‘Ghosts Are Transparent’; Part One, A Thorough Explanation [REPOST]

2/12/2020

CW: Long post that deals with dark themes such as fear, spirit/ghostly activity of a malevolent nature, and mentions of psychosis and mental health issues.

IntroductionI have never been particularly keen about divulging my interactions with the spirit world. My reasoning for this, I feel, is fairly obvious. Ghosts aren’t considered scientific. Ghosts are the construct of childish imaginations and a tell tale sign of mental illness in adults, right??? Society tells us that if someone claims to see ‘ghosts’ they are some combination of the following:

• A drug addict

• Mentally/emotionally unstable

• Unscientific, and therefore their opinions are less valid than those of a reasonable and well adjusted person in society.

• An attention seeker

I have been accused of all of these things in my life because of my past openness. In fact, I still get accused of being one or more of these things on occasion. I am fully prepared for someone to read this blog and send me some sort of nasty gram about how I’m just another unscientific, crunchy, new-ager. That is fine, in all honesty I really appreciate the skepticism. I’m prepared for it. Being ‘out of the broom closet’ online and living one’s life openly makes one a target to some degree, as our society not only discourages authenticity—- but fears it as well.

I feel like it’s time to speak my truth about this subject—- that being the subject of ‘ghosts’ and my ability to communicate with them. Quick disclaimer before we begin; I feel it is imperative that I make a quick statement about mental health.

Mental Health AwarenessIt was Joseph Campbell who said “The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” I could not have said it better myself. Mysticism and mental health go hand in hand. They, at the very least, both stem from the same place within the brain. Is schizophrenia the same thing as being a medium? I really can’t say definitively because, frankly, no one can. There are so many things about our minds and the world we inhabit that we don’t understand and probably will never understand within this lifetime. We can only take everything with a grain of salt, and think critically in all situations to form our own opinions.

If you have a friend or family member that expresses to you that they are hearing things/seeing things that aren’t there, regardless of what you think you need to be there for them. Don’t argue, don’t judge them. Hear them out. If they are confused, unable to concentrate, disoriented, overly paranoid, not making sense (i.e. disorganized speech), or any other signs of psychosis, then you need to do the following:

• • Call 911 or your local emergency number if you feel like the person is at risk of harming themselves or others.

• • Stay with the person until help arrives.

• • Remove any guns, knives, medications, or other things that may cause harm.

• • Listen, but don’t judge, argue, threaten, or yell.

• If you or someone you know is considering suicide, get help from a crisis or suicide prevention hotline. Try the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

While I think learning to meditate and work with one’s own psychic energy is something that will heal anyone and everyone, it is important to get our loved ones the correct kind of help for where they are at. When someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, suggesting meditation is honestly kind of a dick move, if I may be so blunt.

(Of course I may, it’s my blog)

However, this all being said, if someone is having a psychic awakening and we suggest calling in to a Mental Health hotline… that is also kind of a dick move. It can be hard to tell what a person needs, but no matter what, if your loved one confides in you, it’s because they trust you and you owe it to them to not betray that trust. Be open and non-judgemental in all situations.

Thanks for coming to my SaiTalk. I feel like a broken record, putting disclaimers before my posts. I just don’t want y’all coming for me… And I don’t want to unintentionally cause any harm either. Broken people often seek all forms of spirituality to better themselves, but often times we see spirituality is used to justify dangerous ideals and behaviors—-

*cough cough* the various, literal witch hunts through out European history that primarily targeted powerful women and the systematic destruction of indigenous magik in the name of ‘God’, just to name a couple good examples.

I am not here to give you advice and solve all your problems. I’m here to share what I learned through trial and error. All I aim to do is share my truth as I have lived it so that I may understand it more completely… and maybe find others who have had similar experiences.

So with that, lets get into it, shall we?

Firstly, I would like to preface my personal experiences with how I conceptually view the spirit world and spirits. You may disagree, that’s perfectly fine. We don’t really know, this is just how I have come to understand it.

Types of SpiritSo…. Ghosts. Spirits. Apparitions. They go by many names, but what the heck are they anyways? For so many people, the idea of “ghosts” goes against all the beliefs they hold about their reality and their perceptions of themselves. This is partially because we have a very basic and surface level understanding of what they truly are and how it is they exist, in my opinion. The general narrative is either that the human soul gets trapped in some sort of purgatory state between Heaven and Earth, or that there are evil spirits from Hell out to possess our souls. Neither of these are completely accurate in my experience.

For all intents and purposes, there are three main categories of spirit that I have observed:

1. Unintelligent, repetitive, unaware type spirits. They come in two flavors; human and non-human and are characterized by general repetitive actions, usually around the same spot at the same time.

1a. Human Unintelligent Spirits

This is probably the most common form of human-based spirit activity that I encounter. As we move through space and time, we leave little crumbs of energy behind, like little stones falling into a pond, thus creating ripples. These little ripples in time are just pieces and moments left behind, like the natural shedding of hair. If we do the same thing every single day in the same place until we die (like, say, a little old lady likes to do laundry every Sunday at 3 pm sharp), then we can assume to see their spirit doing that task a little while after death. It is important to understand that this is not the whole spirit of your loved one, trapped in some Camusian hell of never-ending laundry. In fact, this type of apparition isn’t even conscious of itself. Like a GIF file on social media of a cat playing piano, it is simply a moment trapped on repeat for the rest of time.

1b. Non-Human Unintelligent Spirits

There are also non-intelligent and repetitive spirits that are not of human origin, all of which I like to refer to as Poltergeists. These (sometimes quite obnoxious) entities take on many physical forms and mimic intelligent/interactive haunts, however they do not actually interact. Like a massive dust bunny, the Poltergeists’ only goal is to acquire more ‘dust’, i.e. toxic energy. (Notice how I say ‘toxic’ and not ‘negative’!). It does this by encouraging arguments between housemates, making people feel ‘on edge’, and sometimes even downright scaring people (doors slamming, borrowers phenomenon, etc.). Poltergeists happen all over the place and to everyone, just like dust bunnies happen to everyone, and are most common in areas that are chaotic, messy, unsanitary, have poor electrical wiring, contain lead or other toxins, or place that have had significant, repetitive trauma. While they may put fear in the pit of your stomach, take comfort in the fact that they are usually adjacent to fart clouds and can be easily banished with a quick smudging and doing a load of laundry…. or five, in my case.

2. Intelligent, interactive human spirits. Now, for me personally, these interactions are quite rare! I have never met anyone who I believe has the ability to channel the human dead. I am sure it’s out there, I just haven’t seen it. Human spirits are a great deal rarer as it takes a lot of energy for us to move in spirit. Unlike creatures that are native to the spirit world, human ‘ghosts’ don’t seem to be able to replenish energy. I will discuss this in further detail later in this post, as it ties in to ‘the Veil’ and my view on the composition of the human soul.

3. Intelligent, interactive, non-human spirits. Here is where things get really wacky, so hold on to your butts. Like the menagerie of flora and fauna that inhabit our physical world, so too is the spirit world teaming with ‘life’; a whole bestiary of immaterial creatures exists in the liminal spaces of reality. Please don’t take this to mean that there are Goetic demons around every dark corner waiting to devour your soul. In fact, a great deal of these creatures are actually quite neutral! They really, generally don’t care about people unless they know you can perceive them. They are inquisitive and playful, generally, however this forward kind of interaction can be misconstrued as malevolent if we don’t know what we are looking at. If you are already into witchcraft, you are probably aware of what I am referring to. Yes, the Fae. The Aziza, the Sidhe, the Yokai, the Elementals, and so on. The go by many names and take many shapes, but these spirit creatures have been observed in every culture across the globe. We can do our best to put these enigmatic beings further into categories and try to designate specific attributes as we would with animals in the physical world, however I feel like the very nature of their existence defies all boundaries that our human minds try to impose. They are everything and nothing. This category also includes Angels, Deities, Saints (to a degree), and named spirits such as Daemons from the Ars Goeatia.

Composition of the Human SoulThe human soul has been a spark for many debates throughout history. I do not expect to wrap it up in a nice little package and solve this age-old riddle in just one simple blog post. As with all other things of this nature, it is un-definable. Like gravity, we feel it’s presence and (generally) people accept it’s existence, but we don’t see it or even know why it’s there. It just is. Over the years, I have developed my own understanding of it to quell my never ending stream of existential dread. Whether I am completely on point, or this is just a coping mechanism, I cannot truly say. However, this explanation I am about to dive into makes sense, and I will continue to hold it as truth until I am proven wrong.

I am not the first person to think the soul is made up of many parts, and I most certainly will not be the last. We see a splintering effect quite often in conditions like D.I.D., schizophrenia, etc. We know that different parts of the brain have different roles in the function of the brain (for example, the frontal lobe is the part of the brain that deals with reasoning, problem solving, and speech; the medulla oblongata is responsible for reflexes like digestion, etc.). The brain not just a single brain, but many smaller brains compiled into a single brain. I feel like this is the physical reflection of the energetic soul in the sense that we are not one singular spirit, but many small spirits compiled into a single vessel.

Ancient people’s were definitely aware of this, as we have found texts from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and I’m fairly certain the far East (I am not as familiar with pre-colonization Eastern occultism, so I will not speak too much on that), all describing the “parts of the soul”. The most famous being the Egyptian account, which I believe is explained in the Book of the Dead.

I am not going to say definitively just how many parts there are in a single soul, because I couldn’t tell you. Wherever you look, you get a different answer, so it’s best that you, as the reader, make that decision for yourself. However I can say that there are at least three parts that I know of:

• The Ego Spirit that lingers around your body after death and eventually crosses over. The human ‘ghost’.

• The ‘Astral’ self that exists in abstract and can travel out of/away from the body

• The Higher Self that is always connected to the ‘Higher Power’, and perhaps is the ‘immortal soul’. The thing that, I believe, is reincarnated into a new body.

This splintered composition is why I believe interactive human ghosts are more uncommon than the non-interactive variety. The “ego”, the thing that is us in this lifetime, will eventually fade into obscurity, no matter what. So long as your name is spoken, this spirit shall remain. However, time is the great destroyer and no one can escape being forgotten at some point. Not only this but this spirit also cannot seem to interact with the physical world, save for certain events (like on Halloween/Dia de los Muertos, or a little while after death). They are there, just much harder to hear and interact with so long as we are disconnected. It is very important, I feel, to remember one’s ancestors when practicing magick. They will help guide you and protect you.

The higher self is that core soul element that is, I suppose, the ‘cannon’ interpretation of the soul, especially in contemporary Christian schools of thought (i.e. there is one soul, it lives once, dies, ascends to Heaven, etc.). The opposing thought here is reincarnation (i.e. the soul dies, ascends to the afterlife, and is eventually recycled back out). I don’t think there is a wrong answer here, because either option seems plausible—- or at the very least logical.

As for the Astral self… I’m going to be honest, I never thought about what happens to this part of the soul in the context of post-mortem soul dispersion. Maybe it wanders the astral realm endlessly? No clue. Not even going to bother getting into it, this post is already long enough as is (and I’m still only prefacing my personal experiences…. what can I say, I’m thorough in my explanations).

Consider this intermission! Get some tea or a healthy snack before we continue.

Structure of ‘Our’ World vs. ‘Their’ WorldThe universe we live in is just a multi-layered ‘field’ of vibrating energy. The ‘physical’ world, the layer we reside on, consists of dense energy that we perceive as being solid. The rocks, the trees, buildings, bodies… These things all exist in the observable, physical world. The spirit world exists as an energetic overlay on top of our world, and sandwiched in-between the spirit world and the physical world is the energetic cusp, the defining line between— the Veil.

The Veil is that middle ground where humans and spirits can mingle. (Personally, I theorize that our brains serve as portals through the veil, what with the collective sub conscious and all…. But that’s perhaps something to save for a future post.) We’ve all heard of the Veil, whether it be an abstract concept or a notion that we are very familiar with. We hear about the “thinning of the Veil” on Halloween night, or ER nurses getting more patients to the trauma ward on full moons.

The Veil, to me, has always felt like a deep river and moves and bends with the land, changing shape and width with the ebb and flow of time. It’s organic and seems to take on a sense of life all on its own. This idea is is supported by mythology; the River Styx comes to mind, the fabled Grecian deity that manifests as a river between the mortal realm and the Underworld. There are similar rivers in other myths as well, I’m sure. (I can’t think of any right now, but you can bet your britches that I’m going to Google it after I’m done writing this blog🤠).

To interact in our world, spirits have to cross the veil. It’s similar to holding one’s breath underwater, I would imagine. For human spirits this is particularly difficult apparently, as human spirits require nourishment, similarly to living humans, so that they may have enough energy to manifest. This is why they seem to visit us more during times when the veil is thin (i.e. at night, on the full and new moons, during particular planetary events, and Samhain/Dia de los Muertos). Non-human spirits can energetically nourish themselves, thus they can interact pretty much whenever they want, however the same thing applies to them. It’s just generally easier to interact when the veil is thinner.

It is at this point that I would like to end part one of my personal accounts with the ‘super natural’. In the next part, I will be discussing my personal stories and first hand accounts of spirits and what it was like for me. Thank you for reading this far! Hope to see you in the next post.