I got into this whole practice after a divorce that left me hollowed out at 48. Tarot didn’t start as fortune-telling for me. It became a daily journaling ritual. When I keep pulling The Hanged Man or Justice, I don’t panic. I treat it like a prompt. The cards aren’t predicting my life; they’re mirroring my blind spots. Same with altered states. Carl Jung's work on active imagination isn’t mystical woo. It’s a structured way to engage the unconscious without chemical assistance. The psyche has its own alchemy. You don’t need a milligram to trigger the shadow work. You just need the willingness to sit in the dark without flinching.

People obsess over dosing and set-and-setting like they’re optimizing a camera exposure. I spend half my life behind a viewfinder in Toronto winters, trying to catch light that isn’t there. You learn pretty quick that you can’t force the right conditions. You adjust. You wait. You develop the negative internally. Inner alchemy and energy healing aren’t about stacking techniques or chasing peak experiences. They’re about integrating what breaks you open. When the substance stops working, it’s not a setback. It’s the universe handing you back the wheel. The door was never in the bottle. It was in the work you’ve been avoiding. Deal with it.