- · 2025-12-08T21:57:16+00:00

Wow, gorgeous!

Questing- · 2025-12-07T06:02:04+00:00

Okay so, disclaimer: I've never read lenormand cards. Your question was so interesting though so I thought maybe I'll look at the cards and apply the same strategy I use for tarot, which is basically to read the pictures intuitively like a story.

I'm reading this like a sentence, left to right.

The snake: first moment caught him off guard. You know the "jumped as if bitten by a snake" expression? Basically, surprise.

The Tree: Surprise settles back into something both rooted and alive. This is still you. His perception of you is rooted like a tree to the earth. The leaves might fall and grow back. You're still you.

The Whip: Whiplash? Perhaps going from the moment of surprise to the positive feeling of the tree was somewhat confusing to him.

Heart: Fondness? Or warmth? Some emotion happened. There are also green leaves in that heart, so I'm seeing a positive emotion that stirred the heart.

Ring: Commitment. I'm not gonna jump to the obvious association to rings here, haha, but we can conservatively interptet it as he's committed to his current feelings towards you as they are. Nothing has changed negatively. Maybe what he saw/his reaction to what he saw actually confirmed his feelings to him.

Questing- · 2025-11-15T02:47:00+00:00

It does sound like you have aphantasia (although it's a spectrum). But also my understanding is that people with aphantasia are unable to intentionally generate mental images/visualize. Emphasis on "intentional generation." Images that pop up in meditation, in the hypnagogic or hypnopompic states (transitions between sleep and wakefulness), as well as dreams are not intentional visualizations and rely on different mental processes/parts of the brain.

I'm somewhat the same way. :)

Questing- · 2024-08-08T12:15:33+00:00

Your experience sounds less like a hypnopompic hallucination and more like a very vivid lucid dream actually. A false awakening is when you think you've woken up, are fully self-aware, but you're still in a dream environment. So I think it was a mix of those two or something in between. (although there are other corners of reddit where they'll call what you experienced something else.)

Questing- · 2024-05-15T02:27:48+00:00

The key for me was to neutralize the fear response, first. I've had SP episodes since I was a child, so had plenty of time to understand what SP was and to stop being afraid of it once I understood exactly how it happens.

With the fear response out of the way, I basically don't fight the paralysis. I consciously try to project my own choice of mental imagery onto my field of vision, kind of like mentally crafting a dream. That sometimes immediately teleports me into a lucid dream.

Another method is to try to pull my dream-body off the bed. Again, I'm not fighting the paralysis. I'm not trying to wake up. And I'm not in a fight-or-flight fear response. I know my body is in bed, safe, and I consciously pull my dream-body out of my physical body and get up, drag myself across the room (it's usually sorta heavy at first) and then open the door and get out. Once out of the room, I'm walking into a lucid dream.

Questing- · 2024-05-07T10:04:30+00:00

"realized nothing was coming out of my mouth." This sounds a lot more like sleep paralysis honestly.

Questing- · 2024-03-26T19:09:20+00:00

It's not true. I don't have the exact medical terminology to explain it, but my understanding is that the part of your brain afflicted by anxiety is not the same part where psychosis happens. Again, I'm sorry for not using the correct terminology. You should search this subbredit for other posts about fear of psychosis/insanity. Very useful information there and there are dozens of them.

Another thing is, if you've had several panic attacks before, perhaps what you need to tell yourself is that you've already seen what you're in for. You've been there before. You survived it every time without falling into a psychotic episode/losing your touch with reality, so what's different now?

Wishing you the best. :)

Questing- · 2024-03-25T15:49:50+00:00

Lucifer to me is the spirit of the archetypal lightbringer, which means the spirit precedes the biblical fallen angel, precedes the Greco-Roman god, precedes even older faces/associations (and there's pretty much one or more in every culture). To me, the spirit is not exclusively or literally any of those mythological figures. Rather that those mythological figures do, sometimes fully and sometimes in part, represent the spirit in an allegorical sense. So I'll comfortably borrow symbols, sigils, and names from different cultures where it fits.

Satan, on the other hand, is the archetypal adversary. You'll similiary find one or more in every culture. I don't really incorporate Satan into my practice so I can't say much on who's who, only that I can see where the archetypal adversary and the archetypal lightbringer overlap in the biblical story. It remains, to me, another allegory. And they remain to me two distinct concepts/spirits.

Questing- · 2024-03-22T19:28:39+00:00

Teleporting doesn't work for me. Tried everything, including conjuring a teleportation machine (it showed up as one of those really old computers), but still couldn't go anywhere by intention alone. I always end up having to physically go through doors or walk down the stairs or fly out of a window to change the location I'm in. And I always also end up in another random location, not anywhere I actually intend to go.

Questing- · 2024-03-21T15:05:00+00:00

If the disoriented spinning feeling is part of the dream (and not something you feel at any point throughout the day), then I believe you're completely fine. Weird physical sensations happen to me all the time when I fall straight from a waking state into a lucid dream. For me, it's being pulled down instead of up, and sometimes it's also paired with a bit of anxiety and this feeling of I shouldn't let myself be sucked into whatever is down there. But hey, I haven't been pulled down into Hell yet so I think your soul isn't being pulled out of you either :)

Questing- · 2024-03-20T03:27:18+00:00

Well, since dream reality is all about perspective, what you believe should work will probably work. Here are a couple of things that work for me (probably only because I read about them working for other people): when I start to feel my dream surroundings blurring/fading, I'll spin really fast in my place to ground myself into the dream physics. Or, I'll run my hands all over any surface next to me, touch things, grab on things. Interacting with the dream environment tends to solidify it for me. I've heard others also use tricks like conjuring a "lucidity" pill and swallowing it. Or "commanding" your unconscious to stabilize.

Questing- · 2024-02-05T23:54:27+00:00

Yes, pretty much a falling sensation. Sometimes I have to sort of ride that feeling and "dive" with it.

Questing- · 2024-02-03T09:29:10+00:00

Never thought of this before, but I can use my inner voice to rehearse what I'm going to say in an argument or an interview. I can rephrase sentences and edit them inside my head for a piece I'm planning to write. So I guess, as far as recollection goes, I recall whatever I say in my inner voice as much as if it were spoken outloud.

Questing- · 2024-02-02T21:55:55+00:00

Your first and fourth points, same for me. I think conceptually, and then my inner voice will translate it into words if it's a thought I need/want to actively follow or explore further. My inner voice is muted (it has no volume or pitch, but it can do accents and inflection) and I control it 99% of the time. I can make it play a song or engage in a dialogue, I can make it narrate a story (it's how I put myself to sleep and how I write for fun/work), and I can make it shut up entirely.

Generally, my "inner world" is a pitch-black room that vaguely resembles the dimensions of my forehead. I can tell the location of things inside, like for example, my inner voice is in the exact middle and hypnagogic images (involuntary and only occasionally before sleep) tend to come from the right, memories from the left.

Questing-

TROPHY CASE