The Woman History Tried to Hide - The Dark Truth About Jung's Anima

Sabina Spielrein was one of the most fascinating and tragic figures of early psychoanalysis.

A brilliant woman whose ideas were decades ahead of their time, she was nevertheless overshadowed by the much more famous men who surrounded her.

For much of the twentieth century, history remembered Sabina primarily as a footnote in the lives of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

But that is not the story of Sabina Spielrein.

Because Sabina was not simply a patient.

She was a scientist, a physician, a psychoanalyst - and a thinker whose ideas would eventually influence some of the most important developments in modern psychology.

Her story begins in 1904, when Sabina was just nineteen years old.

She was admitted to the Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital in Zurich after suffering a severe psychological crisis. At the time, her condition was described using the outdated language of "hysteria".

But there was something remarkable about this young woman.

Sabina was highly educated, intellectually curious, and fascinated by science, philosophy and language. She spoke several languages and possessed an extraordinary analytical mind.

And inside the hospital, she encountered a young psychiatrist who would change the course of her life.

His name was Carl Gustav Jung.

Jung was one of the rising stars of psychiatry, and he became Sabina's physician.

But their relationship soon became far more complicated than doctor and patient.

Sabina and Jung developed a profound intellectual connection.

And eventually, that connection became romantic.

Their relationship was passionate, secretive and deeply complicated by the enormous imbalance of power between them.

Sabina was his patient.

Jung was her doctor.

And as their relationship began to unravel, the consequences became increasingly serious.

Rumours began to circulate.

Jung became deeply concerned about his reputation, and he turned to another man for help.

Sigmund Freud.

Jung wrote to Freud about Sabina, portraying her as a threat to his reputation.

At one point, he described her as someone who was "systematically plotting" his ruin.

Freud, meanwhile, became involved in the increasingly tangled situation.

He corresponded with both Jung and Sabina, attempting to navigate the scandal and understand what was happening between them.

But beneath the personal drama was something far more important.

Sabina Spielrein was developing ideas of her own.

Ideas that would eventually become extraordinarily influential.

One of her most remarkable insights concerned the strange relationship between destruction and creation.

Sabina proposed that the human drive to create could be intimately connected with the impulse to destroy.

In other words, destruction and creation might not be opposites at all.

They could be two sides of the same psychological process.

Her 1912 paper, Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being, explored this disturbing idea years before Freud developed his later theory of the death drive.

Sabina's ideas that emerged from her work would later appear, in different forms, within the theories of far more famous men.

Sabina's influence can be traced through the development of psychoanalysis, including ideas concerning sexuality, transformation, destruction, creativity and the unconscious.

Her intellectual relationship with Jung was also significant. Sabina's work and their conversations contributed to the intellectual environment from which Jung's later theories emerged. Carl Jung’s famous theory of the “Anima” the inner feminine personality of men - was also constructed using Sabina as a real-life model.

One of Carl Jung's most famous ideas was the concept of the Anima - the inner feminine aspect of a man's unconscious.

Jung believed that every man carries within himself an unconscious feminine figure.

He called this figure the Anima.

And he believed that she could profoundly influence the way a man thinks, feels, falls in love and understands himself.

But where did this mysterious idea come from?

To understand that, we have to look at Jung's own life - and at the women who influenced his thinking.

The word Anima comes from Latin and can be translated as "soul" or "breath of life".

For Jung, however, it came to represent something much more specific.

He believed the conscious personality of a man was only one part of who he really was.

Beneath it existed a vast unconscious world containing instincts, memories, emotions and psychological patterns inherited from humanity's distant past.

And within that unconscious world, Jung believed a man carried an inner feminine presence.

The Anima.

She represented qualities that traditional masculine society often encouraged men to suppress - emotion, intuition, sensitivity, imagination, receptivity and connection to the unconscious.

Jung believed that when a man was disconnected from his Anima, these qualities could emerge in distorted ways.

They might appear as sudden emotional reactions, irrational fantasies, idealisation or intense attraction towards particular women.

Jung believed that men could project their Anima onto real women.

A man might meet someone and feel an almost overwhelming attraction.

He may believe that she is uniquely beautiful, mysterious or destined for him.

But according to Jung, he might not actually be seeing the woman herself.

He could be seeing his own unconscious image of the feminine projected onto her.

The woman becomes a screen onto which the unconscious paints an image.

And this can create an extraordinary feeling of recognition.

It can feel like:

"I have known you forever."

"I don't understand why I feel this way about you."

"There is something about you that I cannot explain."

Jung believed that such experiences could be psychologically powerful because the person was encountering something within themselves that they had never consciously recognised.

The Anima could therefore act as a bridge between the conscious mind and the unconscious.

But there is another reason this theory is particularly interesting.

Jung did not develop his ideas in isolation.

He was surrounded by intellectual women whose ideas, personalities and psychological struggles influenced his work.

And one of the most important was Sabina Spielrein.

Sabina had been Jung's patient.

She later became a physician and psychoanalyst in her own right.

She and Jung developed an intense intellectual and romantic relationship, and their correspondence reveals just how complicated their connection became.

Sabina was deeply interested in the unconscious, sexuality, transformation and the relationship between destruction and creation.

It is clear that her ideas and their intellectual relationship led to the development of concepts that later appeared in Jung's psychology.

But Sabina's story raises an uncomfortable question.

How much does a person's intellectual influence survive when they are not given equal recognition?

And how often do ideas become associated with the person who eventually gives them a famous name, rather than the people who helped inspire them?

Jung eventually developed the Anima into one of the central figures of his psychology.

He believed that the Anima could appear in dreams, fantasies, myths and religious symbolism.

She might appear as a mysterious woman, a lover, a goddess, a witch, a mother or even a supernatural guide.

And her appearance could change as a person developed psychologically.

Jung believed that encountering the Anima was part of a much larger process he called individuation.

Individuation meant becoming more psychologically whole.

Not simply becoming the person society expects you to be...

but discovering the hidden parts of yourself that have been pushed into the unconscious.

The Anima, in this sense, was not simply "the feminine side of a man".

She represented a doorway into the deeper unconscious.

And Jung believed that if a man could stop projecting his unconscious image onto other women and instead recognise it as part of himself, something profound could happen.

He could begin to reclaim the qualities he had rejected.

His intuition.

His emotions.

His imagination.

His vulnerability.

His capacity for connection.

And most importantly...

his relationship with his own unconscious mind.

But Jung's theory also has a darker side.

If the Anima is unconscious, then she can control a man without him realising it.

He may become obsessed with an idealised woman.

He may fall in love with an image rather than a person.

He may become irrationally attracted to someone who seems to embody everything he has secretly longed for.

And when the projection eventually collapses, he may discover that the woman he thought he knew was partly a creation of his own mind.

The Anima, therefore, could be both guide and illusion.

She could lead a person deeper into themselves...

or completely distort their perception of another human being.

And maybe that is what makes Jung's idea so enduring.

Whether or not we accept Jung's theory literally, the psychological phenomenon he was describing is recognisable.

We sometimes fall in love with what another person represents to us.

We place our fantasies, desires and unfulfilled qualities onto them.

We imagine that they possess something we desperately need.

And then, when reality fails to match the fantasy, the spell breaks.

Jung's Anima offers one way of understanding that process.

But it also leaves us with a fascinating question.

If we can project hidden parts of ourselves onto other people...

how much of the person we think we are seeing actually belongs to them?

And how much belongs to us?

Maybe the greatest lesson of the Anima is that the mysterious person we believe we have discovered in someone else...

can sometimes be a part of ourselves waiting to be discovered.

A face we recognise.

A feeling we cannot explain.

A presence that seems strangely familiar.

And maybe what we call falling in love with another person...

is sometimes, at least in part, an encounter with something within ourselves that we have never consciously known.

Just like how Jung might have seen himself in Sabina, until she failed to be exactly as he wanted her to be, and like so many men before him used it as an excuse to demonise the woman.

And while the men around her were becoming famous, Sabina herself was gradually disappearing from the historical record.

But she refused to disappear quietly.

She continued her education.

She earned her medical degree.

She became a practising psychoanalyst.

And she conducted important research into child psychology, language development and the unconscious.

She worked with children and became particularly interested in the earliest stages of human psychological development.

Her ideas were original.

Her research was serious.

And she was building a career that had nothing to do with being merely someone's former patient or secret lover.

Eventually, Sabina returned to Russia.

She settled in Rostov-on-Don and continued working as a physician and psychoanalyst.

She also had two daughters.

But history was moving towards one of its darkest moments.

In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

The following year, German forces occupied Rostov-on-Don.

Sabina Spielrein and her two daughters were among the Jewish civilians murdered during the Nazi massacres in the region.

She was forty-four years old.

A brilliant life had been brutally extinguished.

And then something extraordinary happened.

Sabina Spielrein almost vanished from history.

For decades, her name appeared primarily in connection with Jung.

She became a scandal.

A patient.

A lover.

A footnote.

But not a thinker in her own right.

Then, in the late twentieth century, her forgotten papers began to resurface.

Her diaries, letters and scientific writings were rediscovered, helping historians reconstruct the remarkable intellectual life that had been buried beneath the scandal surrounding her relationship with Jung.

And suddenly, Sabina Spielrein could be seen in an entirely different light.

Not as a footnote to Jung or Freud.

Not as a forgotten patient.

But as an intellectual in her own right.

A woman who had been thinking deeply about creation, destruction, sexuality, childhood and the unconscious at a time when psychology itself was still in its infancy.

Today, Sabina Spielrein is increasingly recognised as an important early figure in psychoanalysis and one of the pioneering thinkers who connected psychoanalytic ideas with child psychology.

But the most haunting part of her story is not simply that she was forgotten.

It is that she was so nearly remembered only for the men in her life.

History had taken a brilliant woman and reduced her to a scandal in somebody else's biography.

And it took decades for her own voice to emerge from beneath it.

Sabina Spielrein's story reminds us that history is not written by the people who had the best ideas.

It is written by the people who had the most power.

And for generations, the voices of women were too often filtered through the men who surrounded them.

So the most unsettling question is not simply:

"Why was Sabina Spielrein forgotten?"

It is this:

How many other brilliant women were dismissed as hysterical, unstable, difficult or insane...

How many had their ideas absorbed by more powerful men...

And how many disappeared completely from the historical record?

Sabina Spielrein was nearly erased.

But she left something behind that proved remarkably difficult to destroy.

Her ideas.

Her writings.

Her questions.

And her voice.

And that may be the final lesson of Sabina Spielrein's life:

You can bury a person.

You can bury their name.

You can even bury their work for generations.

But sometimes, the ideas themselves refuse to stay buried.

And eventually...

they find their way back into the light.

The Dark Secret Behind Billionaire Bunkers

There is something strange happening beneath the feet of the world's wealthiest people.

Deep underground, behind enormous steel doors, reinforced concrete and sophisticated security systems, some of the richest people on Earth are preparing for a future they clearly do not want to experience.

They are building bunkers.

Not the crude concrete shelters of the Cold War.

These are luxury survival compounds.

Underground homes with their own power supplies.

Their own water.

Their own food.

Their own communications.

Some are designed to remain sealed for years.

Swimming pools.

Gyms.

Medical facilities.

Bedrooms.

Entertainment rooms.

Everything you could possibly need...

if the world above you ceased to function.

And we are usually given perfectly reasonable explanations for why these places exist.

A pandemic.

A nuclear war.

An asteroid.

Climate catastrophe.

Economic collapse.

Civil unrest.

The breakdown of civilisation itself.

And maybe those really are the things they are preparing for.

But there is another possibility.

One that is considerably more uncomfortable.

What if the people building these fortresses aren't primarily afraid of what might happen to civilisation?

What if they're afraid of what might happen...

when civilisation turns against them?

Think about that for a moment.

Because there is something rather peculiar about a billionaire preparing for the collapse of society.

They aren't simply preparing to survive.

They are preparing to survive separately.

Away from everyone else.

Behind walls.

Behind guards.

Behind locked doors.

Underground.

And maybe that tells us something about what they imagine the future might look like.

Because history has taught us something rather uncomfortable.

People will tolerate an extraordinary amount of inequality...

right up until they don't.

For centuries, societies have been divided between those who possess enormous wealth and power...

and those who possess almost nothing.

Most of the time, that imbalance remains remarkably stable.

The poor work.

The wealthy accumulate.

The system continues.

Generation after generation.

Until something changes.

A famine.

A war.

An economic crisis.

A sudden increase in the cost of living.

A government that becomes too corrupt.

A population that becomes too angry.

And eventually...

the people who have been enduring the system begin to question why they are enduring it at all.

And when enough people reach that point...

history can become very unpredictable.

Consider France in the late eighteenth century.

The French monarchy possessed extraordinary wealth and power.

The aristocracy lived in luxury.

And the social structure of the country was profoundly unequal.

Meanwhile, ordinary people struggled with poverty, taxation and rising food prices.

For a long time, the system continued.

Until it didn't.

In 1789, the French Revolution began.

The Bastille fell.

The monarchy was challenged.

The old social order began to disintegrate.

And eventually...

the people who had spent generations at the bottom of society discovered that they were capable of bringing the entire structure down.

The French Revolution was not caused by one single thing.

History is never quite that simple.

But inequality, privilege, poverty and resentment were all part of the explosive mixture.

And that is where the billionaire bunker becomes interesting.

Because possibly the question isn't simply:

What are they afraid will happen?

Possibly the question is:

Who are they afraid will make it happen?

Now, before we go any further, there is something important to understand.

There is no evidence that billionaires are secretly coordinating their bunker construction because they know a revolution is coming.

There is no secret document telling them that society will collapse on a particular date.

And there is certainly no proof that they possess some supernatural knowledge about the future.

But that isn't really what makes this phenomenon interesting.

What makes it interesting is the psychology behind it.

Imagine having almost unlimited wealth.

You can buy almost anything.

A private jet.

A yacht.

A mansion.

A private island.

A fleet of security vehicles.

You can move your family to another country.

You can build a compound in the middle of nowhere.

You can buy food and supplies for years.

You can surround yourself with security.

But there is one thing even extraordinary wealth cannot buy.

Certainty.

You cannot purchase a guarantee that the society surrounding you will remain stable.

You cannot buy the loyalty of millions of strangers forever.

And you cannot guarantee that people who feel they have nothing left to lose will continue to respect the system that made you extraordinarily wealthy.

And maybe...

that is where the bunker becomes more than a shelter.

It becomes a symbol.

A physical manifestation of fear.

Because think about what a bunker actually represents.

It represents separation.

The world outside...

and the people inside.

Above ground...

and below it.

The masses...

and the few.

It says:

If everything falls apart, I have somewhere to go.

And that raises another uncomfortable question.

What about everyone else?

Because the billionaire bunker does not solve the problems that cause social collapse.

It doesn't make food cheaper.

It doesn't reduce inequality.

It doesn't repair broken institutions.

It doesn't create jobs.

It doesn't restore trust.

It doesn't make people feel that the system is fair.

It simply creates somewhere safe to hide...

if those problems become impossible to ignore.

And this is where things become particularly interesting.

Because the wealthiest people in the world are not powerless observers of the society they fear.

They have enormous influence over it.

They own companies.

They control vast amounts of capital.

They influence markets.

They fund political campaigns.

They shape industries.

They purchase property.

They influence technology.

Some possess more financial resources than entire communities.

And yet...

some of them are simultaneously preparing for the possibility that the society around them could become so unstable that they need to disappear beneath it.

There is an almost poetic contradiction in that.

The people with the greatest ability to escape a collapsing society...

may also be among the people with the greatest ability to influence the conditions that could cause that society to become unstable.

And that brings us back to the question of revolution.

Revolutions don't usually begin because everyone suddenly wakes up one morning and decides to overthrow the government.

They begin with pressure.

Economic pressure.

Social pressure.

Political pressure.

A feeling that the system is fundamentally unfair.

A feeling that the people at the top are living by completely different rules.

And most importantly...

a feeling that nothing is ever going to change.

That last one is dangerous.

Because anger can be endured.

Poverty can be endured.

Inequality can be endured.

But hopelessness is different.

When people stop believing that the future can be better...

they can begin to believe that destroying the present is the only way to create something new.

And that is when history becomes frightening.

Because history is full of moments when ordinary people suddenly discovered that the institutions they thought were permanent...

weren't permanent at all.

Palaces can be entered.

Governments can fall.

Empires can collapse.

Fortunes can disappear.

Names that once seemed untouchable can become historical footnotes.

And maybe the people building these bunkers understand that better than anyone.

Perhaps they understand something that the rest of us don't like to think about.

That wealth can provide extraordinary protection...

but only up to a point.

Because there is a limit to what money can buy.

You can buy the strongest doors.

But you cannot buy a peaceful society.

You can buy armed guards.

But you cannot buy social stability.

You can buy a year's worth of food.

But you cannot buy a functioning civilisation.

And you can build your home hundreds of metres underground...

but eventually...

you still have to ask what is happening above you.

There is another fascinating detail here.

The bunker itself is not necessarily a prediction.

It could simply be an insurance policy.

We buy insurance for things we don't expect to happen.

We wear seatbelts even though we don't expect to crash.

We install smoke alarms even though we don't expect our houses to burn down.

So maybe billionaires are simply doing the same thing...

on a much larger scale.

But there is a difference.

When an ordinary person buys insurance, they are protecting themselves against something that might happen to them.

When one of the world's richest people spends millions creating an underground fortress capable of surviving societal collapse...

you can't help but wonder what kind of future they are imagining.

What do they see?

What are they afraid of?

A virus?

A war?

A climate catastrophe?

An economic collapse?

Artificial intelligence?

Political instability?

Or something much simpler?

People.

Because maybe the most unpredictable force on Earth...

isn't nature.

It isn't technology.

It isn't even war.

It is human beings who have reached the point where they no longer believe they have anything left to lose.

And history has shown us that when enough people reach that point...

the impossible can suddenly become inevitable.

A king can lose his crown.

An empire can fall.

A government can collapse.

A revolution can begin.

And the people who once seemed untouchable can suddenly discover that all the wealth in the world cannot put the old world back together again.

So maybe we should look at these underground fortresses differently.

They aren't simply shelters.

They are monuments.

Monuments to enormous wealth...

and enormous uncertainty.

A reminder that even the richest people on Earth cannot completely control the future.

And maybe...

just maybe...

the most revealing thing about a bunker isn't what it is designed to keep out.

It's what the people inside are afraid might come looking for them.

Because a bunker can protect you from a disaster.

It can protect you from a nuclear blast.

It can protect you from a pandemic.

It can protect you from a storm.

It can protect you from the chaos of a collapsing infrastructure.

But there is one thing a bunker cannot protect you from.

The question of why people became angry enough to come looking for you in the first place.

Maybe the bunker isn't a prediction of the future.

Maybe it's simply a reflection of the fears of the people who built it.

But if that is true...

then the most important question isn't:

What are the billionaires preparing to survive?

The question is:

What kind of future do they believe they need to hide from?

And if they are preparing for the collapse of civilisation...

we should ask ourselves something even more disturbing.

Are they afraid of the end of the world?

...

Or are they afraid of the people who will inherit it?

The IQ Paradox: Are Humans Getting Dumber?

 

Could it be that we are growing less intelligent as a species? The notion may seem absurd, yet recent research suggests this might be our reality.

This story begins with the discovery of a trend known as the Flynn Effect, named after the researcher James Flynn. Throughout the first part of the 20th century, Flynn observed a steady rise in IQ scores, suggesting that each generation was becoming smarter than the last.

This trend sparked numerous theories attempting to explain this intellectual blossoming. From improved nutrition and healthcare to advancements in education, each played a role in sculpting a more intelligent society.

However, an intriguing twist occurred in this intellectual narrative. A pair of researchers from the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Norway found that this upward trend in IQ scores has taken a U-turn.

Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that instead of becoming smarter, we might be becoming dumber.

Their research involved the analysis of IQ test results from young men entering Norway's compulsory military service between 1970 and 2009. They examined an impressive 730,000 test results.

The findings were startling. Scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a clear reversal of the Flynn Effect observed over the previous 70 years.

Yet, amid this gloomy revelation, a ray of hope emerged. The researchers noticed differences between family groups.

This observation suggested that the decline might not be entirely due to genetic factors, but could be influenced by the environment.

Lifestyle changes, such as modifications in the education system and a shift from reading to playing video games, might be contributing to this decline.

This revelation isn't exclusive to Norway. Similar trends have been observed elsewhere.

A British team found IQ scores falling by 2.5 to 4.3 points every decade since the end of World War II.

Meanwhile, researchers in the US discovered that diet could influence IQ. Children consuming more meat and fish tended to have higher IQs and better sleep quality, another factor influencing adult intelligence levels.

In summary, the once-celebrated Flynn Effect, the steady rise in IQ scores over the generations, seems to be on the decline.

The reasons behind this are complex, ranging from potential genetic factors to environmental influences such as changes in education, lifestyle and diet.

While these findings might seem disheartening, they serve as a reminder that intelligence is a multifaceted attribute influenced by a myriad of factors.

It is a call to action for us to better understand these factors and how we can optimise them for the betterment of future generations.

First published 21st November 2023

The History of Runes

I was asked: I have a question about the Viking Runes - was it the Serpent families who created them and how old are they? 

Runes are more than ancient letters. They are a bridge to the minds and spirits of our ancestors. Carved in stone, wood, bone and metal, runes carry a history of writing, magic, mystery and wisdom that stretches back over 2,000 years.

We are told that Runes were born among the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe.  And that the earliest known runic inscriptions date to around 150 CE. But in truth they were used much further back than this. The Serpent Bloodline used them primarily as magic talisman's but also each family were given one to represent their clan, and they were used as markers to identify that tribe, worn on jewellery, carved into stones etc. Each family saw they Rune as protective and magical.

The word “rune” comes from the Old Norse rún, meaning “secret” or “whisper”.

In more modern times the runes became known as Elder Futhark  and consisted of 24 characters.

The Elder Futhark was used across much of Northern Europe for several centuries.

Runes were carved onto stone monuments, weapons, tools, jewellery and everyday items.

They could mark ownership, record events, invoke protection or carry magical intent.

Each rune had a name, a sound, and a meaning.

Runes were not only for writing, they were also used in magic and spiritual practices.

People carved runes for protection, healing, success in battle, fertility, safe travel and more.

Runic poems and charms, like the Merseburg Charms, show how powerful and sacred they were considered.

Around the 8th century, the runic alphabet was simplified to 16 characters - the Younger Futhark.

This version was used mainly in Scandinavia and is the futhark most people know today.

Runes continued to be used for inscriptions in Scandinavia long after Latin letters became common.

They were carved on church walls, grave stones, wooden objects and household items.

In some places, they remained in use into the 20th century.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, interest in runes was revived through folklore, archaeology, occult traditions and Norse mythology.

Today, runes are used for divination, meditation, magic and personal growth by people all over the world.

Runes are not just letters from the past.

They are symbols of a living ancient wisdom - a connection to nature, the divine and the deeper mysteries of existence.

To learn runes is to open a door to the past, and even, to a deeper understanding of yourself.

Why the true history and timeline of Runes, like most things, is distorted.

Before 0 CE, there were simply years that we now label as BCE - “Before Common Era”. But there is an important detail that often surprises people:

There is no year 0 in the traditional BCE/CE calendar.

The sequence goes:

2 BCE → 1 BCE → 1 CE → 2 CE → 3 CE

So the calendar jumps directly from 1 BCE to 1 CE.

Why did this happen? I can hear you saying.

The dating system we commonly use today developed from a Christian calendar created many centuries after the period it was trying to date.

In the 6th century CE, a Christian monk and scholar called Dionysius Exiguus was asked to calculate dates for Easter. He proposed numbering years according to the presumed birth of Jesus Christ.

He called the years after Christ's birth Anno Domini, meaning “in the year of our Lord”. This eventually became the AD system.

The intention was essentially:

Before Christ → BC

After Christ → AD

Later, historians began using the more religiously neutral terms:

Before Common Era → BCE

Common Era → CE

But Dionysius did not include a year zero.

Why not? You might ask.

The concept of zero as a number was not being used in the same way in European mathematical and calendar systems at the time. Roman numerals, which were widely used in Europe, didn't have a standard numeral for zero.

So instead of:

2 BCE → 1 BCE → 0 → 1 CE → 2 CE

the system became:

2 BCE → 1 BCE → 1 CE → 2 CE

This can make calculations involving ancient dates surprisingly awkward.

But there is another fascinating problem.

Dionysius was trying to determine the year of Jesus's birth, but modern historians believe his calculation was probably wrong.

Most historical estimates place Jesus's birth somewhere around 6-4 BCE.

That means, rather strangely, Jesus may have been born several years “before Christ” according to the calendar that was later created to date his birth!

This wasn't because people at the time thought they were living in the wrong year. The calendar system simply didn't exist yet.

And this is an important point:

The year did not actually “restart”.

Nothing happened in history where everyone suddenly reached a particular day and declared, “This is now year 1.”

Different civilisations had their own calendars and systems of counting years.

The Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Jews, Chinese and many other cultures all had their own ways of recording time.

For example, Romans might identify a year by naming the consuls who held office. Other cultures counted years according to the reign of a king or emperor.

The Christian AD system gradually spread through medieval Europe and eventually became the international civil calendar we use today.

So when we say something happened in “500 BCE”, we're applying our modern dating system retrospectively.

The people living in 500 BCE wouldn't have thought:

“I am currently living in 500 BCE.”

They would have had their own way of identifying the year.

This becomes particularly interesting when we go back to the question about runes.

The earliest known runic inscriptions date to around the 2nd century CE, although the origins of the runic writing system was developed much earlier.

So when we say the Elder Futhark was used from approximately 150–800 CE, we're translating ancient history into our modern calendar system.

And there is an even deeper point here.

Human beings didn't suddenly begin measuring time at the beginning of the Common Era.

People had already been watching the cycles of the Moon, Sun and seasons for thousands of years.

They had been recording eclipses, solstices, equinoxes, harvests, reigns, migrations and religious festivals long before the CE calendar existed.

In fact, some of humanity's oldest monuments appear to have been connected in some way with observing the heavens.

So the “beginning” of the Common Era is simply the point from which one particular dating system eventually began counting.

And that distinction is important.

Time itself didn't restart.

Our numbering system did.

If you want to know more about the cycles of time, I have various other videos covering this topic.

The Eerie Truth About Liminal Spaces

Have you ever walked into a place that should have felt completely ordinary, yet something about it felt strangely wrong? 

Maybe you have stood in an empty school corridor after dark, walked through a deserted shopping centre, seen an abandoned swimming pool, or found yourself alone in a hotel hallway late at night.

Nothing is necessarily frightening. 

There may be no obvious danger.

And yet, you feel it.

That strange sensation that something is different.

As though the place is familiar, but somehow unfamiliar at the same time. As though you have stepped into a world that looks almost exactly like your own, but follows slightly different rules.

You might even experience a peculiar feeling of nostalgia for somewhere you have never been.

This is the strange phenomenon known as a liminal space. But perhaps there is more to liminal spaces than simply empty rooms and unsettling photographs.

Possibly they fascinate us because, on a deeper level, they reflect something within ourselves.

The word liminal comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold. And a threshold is a fascinating thing. It is neither one room nor the other. It is the place between them.

When you stand in a doorway, you are technically still in one space while already entering another. A threshold represents transition. And this is the essence of liminality. To be liminal is to exist between states.

Between what was and what is yet to come. Between one identity and another. Between certainty and uncertainty. Between the familiar and the unknown. And perhaps this is why certain places can affect us so deeply.

We recognise them. But something is missing.

A railway station without passengers. An airport without travellers. A school without children. A hotel corridor with every light switched on, but not a single person anywhere.

A playground at night. A swimming pool with the water perfectly still. A supermarket after closing time.

These places were designed for movement, noise and human activity. When that activity disappears, something peculiar happens. The architecture remains exactly where it was. The lights still glow. The doors are still there. The chairs remain in their places. The signs still tell us where we are. But the human presence has vanished.

And suddenly, something ordinary becomes uncanny.

Our brains are remarkably good at recognising patterns. We know what a school should sound like. We know what an airport should feel like. We know what a shopping centre should look like when people are moving through it. When we encounter the same environment without the activity we associate with it, our expectations are violated.

The result can be an unsettling mixture of familiarity and unfamiliarity. It is familiar enough for us to recognise. But unfamiliar enough to make us question what we are seeing. And perhaps this explains why liminal spaces can produce such complicated emotions.

They are not always frightening. Sometimes they are beautiful. Sometimes they are peaceful. Sometimes they are deeply nostalgic. And sometimes they can make you feel strangely sad.

You may look at a photograph of an empty playground and suddenly remember childhood. You may see an old hotel corridor and feel as though you have been there before, even though you know you haven't. You may look at an empty swimming pool and experience a strange longing for a memory that doesn't actually belong to you.

It is almost as though the image has unlocked something that was already hidden somewhere inside your mind. And this is where things become particularly interesting. Because liminality is not simply an internet aesthetic.

The idea of liminality existed long before people began posting mysterious photographs of empty corridors online. Anthropologists have used the concept to describe periods of transition in human life.

Arnold van Gennep famously explored transitional stages surrounding rituals and important changes in identity. Later, anthropologist Victor Turner developed the idea of the liminal state further.

A person entering a rite of passage might temporarily exist between identities. They are no longer who they were. But they have not yet become who they will be. They are in between.

And that in-between state can be mysterious, uncertain and transformative.

Think about how many experiences in life actually resemble this. There can be a period between childhood and adulthood. Between leaving one home and finding another. Between ending one relationship and beginning a new chapter. Between losing an old identity and discovering a new one. Between knowing exactly what you believe and realising that everything you once believed may need to be reconsidered.

These periods can be uncomfortable. But they can also be incredibly powerful. Because when the old version of your life has disappeared, but the new version has not yet taken shape, you enter a kind of psychological liminal space.

You are standing on the threshold. And possibly this is one reason why liminal imagery can feel so emotionally powerful. We are not simply looking at an empty corridor. We are looking at a visual representation of something we have all experienced. The feeling of being between worlds.

There is another fascinating aspect to this.

Many ancient cultures placed enormous importance on thresholds. Doorways, gates, crossroads, caves, bridges and borders often carried symbolic meanings. They were places where one thing became another. A doorway could represent the boundary between the known and unknown.

A cave could represent entering the darkness and emerging transformed. A crossroads could represent a moment of choice. A bridge could represent passage from one state to another.

Even in mythology, the threshold is rarely just a physical location. It often represents a psychological or spiritual transition.

And presumably this is why the imagery of the doorway appears so often in stories about magic, dreams and the supernatural. The doorway is the simplest symbol of entering somewhere else. You leave one environment behind and cross into another. The old world is on one side. The unknown is on the other. And you are standing directly between them.

This idea also appears in dreams. Dreams themselves can feel profoundly liminal. You can be somewhere that seems completely real, even though the laws of reality have changed. You may recognise a house that does not exist. You may walk through a city you have never visited while somehow knowing exactly where you are. You may meet people you have never seen before but feel that you have known them forever.

The dream world occupies its own strange territory between conscious awareness and unconscious experience. Quite possibly this is why liminal spaces sometimes feel dreamlike. They activate something very similar. They take an ordinary environment and remove enough of its expected context that it begins to resemble the logic of a dream.

And then there is the phenomenon of déjà vu. That peculiar feeling that you have experienced something before. You enter a room and suddenly feel that you have already been there. You walk down a street and experience an inexplicable familiarity. You hear a sound and feel transported somewhere else.

Science has explanations for déjà vu involving memory and the way the brain processes familiarity. But the emotional experience itself can still feel incredibly mysterious. And when déjà vu occurs within a liminal environment, the sensation can become even stronger. It can feel as though you have briefly stepped through a crack in ordinary reality.

This may help explain the fascination with photographs of places that appear almost real but somehow impossible. The internet has given this phenomenon a particularly famous form through what is known as the Backrooms.

The Backrooms began as an internet horror concept based around an image of an endless, strangely familiar yellow interior. There are no obvious people. No clear destination. No reassuring explanation. Just seemingly endless rooms.

The horror comes largely from the uncertainty.

Where are you? How did you get there? Where does the corridor lead? And possibly most importantly, why does this place feel so familiar?

The Backrooms transformed the idea of liminal space into a form of digital mythology.

But underneath the horror is something much older. The fear of becoming lost between worlds. The fear of entering somewhere without knowing how to leave. The fear of crossing a threshold and discovering that you cannot return to the place you came from.

And conceivably this is why liminal spaces can be so fascinating even when they are not frightening. They represent possibility. A doorway can lead somewhere terrifying. But it can also lead somewhere extraordinary.

A crossroads can represent confusion. But it can also represent freedom.

An empty room can represent loneliness. But it can also represent a blank page.

And an unfamiliar path can represent danger. But it can also represent transformation.

Maybe this is why some liminal spaces feel strangely peaceful.

An empty beach before sunrise. A deserted train station in the early morning. A quiet hotel corridor. A mist-covered road. A swimming pool illuminated at night.

There is something about these environments that temporarily removes us from the ordinary rhythm of life. No crowds. No conversations. No expectations. Just silence.

And in that silence, we become more aware of ourselves.

Perchance liminal spaces are compelling because they give physical form to an emotional experience that is difficult to describe. The feeling of not quite belonging to the world you have left behind, while not yet knowing where you are going next.

We often think that uncertainty is something to escape. But transformation requires uncertainty. Before a seed becomes a plant, there is a period hidden beneath the soil. Before dawn, there is darkness. Before a new identity emerges, the old one may have to fall away.

And quite possibly the most profound liminal spaces are not physical places at all. They are moments in our lives. The moment before making an important decision. The moment after leaving something behind.

The strange period when you realise that you have changed, but nobody else has noticed yet. The moment when an old belief no longer makes sense, but you have not yet discovered what you believe instead. The period when your life appears empty because the things that once filled it have disappeared.

These moments can feel frightening because we naturally want certainty. We want to know where we are going. We want to know what happens next. But the liminal state does not provide those answers. It asks us to remain at the threshold. To tolerate the unknown. To allow something new to emerge.

Plausibly this is why the ancient symbolism of thresholds has survived for thousands of years. A threshold represents possibility. You are not trapped in the old world. You have not yet entered the new one. You are standing between them.

And potentially that strange feeling we experience when looking at a liminal space is not simply fear. Maybe part of us recognises it.

Because somewhere deep within our own lives, we have all stood in that doorway. We have all been between chapters. Between identities. Between places. Between relationships. Between versions of ourselves.

And potentially the unsettling emptiness of the liminal space is really a reflection of that moment when the familiar has disappeared and the future has not yet revealed itself.

So the next time you find yourself somewhere strangely quiet, somewhere that feels familiar yet unfamiliar, somewhere that seems suspended outside ordinary time, don't immediately dismiss that feeling.

Look around. Notice the silence. Notice the emptiness. Notice the strange sense that you are standing somewhere between one world and another. Because maybe you are.

Not necessarily in a supernatural sense. But symbolically. Psychologically. or even spiritually.

You are standing on a threshold. And thresholds have always fascinated humanity because we have never truly known what waits on the other side.

Presumably that is what makes liminal spaces so haunting.

They remind us that the world we know is not the only way of experiencing reality.

Sometimes the most mysterious places are not distant planets, ancient ruins or forgotten temples.

Sometimes they are ordinary places that have somehow become extraordinary. A corridor. A doorway. A staircase. A deserted station. A road disappearing into the mist. A room waiting for someone to enter.

Places that exist between one moment and the next. Between memory and imagination. Between the familiar and the unknown. Between what we were and what we are becoming.

They are liminal spaces. Places on the threshold. And quite possibly, in one way or another, we are all living in one.

Esoteric Maximalist Art Featuring Hamsa, Evil Eye, Sacred Heart & Botanical Designs

 

Discover the Beauty of Maximalist Mystical Home Décor and Esoteric Art

If you love maximalist design, dark academia, gothic décor, bohemian interiors, and mystical home accessories, you'll appreciate a world where symbolism, nature, and ancient traditions come together in beautiful, meaningful artwork.

My collection is inspired by esoteric art, occult symbolism, alchemy, sacred geometry, hermetic philosophy, Gnosticism, mysticism, and the rich visual language of folklore, mythology, and spiritual traditions. Every design combines intricate detail with vibrant colour, creating pieces that celebrate both beauty and symbolism.

Throughout the collection you'll discover timeless protective symbols such as the Hamsa Hand, Evil Eye, Sacred Heart, celestial suns and moons, stars, botanical illustrations, flourishing roses, wildflowers, vines, leaves, herbs, peacocks, feathers, and other natural elements that have inspired artists and mystics for centuries.

The artwork blends influences from Victorian botanical illustration, Art Nouveau, vintage engraving, medieval manuscripts, Renaissance ornament, folk art, witchcore, cottagecore, goblincore, gothic romanticism, and maximalist interior design, resulting in richly layered patterns full of symbolism and storytelling.

Whether you're decorating a cosy reading corner, a meditation room, an eclectic living space, or simply searching for distinctive statement pieces, these designs are created for those who appreciate mystical aesthetics, spiritual symbolism, occult décor, esoteric gifts, and alternative home décor.

The collection features artwork on a growing range of products including furniture, chairs, tables, storage pieces, home décor, wall art, cushions, blankets, clothing, shirts, hoodies, dresses, bags, accessories, and unique lifestyle products, allowing you to surround yourself with meaningful art wherever you are.

Every illustration celebrates the harmony between nature and the symbolic world. Delicate roses, flourishing florals, intricate botanicals, medicinal herbs, sacred plants, celestial motifs, alchemical emblems, potions, and protective talismans come together in elaborate compositions that invite closer inspection. The more you look, the more hidden details emerge.

If you're drawn to alchemy, occult symbolism, mystical illustration, sacred hearts, Hamsa art, Evil Eye décor, witch aesthetic, esoteric gifts, spiritual home décor, botanical art, floral maximalism, ornamental design, vintage-inspired illustration, or symbolic artwork, I hope these creations inspire your imagination and help you create a home filled with colour, character, and meaning.

Art has always been more than decoration. Symbols carry stories, flowers represent renewal, sacred hearts express devotion, alchemical imagery reflects transformation, and protective emblems such as the Hamsa and Evil Eye remind us of hope, resilience, and the enduring human desire to find beauty and meaning in everyday life.

Explore the collection and discover maximalist mystical designs inspired by nature, folklore, symbolism, alchemy, and the timeless traditions of esoteric art.

Find my store here - Purple Peacock Store

The products can be shipped worldwide, and they are created on demand in a location near you.

Cats In Popular Culture - The Eerie Rh Negative Blood Connection

There is a question that no one asks because it sounds ridiculous:

Why do people love cats so much?

Not merely appreciate them, but adore them with an almost religious fervour. Why are millions of people willing to rearrange their lives around animals that knock objects from shelves, wake their owners before dawn, shed on every available surface and behave with supreme indifference to human wishes?

Why are cat videos among the most watched forms of entertainment on the internet? Why do cat memes proliferate endlessly across every social platform? Why does every culture seem to possess legends, artwork and stories devoted to felines?

The official answer is simple:

Cats are cute.

This report proposes an alternative explanation.

Cats are not merely pets.

They are vectors.

And humanity has been preparing itself to welcome them for thousands of years.

This report concerns a protozoan parasite and a series of observations which, if interpreted in the most alarming manner possible, suggest that humanity may be participating in the global propagation of a parasitic organism without recognising that it is doing so.

The scientific facts contained herein are accurate and publicly available.

I will also talk about the eerie reality that connects all of this to Rhesus negative blood.

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At the centre of this lies a microscopic parasite called Toxoplasma gondii.

The scientific establishment recognises it as one of the most successful parasites on Earth. It is estimated that a large proportion of the world's human population has been infected at some point, though prevalence varies considerably between regions.

Most infected people never know they carry it.

Most never exhibit symptoms in the early stages.

Most continue their lives normally.

The parasite may remain inside the body for years and can form tissue cysts, including in the brain and muscles.

No reliable method exists to determine how many people around you are carrying dormant cysts at this moment.

You should consider that number carefully.

Then consider the number of cats.

The organism reproduces sexually only in members of the cat family. Domestic cats and wild felines are what scientists call its definitive hosts.

This means that, from the parasite's perspective, cats are not incidental.

They are the destination.

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The parasite's life cycle, according to established science, is extraordinary.

Science recognises a disturbing fact.

Cats are not merely one host among many.

They are the parasite's definitive host.

Toxoplasma gondii can reproduce sexually only inside the intestines of felines.

Without cats, its life cycle is incomplete.

With cats, its opportunities become nearly limitless.

A cat infected with Toxoplasma gondii may shed microscopic eggs, called oocysts, in its faeces for a limited period, usually after initial infection.

These oocysts can contaminate soil, water and surfaces.

Other animals become infected by accidentally ingesting them.

Humans may also become infected through:

• Contact with contaminated soil or cat litter and then touching the mouth.

• Eating undercooked meat containing tissue cysts.

• Consuming contaminated water or unwashed produce.

• Rarely, through organ transplantation or blood transfusion.

• From mother to unborn child if infection occurs during pregnancy.

Once inside the body, the parasite spreads and forms microscopic cysts, particularly in muscle tissue and the brain.

Then it waits.

For years.

Possibly for life.