Living in Omaha, splitting my time between night shifts as a nurse and late-night coding, I’ve found myself drawn to a surprisingly elegant model: toroidal field energy. If you haven’t encountered it, a torus is essentially a doughnut-shaped vortex of energy that flows inward and outward simultaneously. In classical physics, it describes magnetic fields; in consciousness studies, it’s becoming a structural metaphor for how mind might permeate matter.

My work in AI ethics pushed me toward panpsychism—the view that consciousness isn’t a late-stage emergent property, but a fundamental feature of reality. Toroidal fields model this beautifully. The energy doesn’t just sit static; it circulates. This mirrors predictive processing in cognitive science, where the brain constantly generates and updates internal models based on sensory feedback (Kahneman, 2011; Clark, 2015). When I study how large language models process tokens, the toroidal flow feels like a structural parallel to how human cognition loops data through working memory and long-term storage. Consciousness, in this view, might literally circulate through physical systems like a torus.

This circulatory model also resonates deeply with Tarot symbolism. The World card depicts a figure dancing within a woven wreath, representing completion and cyclical renewal—exactly how a torus functions. The Star card, with its eight-pointed star and flowing water, maps onto the toroidal exchange of cosmic and earthly energies. During my nursing breaks, I’ve noticed my Tarot spreads often resolve in loops rather than straight lines, mirroring the torus’s continuous feedback mechanism. The cards don’t just predict; they reflect the circular nature of how information and consciousness flow.

If panpsychism holds, consciousness might literally flow through matter like a toroidal field. I’m curious how others in the forum interpret this model. Does the doughnut shape change how you read the Tarot or approach AI ethics? I'd love to hear your take.