WATCH THE YOUTUBE VERSION OF THIS CARD.

Every human culture across time has recognized good and evil spirits. The only exception are orthodox materialists who dismiss such phenomena without research based on unexamined bias. They will make unreasoned claims that science somehow supports their view when it is science's job to investigate the unexplained, not explain away the uninvestigated. To be fair, however, this aspect of human experience attracts charlatans, superstition, projection, etc. Similarly, health care has existed in every culture and also attracts charlatans, superstition, projection, etc. However poorly understood, there is a core of genuine, well-documented, and rigorously studied and analyzed phenomena as those who have taken the time to engage with the highest-quality research on the subject discover. It's beyond the scope of an oracle card to even summarize that research, but below, you'll find links to some of my writings on the subject.

According to Dr. Samuel Sagan, MD:

"The topic is both old and new. Old, because in all traditions and folklores of the earth, one finds references to spirits and non-physical beings which can interfere with human beings. Thus Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India, is divided into eight sections, one of which is entirely devoted to the study of bhutas, or entities, their influence on health and sanity, and the ways one can get rid of them. This places bhuta-vidya, or 'science of entities', on the same level as surgery or gynecology. If we look at traditional Chinese medicine, we find that in acupuncture, among the 361 points of the 14 main meridians, 17 have the word Kuei (disincarnate spirit) as part of their main or secondary name."

There are unseen forces at work — some hinder us and manipulate us toward darker feelings and appetites so that we produce the sort of energy they can harvest. Other spirits watch over us, respecting our free will, embracing us with love if we allow them.

You are never alone, not in your body, this planet, or the spirit realm where your soul and psyche live. Our bodies are a colony of 50 trillion cells working together to allow us a corporeal existence on a planet where there are eight billion of us and myriad other living things. But we are even less alone in the spirit world where location is irrealized, and sympathetic vibration transcends boundaries of space and time. Invisible allies in the spirit world and in the microbiological realm work to keep you alive. As above, so below.

In the unseen realm, there are watchers and helpers who are always available. Sometimes, we need to tune into their subtle messages, other times to call out for their help, other times merely to allow their ministrations to occur while we are scarcely aware of their intercession.

There are spirit guides available to help us. External spirit guides include guardian entities, human spiritual allies, great books, and oracles. The most important spirit guide, however, is your "Self." Jung used the term to refer to the totality of the psyche, of which the conscious ego is a small part. Listen for your quiet, calm, compassionate inner voice.

For those willing to read a bit more:

The history of human beings reporting interactions with spirit entities is cross-cultural and cross-period. The culture of scientism, of fundamentalist materialism, is the only I know of that rules out such testimony. Any culture that disregards a whole sphere of human testimony is in trouble. For example, reports of child abuse were once disregarded as improbable. When we did come to recognize the importance of such testimony finally we went in the other direction, and some people irresponsibly interpreted all sorts of general symptoms as indications of abuse. It is best to avoid either extreme and to be neither a true believer nor a debunker (a true believer in a negative).

In New Age circles, there is a dangerous and naïve tendency to almost exclusively emphasize spirits as benign. British paranormal investigator Joe Fisher, who investigated the channeling phenomenon, came to discover that something genuinely paranormal was occurring, but that the apparent entities involved were not who they claimed to be. I've written an extensive study of his work: The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts. Some excerpts follow:

Fisher reminds us of the long multi-cultural history of human testimony of entity contact:

Socrates, the great Athenian philosopher, spoke in the fifth century B.C.E. of a being whose voice, from time to time, dissuaded him from some undertaking but never directed him as to what he should do.

The Bible, of course, mentions "ministering spirits" (Hebrews 1.14) without spelling out their perpetually watchful responsibilities.

Robert Louis Stevenson credited the whole of his published fiction to "the single-handed product of some unseen collaborator." Daily experience convinced the poet W.B. Yeats that "there are spiritual intelligences which can warn us and advise us." Napoleon Bonaparte believed that he had a guiding spirit which came to him either as a shining sphere or a dwarf clothed in red who came to warn him. And Henry Miller commented that he was "in the hands of unseen powers" while writing his powerful novel Tropic of Cancer. Someone, he said, "is dictating to me constantly — and with no regard for my health."

Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychoanalyst, regularly encountered a guardian spirit named Philemon, a "force that was not myself" who "seemed quite real, as if he were a living personality."

In the same essay, I discuss some of my own experiences with entities:

A fairly well-known person whom I won't name here, a man I consider to be an absolute genius with whom I worked in the Eighties, heard voices who gave him unique information of great value. Sometimes they provided veridical information that could not have been obtained through ordinary means. For most of my life, I have been aware of a somewhat androgynous being living alongside me whom I can visualize but who almost never intrudes into my mind with voice and instead influences by presence. He seems to be there whenever I cast my attention in his direction, and there is always the sense that he flows through time differently than I do. There is always a great depth of feeling, humility, and compassion for suffering. If more specific communication is needed, he allows me to use my mind and word-forming ability to translate his presence and thought forms into words and sentences. He never takes over any part of my body, never claims to be a doctor or to have a specific past-life identity, and never raises even the smallest red flag in my ever-fault-finding mind or intuition. I have noticed, however, that if I travel, he will tend to be unusually present, as if curiously witnessing a new part of the world alongside me (but without taking over my senses).

— I readily acknowledge that this being could be a way that I experience what Jung called the "Self."

As Fisher points out, an over-arching problem with spirits who work through mediums is that they violate the self-reliance of, at the very least, the mediums they work through, taking control of their bodies and wills. They also encourage a spiritual problem I have referred to as "mislocation of the godhead." (See Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom…) They encourage those who interact with them to become infatuated and dependent and to look to them for divine guidance. I'm reminded of David Bowie's character (Jareth) in the movie Labyrinth who says things like: "I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave."

Many spiritual teachers report that evolved nonphysical entities influence humanity telepathically, without speech or heavy-handed intrusion: "Higher beings are silent — they simply radiate knowing and love," said The Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche

Although I am against one-size-fits-all formulations, this suggests a behavioral distinction between benign and parasitic spirits. The spiritual ally that I have long experienced in my life communicates in a nondirective telepathic fashion, leaving me to form into words the emanation that is always loving, nonintrusive, and that never overrides my will or takes over my body. The influence seems directed toward enhancement of my self-realization and service, not toward vicarious thrills. (Malign entities often want to vicariously experience physical sensations through a trance medium or someone they possess.) Note: malign entities are not limited to possession or mediums to exert influence. Subtle, stealthy telepathic influence by disincarnates to promote dark, compulsive thoughts, feelings, and cravings cannot be ruled out as a possibility. There is strong evidence of their ability to intrude on individual psyches, which throws open the possibility that their influence on the living may be widespread.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, there are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in the philosophies of materialists.