Thoughts and Musings

Like many animals that evolved by surviving in groups, humans have strong social instincts. Photo by Tati Halabi People who have never been in a cultic group frequently ask, “Why would someone subject themselves to that level of control and abuse?” While the answer is far too complicated to be attributed to just one reason, a large portion of it relates to the collective instincts with which we’re all born. As social beings, we’re wired for belonging to and participating in

I read Tarot for years before I studied Jung. So by the time I entered Jungian analytic training, I already knew the Empress. I knew the particular quality of her sovereignty, the way she could mean fertility in one reading and creative authority in another and a kind of sensual self-possession in a third. She was a figure I'd sat with. She wasn't a concept waiting to be named. Which is probably why I felt something sink when I signed up for a one-day class on Tarot and arche

Depression is disruptive. It can feel heavy and painful—at times downright debilitating. Within a known context, such as the death of a loved one, that heavy, consuming darkness gets named “grief.” It’s not pleasant, but we give it permission to exist despite the suffering because we recognize it as an important process in the face of loss. But when that same level of malaise settles in without an apparent “good” reason, we’re quick to label it with words implying it shouldn’