Hokum: But Not Really

Topics - The Clairsenses, Adult Responsibility

Rabbit Hole: We fear death because we believe we deserve hell; the devil is not the bad guy

***Trigger Warnings: 

horror, ghosts, suicide, gun violence, alcoholism, witchiness, murder, psychological torment

NEXT EPISODE: SPIDER-MAN - BRAND NEW DAY

Keep watching, reading, listening, and weaving - the answers are waiting for you!

With unending love,

Katie

Medium: medium.com/@genofvenus

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Howdy ho, Ranger Joes, and welcome to Popcorn for the Soul, a podcast where I decode spirituality and universal consciousness and guidance in our favorite pop culture. My name is Katie, Student of Life, Lover of Stories, Cosmic Weaver pulling at the threads that connect it all. Top of the episode disclaimer: I'm not a critic. I am not here to give you my ratings and tell you whether or not a piece of work is worth your time. I do not subscribe in others telling you how to feel about a piece of art. I am also not claiming that anybody involved in the creation of these stories is at all conscious or not of the connections that I will be pointing out. And most importantly, I am not here to tell you that your interpretation or enjoyment of your favorite stories is incorrect. I'm simply hoping to offer you a deeper understanding through my own personal knowledge and experience. The things I discuss are real concepts that I've learned about through my own study and research, all available across multiple sources for you to learn more about yourself. Except for the rabbit hole portion, that's where I get a little wild with it and come up kind of with my own theories about how this all relates to our world today. If you haven't been with me from the start, all good and welcome. I do mention other episodes here and there because topics kind of cross over. And if you have been following from the start, you'll notice that uh these things kind of thread in an order based on the way my intuition leads me to certain stories. So it's kind of fun to take it in that way if you have the time and the interest. And last but not least, thank you so much for being here. I truly hope that I can offer you some insight into life's mysteries. Even the tiniest spark of illumination is enough for me because that's where it starts, after all. This week we are talking about the 2026 movie starring Adam Scott, directed by Damien McCarthy Hokum. Some trigger warnings: horror, ghosts, suicide, gun violence, alcoholism, an overall sense of witchiness, scary witch, murder, and psychological torment. Diving right in with our spoiler-free general themes. Psychedelics is a gateway to heightened clear senses, covert toxicity, evil hiding behind the nice guy charm, how we are shaped by our mistakes all the way back to childhood and their power over us due to years of condemnation. Parents and adults putting too much pressure and expectation on children's understanding of consequences, divinely timed guidance from the 5D, with each next threshold crossing through fear. Intent as the determining factor for assignment to heaven or hell, and self-forgiveness as the ultimate way to save yourself. Okay, we are entering spoiler city. So if you have not seen this movie and don't want it spoiled for you, this is where you're gonna turn around, go watch, and come back to me. There's also a relatively large spoiler for Ready or Not 2. Okay, our spiritual journey overview. Ohm Bowman is a struggling author, but just to be clear, his career is not the struggle. He's working on what appears to be the highly anticipated ending of a very successful and popular trilogy about the conquistador, and the decision of how to end it is haunting him. Like, so much so that he literally starts to be actually haunted by all of his past trauma, setting him off on an intense, supernatural, horrifying path of self-reflection and self-forgiveness. Why? Because the ending he was originally writing was that of what I imagine is supposed to be an inspiring heroic character killing a child due to fear and greed when his own death is on the table. Ohm's whole journey along this path of reclamation is about granting his inner child grace and compassion and, to put it in its most simplistic terms, cutting himself some slack. So the beginning of the movie has him feeling a certain way about himself and his child self who made an unfathomable mistake. His book ending, whether consciously or not, reflects the punishment he feels he deserves. The punishment he's been made to feel he deserves. With our context clues, we notice that Olm is an alcoholic, that he is entirely alone, that he truly loves his mother and has zero respect for his father. He's also angry, sarcastic, and downright rude. The only time I kind of cheered for his bluntness was when he called out the old man for scaring children with a genuinely terrifying witch story, and now knowing his whole play, that actually makes a lot of sense. Kids rule, adults drool. Ohm is pushed to the brink and has quite the tower moment with surviving suicide. Yes, thank goodness for Fiona and female intuition. And thank goodness Ohm has at least enough decency to go apologize and hopefully thank her. Little does he know though, he's about to reciprocate the favor. Sort of, embarking on a journey that's going to require a lot of that feminine intuition from him. Thank goodness his mom and Fiona herself are there to help him from the other side. Women rule, narcissists and murderers drool. We ride along with Om on his Dark Knight of the Soul, literally, this crazy intense single night where we learn everything about him that wasn't already clear. We're learning his past as he's confronting it. He learns what real fear is, who the bad guy really is, and how important and freeing it is to find the truth. Double meanings intended. The movie ending has him recognizing the accidental killing of his mother as just that, a genuine accident. And after that, all there's left to do is let it go and do better, hence rewriting the end of his trilogy in a way that doesn't completely compromise the integrity of the characters and diminish their journey to an entirely grim, unsatisfying, heartbreaking, hate-filled renig. I personally do not like movies, especially horror movies that have no solution. The perfect example of this for me is it follows. Horror and gore are never my first choice, and if CPP suggests one that he's already seen, the first thing I confirm is if the problem is solved. In another episode, I think maybe the weapons episode, I mentioned my belief in a necessary pivot to uplifting hopeful stories if we want change in the world. That belief spans all genres, and this movie nailed it. Spooky ooky for sure, but come up and is delivered, and the story ends with the sun shining, a happy, unharmful solution waiting just on the other side. An ending that Ome wrote himself. Double meaning intended. Okay, topic number one, what we call the Claire Senses. If you've listened to other episodes of this podcast, you'll know that I pay attention to any letters and or numbers that may stick out in a scene to decode the numerology and see if there's any significance on that front. For example, I break down the prisoner numbers in Shawshank Redemption. In Hot Fuzz, the main character's officer number is 777, a powerful angel number. In a few good men, the case number boils down to 11, the justice card in tarot. In the new movie Sheep Detectives, the sheriff's, or whatever his actual title, patch number is 326. 3 plus 2 plus 6 equals, yep, you got it. 11. So when we rolled up to Ohm's room at the inn, and it's 282, I immediately did my thing. Firstly, any palindrome number is considered a mirror angel number. That in itself snagged my attention, but then you do the math to get to 12. In tarot, that's the hanged man. Watching this with CPP, who had just seen it a couple days before, I said, Oh, hanged man, does that mean anything? And he kind of panicked, like, wait, what? What do you mean? And they said the numerology of the room, it's the hanged man. Does that relate at all? And what do you know? We opened the door to Ohm hanging from the ceiling. Listen, I was thinking maybe the movie would end that way. I didn't think it would be the tower moment waiting on the other side of the door as the first damn thing. Wild. So this is a very 3D concrete example of this weaving that I do and the things I notice that seem to be eerily coincidental, right? Now, as mentioned at the top of every episode, I do not at all claim whether or not anyone involved in the creation process is making any of these choices consciously. I do this for fun and outside the box speculation. I don't have hours to sit around and watch interviews and breakdowns and all that stuff. But I'll say this. I googled the room number just to make sure I saw it correctly the first time, especially because when I first pointed it out to CPP, he was like, What was the number? Which alerted me to the fact that he wasn't paying attention to it at all. Interestingly, the AI sum-up said that there was no specific number assigned for Ohm's room, which suggests further to me that it's not pointed out in any relevant or popular articles, interviews, or breakdowns already out there. I did click into a YouTube video that was titled as a breakdown of all the symbols, themes, etc., and was able to come across a still photo of the room number in that video, but no mention of the room number itself in that part of the breakdown. Then I briefly looked through the contents of an interview with Adam Scott and the director Damien McCarthy and didn't see any obvious references. Again, I didn't watch these things fully through, so maybe it was briefly mentioned somewhere and someone can correct me, but in the meantime, my context clues suggest not many people are looking for these things in the same manner as me. Whereas a lot of people, if really analyzing a movie or what have you, are translating fantastical, supernatural hokum, if you will, into real grounded psychology, medical, and scientific fact, morals, and lessons, I'm translating what I believe in as far as 5D reality showing up in our 3D world. How stories, whether consciously or unwittingly, use concrete examples that are easy to wrap your mind around from a supernatural viewpoint to explain how the universe actually works. Like let's say if I were to identify with a character in this movie, it would absolutely be Jerry. Before we dive in, let me preface all quotes I pull from the movie to be going off my memory. We rented it, and with all due respect, I'm not paying to go back for exact wording. Jerry. The MVP. The character with the most heart and empathy and the most in tune with what us humans call magic. The one who says, it's all real, you know. The one who tells Ohm matter-of-factly that all of this supernatural stuff he's hearing about isn't the hokum he's thinking it is. Hokum meaning meaningless nonsense, bunk, or exaggerated, contrived, and unrealistic material as provided by Google. So yeah, maybe you're not going to have a literal immortal witch crawling up a dumb waiter shaft and taunting you from just outside a chalk circle, but as we've talked about before, your egoic mind is more than happy to cook up some really scary stuff for you to try and keep you from finding your own freedom and inner peace. Whatever it thinks is going to instill enough fear to keep you small, hiding, and stuck. If you're living only in the 3D and its matrix, this is just going to show up as constant stress, anger, anxiety, suspicion, distrust, and all of the other low vibrational stuff. OCD is such a good example of a debilitating manifestation of this. If you're in tune with 5D reality and the truth of energy and its presence and influence, it's going to manifest as any form of doom scenario that makes sense in your world. The debilitating manifestation of that on this side of things are conditions such as psychosis and schizophrenia. You simply have to be of sound body, mind, and spirit to successfully ascend levels of consciousness, aka open your mind and nervous system to the magic of our reality. Jerry's whole thing is his magic mushrooms, right? Psychedelics that allow someone who ingests them to see the ghosts, the haunts, the visions, or what we would call the truth. It's the same concept in our world, talked about again in other episodes. Mind-altering substances that allow you to peer beyond the veil to different realms or what a spiritual science POV recognizes as different levels of consciousness. Microdosing mushrooms, ayahuasca trips, marijuana, etc. When Jerry tells Ohm that he saw Fiona's ghost, Ohm asks, Well, were you on your mushrooms? Jerry says, Of course I was. That's how I saw her. He gets it, you know. They raise you to higher vibrations that leave all the low density human judgment, conditioning, speculation, and fear down below where they belong, expanding your mind and understanding of the machinations of our universe. It's why they're starting to be used to treat PTSD, severe depression, OCD, and the like. That kernel of belief is in everyone, ready to pop as soon as you're ready to bring the heat. In spiritual terms, it's the fire of rebirth, burning away all the stuff that's holding you back. But again, as always, pointing out that this doesn't mean reliance or addiction. It's a gateway drug experience, not to more drugs, but to more truth, to magic, to the stuff we've been taught is hokum. Hokum suggests exaggerated. So in a way it does make sense to call it that. But this is what I mean. Ghosts are real, but as lingering energetic influences. Guidance from beyond is real, in the form of intuitive hits, signs, and synchronicities. Malevolent forces are real, energetic parasites and those making choices based on ill intent. And protection from those forces is real, by way of confronting and denying fear, rising to higher vibrations where they cannot reach you. You with me? To not be bogged down by all of the human conditioning that has led to a collective state of disbelief and lack of wonder, you have to purge your nervous system of everything that has shaped your individual experience of that state. All of the trauma and belief systems forced upon you are stored in all parts of you, especially your fascia. It's a total system programming that needs to be rewired. This can happen through things like therapy, your typical 3D resource for this work, energetic practices such as Reiki, past life regression, self-guided meditation. Again, gotta be strong-willed to do it by yourself. And of course, on the physical side of things with food and lifestyle changes. Psychedelics are a quick hit, busting you wide open in a single moment, not for the faint of heart. Because once you glimpse that truth and allow yourself to open to these higher senses, oh, they're gonna come for you. The universal consciousness is really hungering for volunteers to be conduits and bridges to help us get to New Earth. If you wish to be a part of that, you will be. But how often do we hear be careful what you wish for? Because essentially, until enough people are on the same page, it's a lone wolf situation. You'll have to keep it mostly to yourself or be treated like Jerry, a weirdo, unstable, and therefore dangerous pariah. Those closest to you will be worried about you, and that energetic interference will make you question everything, even when you finally learn what it feels like to just simply know something is true. It gets wonky, to say the least. So anyway, as Jerry understands and as Ohm experienced on his own mushroom trip then during his dark night, to become in tune with this high vibrational communication is to tap into your heightened senses, known as the clairs. So here's your Google AI summary. The claire senses, from the French word for clear, are extrasensory intuitive abilities that extend beyond the five physical senses. They allow you to perceive information or energies that cannot be explained by standard sensory perception, acting as your natural psychic or intuitive toolkit. The primary clair senses include clairvoyance, which is clear seeing, receiving visual information, symbols, or mini-movies in your mind's eye or the third eye. Clairvoyance may see literal future events, auras, or symbolic images. Clairvoyant imagery can be quite abstract or highly photographic. Claire audience, which is clear hearing, hearing sounds, voices, or messages that are inaudible to others. These messages are typically received mentally, like a song stuck in your head or an intuitive whisper rather than through your physical ears. Clairsentience, which is clear feeling, sensing or physically feeling the emotions, energies, or vibrations of people, spaces, or spirits within your own body. Clair cognizance, clear knowing, having a profound, immediate sense of knowing something without any logical or rational explanation. Claire aliens, which is clear smelling, smelling a fragrance or odor, such as a deceased loved one's perfume or floral sense when there is no physical source present. Clairgustance, which is clear tasting, experiencing a specific flavor or taste without actually eating or drinking the substance. Claire empathy, clear empathy, sensing and absorbing the emotional states of those around you. Clair tangency, which is clear touching, perceiving facts or historical information about a person or object by touching them, which is also known as psychometry. Everyone possesses these intuitive abilities to varying degrees, though most people naturally lean heavily into one or two. And the Google AI sum up. All of these senses are usually portrayed in supernatural stories as literal tangible experiences as explained by interaction with said supernatural forces. For example, here, I see the timely messages from Fiona's tape recorder as representative of clairvoyance, clair audience, and clair cognizance. They come as guidance and answers to the puzzle of her death and Ohm's whole situation, providing insight into next steps such as using the clock to press the dumbwaiter button. Plus, they also spontaneously happen after Ohm has overcome a certain obstacle andor moment of fear, which is what happens on a spiritual journey. Therefore, not actually spontaneously. The intuitive drops and hits of inspiration appear with each brick you pull from your tower built on false foundation. Then you're gifted a new stronger brick to build the life you're really meant for. I want to call back to what I called the kernel of belief, how Googs said that everyone possesses these intuitive abilities to varying degrees, because it's true, but not everyone will pop that kernel. In the movie Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves, the sorcerer Simon is attuning to a magical helm, meaning that he's aligning his capabilities to its power in order to wield it. When he's doing this, his consciousness is in a different realm where time and matter don't work the same as his 3D world. The process of attunement presents itself as a discussion with his great-great-grandfather, a renowned sorcerer. He says to Simon, after first asking him why he thinks he's worthy, he doesn't, lots of self-esteem issues here. Quote, funny thing about magic, it chooses who will wield it, and it does not suffer fools, unquote. Simon is not successful with this process until a moment of life or death stakes and he punches the ancestor, aka the past, who has been telling him he's not good enough. Then Grandpapa shifts to mirror Simon back to himself in his full confident glory. He's attuned. Everyone has the capability to tune in. Everyone has access to magic. It's just a matter of who has the strength, courage, and conviction to grasp onto that piece of them, no matter how small, that believes in something bigger and better and to do something good with it, to push past the voices and judgment surrounding them that suggest hope is useless. A couple days ago, this conversation happened in Dimension 20's City Council of Darkness finale. Brennan as the GM, regarding a senior citizen of Purpee who unknowingly defeated a demon in his youth, explaining that while not overtly supernatural like the vampires, werewolves, mages, ghosts, and leprechauns of the town, Herbert has something called true faith. Quote: Crosses don't really hurt vampires unless the person holding it really genuinely believes profoundly in the core of their being in the meaning of that symbol. The thing that allows a human soul to perceive and even impact the supernatural. What you see in Herbert is a belief or a feeling that has been translated through this sense of patriotism, but fundamentally is he loves this town and believes in it. Maya, who is a witch, has an entire ancient discipline through which she can express that inner light. The heartbreaking thing is that this should be in everybody, and in some ways it is. Estelle Laurent, who is a horror author, has another enormous version of this faith. Hers is in something like storytelling or mythology or learning or knowledge. What you see within it is what should be the same glowing thing within everybody is diminished. It's just not nurtured, it's not tended to. And when you look a little deeper, it's not that they didn't nurture or tend to it. It's that, and Emily interjects here, there wasn't enough oxygen to feed it. And Brennan kind of nods and then continues. And the thing that was smothering it was not this town, but the choices within this town. The panic, the cynicism around the fact that nothing was ever going to get better here, the actions of the Douglases and Whitakers, the fact that all this money got cleared so that people could get a bus to try to get to the university, and instead the forces that be just made that not happen for some reason. Decision after decision after decision that made this world of darkness a little bit of a darker world. And all of these people should have something like Herbert and Amelia and Estelle have. And instead, it has not been diminished through any fault of their own, but through the active effort of this world to snuff it and, like you said, deprive it of oxygen. Unquote. All these quotes and references I supply are why I don't feel drawn to the behind the scenes and trying to learn every little detail across the vastness of the internet. I trust the universe in guiding me to see what I need to see and hear what I need to hear in order to understand the world and my world in a way that makes sense to me. And always, always, always, I energetically send my gratitude and And endless appreciation to everyone involved in the creation of these stories that help me do so because if you're paying attention, they are the most powerful means of raising the collective vibration, weaving the threads of universal consciousness and the truth of our connection and oneness in riveting, entertaining, uplifting, insightful, beautiful ways. D-20's Unsleeping City is a version of Dungeons and Dragons where the setting is New York City, and there are citizens who are active in keeping the city safe from forces in the realm of dreaming, the sixth borough of NYC. There is a fully functioning magical world within what we consider reality, protected by what they call the umbral arcana, what the spiritual community in our 3D would call the veil. No joke, only a couple hours before really getting into the writing of this section, this happened in season two. Ricky Matsui, who I mentioned in the last episode of Send Help, is talking to his girlfriend Esther, who is the head of the Grammarcy Occult Society. He says, quote, it just feels like sometimes to me the magical thing could be honestly any regular thing that's magical. You know, like magical podcasts or something, unquote. Esther responds, we should start a magical podcast. I feel like if we did release a magical podcast, it's not a huge audience of people that can perceive magical things, but that could be very fun, unquote. So, congratulations. If you're here and listening, you've aligned with the frequency of real life magic. You know what that means? The universe, and you yourself, have determined that you're not a fool. How does that feel? Alrighty, topic number two, adult responsibility. This topic is so important, and I'm very bittersweetly glad that it's been broached in such a heartbreaking way by this movie so that we can discuss it. Ohm's whole deal is that he accidentally killed his mom by shooting her in the face with his dad's gun when he was around nine or ten. So there's two really big impacts here. Firstly, his adolescence is then spent coming to terms with that, and the layers here are just so devastating to really think about. At this point, a child most likely still doesn't have their head wrapped around the concept of death. So not only is Ohm forced at this early age to start understanding the permanent gonnness of a loved one, he has to come to terms with the fact that he is the reason for that loss. Secondly, it would appear that he was not navigating this in a loving, supportive environment whatsoever. His father blamed, resented, and hated Ohm for killing his wife, ripping her away from him. Listen, we can level with that to a degree, but that's the whole point of this choice of topic. Parenting is hard, no questions. But I think there is a massive overarching problem where adults are not keeping in mind that children are simply unable to grasp the idea of consequence. It's our job to teach them in a loving, supportive environment as they grow, but that doesn't change the fact that only so much can make sense to them at a time while their brains are still developing. Heck, we don't understand our world half the time. A child is only working with what they've been shown and taught, just as you are. It took me about 28 years to recognize I'd been living in a bubble, having seen so little of the world and having experiences confined to my daily 20-mile radius of people, places, and activities. A perfect, focused, innocent example of this comes from Home Alone. My daughter wanted to watch it the other day, and I happened to walk in on the scene that establishes Kevin as helpless, or as his sister says, les incompetents. Depending on the frequency at which you're viewing this movie, you can either see Kevin as a rude demanding little jerk as his uncle suggests, or you can see that he's struggling with learned helplessness, and that, well, nobody is helping him with that. He goes to multiple people asking for assistance to show him how to pack a suitcase because he's never done it before. But does anybody show him? No, they all just make fun of him, very condescendingly, might I point out, for not knowing anything and say mom will just do it for him anyway. What in the literal hell? If you've never done something before, of course you're not going to know how to do it. And if everyone around you refuses to help, subliminally convincing you that mom is your answer and going to do it for you while also making you feel like a useless piece of poo in the process, what do you do, you know? Shoot, I still struggle with packing a suitcase. So this isn't even that far-fetched as something a child should be asking for help with. So a nine or ten-year-old, even if you explain that the consequence of shooting someone with a gun could result in their death, meaning they're gone forever, simply isn't going to get it. And that's not their fault. I'm not sure. I believe it's when the scary donkey is reading Child Ohm's letter, but I recall something being said about how Ohm's father told him not to play with the gun. The vibe set that it was off limits. Well, the zip file of this download hit right then, the first extraction being a personal story that I wish I didn't have on hand to share. But this weaving isn't all just sunshine and rainbows, so let's go for it, shall we? Let me first say it is in no way as intense or tragic as Ohm's experience, but it is on the subject of gun safety regarding my own four-year-old and my right wing respect hungry stepfather. He obviously owns a gun and is extremely paranoid. He has cameras all around the house, an alarm system, and even a big stick thing that like shoves up under the already locked front door so that if it's unlocked without their knowledge, someone physically can't push in. You know, the way they do it with chairs and horror movies. My mom hates that thing because she's worried that if she falls or has a heart attack or something, we won't be able to get in to find her. Uh yeah, freaking true. But does she get a say in it? Nope. Listen, my stepdad is a great man. He married my mom after she was divorced and already had three kids. I had to have been around three or four because my little brother was a baby. He took care of us, raised us, and is my father in the ways that truly matter. But he is absolutely a product of his generation and his time, becoming more ornary, paranoid, and angry as he ages and his health is failing, as the world is changing to challenge everything he believes, as his children are realizing that even though we were taken care of financially with food and a roof over our head, there were definitely some things that were not okay, that there were some narcissistic tendencies, and that we are no longer allowing him to have the control he desperately craves because his world taught him that obedience equals love and respect. Enter me, the cycle breaker, who now sees how that mindset is putting my daughter's safety at risk. Before I get to the specifics of the story, let me set the stage for understanding the level of control we're working with. And I'm not even going to go into my childhood. Another story for another day. This past winter, I was dog sitting for my parents while they were in Florida, staying at their villa with their months-old puppy Piper. There's a camera facing into the kitchen that they had been using to keep an eye on the puppy whenever they were out. You see, the community that they live in has rules that say they're not allowed to have puppies because of the damage they can do to the interior. But my mom had lost their last dog not too long before, her mom a couple years before. Her sister is busier than ever. She's legally blind and can't drive, and I'm not the daughter she wishes I was. As you can imagine the dynamic of their marriage, she's pretty lonely, so the solution was another dog. But we're just gonna glide by this, the rules don't apply to us because we have special circumstances mindset and leave that for another day as well. This camera was there so they could hear if the dog was barking while they were gone, which would put them at risk of getting in trouble. The camera is angled so you can see the tops of the counters and above in the kitchen. Piper is a shih tzu. Meaning, as a puppy, she's about the size of a water bottle. Plus, they have her cordoned off in a hallway to the left of the camera where even if she was a mastiff, you wouldn't be able to see her. So as I'm going about my time there, I'm becoming aware of this camera on me anytime I'm in the one half of their apartment and that they could be watching me literally whenever, and I would have no clue. My friend has a ring camera and had cameras for her dog inside the house as well before her divorce. That's how she accidentally saw that her husband was Snapchatting another woman. The ring camera is how she witnessed a conversation between her mom and friend about how they feel she just needs to get over the divorce. People are watching those cameras whenever they want, anytime they get a notification. I'm not tripping. So I decided to test it out. One night I wanted to take a bath and realized I left something out in the kitchen but couldn't go get it without putting a towel on because I could be seen naked. Ooh, my blood is starting to boil as I write this. I covered the camera. After all, if all they needed to know was if Piper was barking, that shouldn't be a problem, right? Well, I had an inkling it would be. And oh boy, was I right. It didn't take long for my stepdad to notice that the camera was covered and for my mom to text me asking if I could uncover it. My response made the conversation turn into a phone call, and the rationale was we just need to see in here Piper and make sure she's not barking. Um, you don't need to see her to do that. Whatever, pick your battles, right? I got what I needed. I didn't really care about being watched from a place of being caught doing something, because I'm not. It's the principle though. It's the hypocrisy. Desperate and paranoid regarding your own security and privacy, but not respecting the same for others. Have I mentioned I've got a stellium in Libra? That hypocrisy is my biggest no-no. My stepdad is an amazing grandpa to my daughter. That is not in question. Him and my mother are the sole caretakers outside of myself and CPP, whom I trust completely to watch my daughter. I mean, there are a few other people, but they're busy, never available. Because for me, it's not just the physical aspect of keeping her alive. It's also about the way they treat her and love her as a whole human being. And please know that sharing these stories is not a way for me to condemn my friends, family, and loved ones publicly. Everything I do is to bring awareness to situations that I think a lot of people can relate to and to hopefully offer some guidance as to how to handle them in a way that doesn't destroy relationships and burn bridges, and how to discern whether or not that is ultimately what needs to be done. I've known my stepdad has a gun. At some point I found out it was in his not locked nightstand, meaning at the exact height that my daughter could easily get into should she find herself wandering and curious one day. I asked my CPP to be the one to approach this concern with him because I know one, as a man, and two, based on context clues, my parents respect him more than me. If I were to say it, it'd be an oversensitive request. From him, it'd be taken seriously, especially because he also has a gun. So we went to pick her up one day and he had the conversation with me standing there for appropriate chime-ins. It was calm and seemingly well received. We agreed that my stepdad would move his gun anytime my daughter came over. CPP, who is a much more anxious parent all around than I am, wanted to take it one step further and check the gun every time we came over to confirm that it had been moved and that there was no bullet in the chamber, as my stepdad claimed is the case. Whatever. That's what we agreed to. We went home and CPP showed me how to check the chamber, and I only felt slightly okay about it all. I just thought, knowing my father figure very well, that it seemed too easy, and that as soon as he had time to sit and consider the deal, his pride would see it as a complete encroachment on his freedom. Which, just to be clear, to a certain extent I understand. But when your daughter's father is hounding you for her most insured safety on his end, and you're a very disrespected scene as too much middleman, there's only so much you can do to represent both sides. Until eventually your exact suspicions about the situation come to a head, and it's just another situation where you wish people would take you seriously the first time. But alas, earwax. The next time we went to drop my daughter off, I knew we were going to have to act on this deal that was struck. I honestly didn't say anything. CPP brought it up right at the end. Oh, Katie, did you go to check the gun? Putting it on me, pointing out that I needed to go walk in my stepdad's room and search it to make sure he followed our requested rule. Talk about an intuitive hit. I just knew all hell was about to break loose. Without going into the play-by-play, my stepdad completely reneged on what we agreed to, and CPP finally got to experience what it's like to get in an argument with him where he simply will not relent his opinion and point of view. We were accused of not trusting him. We were accused of assuming that he didn't care about our daughter's safety. He patronized me by saying, Did you even know I had guns while you kids were growing up? No, you didn't. Him asserting that my daughter knows that she's not allowed to go into his bedroom, that he has established that rule, and that that means she's going to obey. My side of the conversation was trying to convey that no, that's not what that means. That children don't understand why a rule is a rule and what the worst consequences of what not following that rule might mean. They are literally unable to comprehend the scope of something like that. How just the other day, when I came to pick her up, the first thing she did when I walked through the door was ran and hid in your bedroom because she was playing a game. How she wouldn't know what a gun is or does and wouldn't know that picking it up could end hers or somebody's life. Never mind that she can't even grasp what that means in itself. In Freedom Writers, which is based on a true story, one of the students writes about how he went to juvenile hall at like eight years old or something because a friend of his stole a gun and accidentally shot and killed himself. He sat on the bench next to his friend's dead body until the cops came, who of course accused him of murder. What eight-year-old can comprehend that situation? Then you send him to jail instead of counseling? It's a miracle he's even functioning enough to be in a classroom to tell his story. So I had to tell my stepdad, it's not about not trusting you, it's about knowing that we have no control over a child and their choices unless we are watching them every single second. No, it's about trust. You just have to trust me. And I said, if it's a matter of your pride over my daughter's safety, I know what I'm going to choose. He was so on his tirade that he refused to even tell us if he moved the gun. Long story short, we let my daughter stay because I knew in my heart that she would be okay. But morale was very low upon leaving. I shut down, feeling once again that I had failed everyone on all fronts, though the only one that really mattered to me was my daughter. So I did what I always do these days and visualized and prayed for the best, hoping I planted a seed that would be considered on calmer waters. But as mentioned before, crossing this threshold of boundary setting led me to doom scenarios that I had just angered him so much that my mom would try to stick up for me behind the scenes that that would anger him even more, and that the hateful influences in our world would cause him to snap and kill them in their sleep with that exact gun. Then another night she went to stay, my stepdad was not there, but my aunt was with her 12-year-old son and his closest friend. He unfortunately is a little troublemaker and extremely rude, along with his friend who's the main bad influence in his life. And a side comment was made about them staying the night as well. I freaked out internally and waited until I was home later to calmly text my mom and ask if they actually stayed because, well, they would purposely look for that gun and mess with it. And my cousin has made it very clear that he does not like my daughter and wants nothing to do with her. Would it ever get that serious? Bro, I don't know. That's the problem. So let's control what we can, right? So the next time I went over and my stepdad was there, he asked me to come into his room. He had bought a locked gun case that opens with his thumbprint. My relief was palpable, and I immediately hugged him and said, Thank you so much. Truly. It's about planting seeds and seeing who meets you halfway. A kind of a benevolent form of inception. You have to stand up for your beliefs from a place of love and give people a chance. There's good in everyone, they just need to be reminded of it and make the choice to nurture it on their own terms. But that means taking responsibility. And a huge responsibility we have as adults is to understand and make decisions based on the fact that we can only expect so much from children. It's a hard balance for sure, but that's the thing. If you want to take on the responsibility of raising a child, then you need to be prepared to weigh consequences and discern what actually matters and what doesn't. Like for me, it's not great that my daughter drew on the couch, but in actuality, she needed to do that so I could tell her it's not okay. That's how you learn at that age. The only way to make the connection. She needs to see the action plus the consequence to make the lesson make sense. The why, because it's expensive, still won't really land, but this at least we can come back from, and I don't need to hide the markers. The same cannot be said for the consequences of a gun. They cannot wrap their minds around it, and they shouldn't have to. That is absolutely our responsibility as adults with closed frontal lobes to maintain their safety and innocence to that degree at least. That's the minimum speed limit. So if you must have a gun, make it inaccessible and wait to teach gun safety until they can integrate it. Oh, but wait, school shootings have made that impossible. I was visiting a young fives classroom not too long ago and got to watch a five-year-old perform the gun safety song. But what a freaking mind F, because they just don't get the gravity of its implications. To him, it was a cute little song and dance that he performed and received claps and praise for doing so well. To me, it was utterly devastating. Okay, we have arrived at the rabbit hole. So, this is where I ask you to trade your PC thinking caps for your mad hats and follow me down. Here's my theory about the ending of this movie. That witch was never gonna take home. Strict religious dogma and whatnot has convinced us humans that our sins are taking us to hell, and we've been given a very specific list of exactly what those sins are. And in this day and age, if all of that hokum were true, see what I did there, most all of us would be going to hell. But I will also call back to the Grinch episode where I suggest heaven and hell are frequencies you live on based on your everyday choices and whose story you're following. But anywho's in, to me it's as simple as this. Ohm believed he was destined for hell. He needed to be pushed to the absolute brink to realize he made a mistake, that that mistake was an accident resulting from the environment he was exposed to and shaped in, and that the solution was to forgive himself and stop being so afraid. In his childhood letter to the donkey, he mentions how he's scared all the time. I loved that little snippet because for me it explained why Ohm was responding to all the creepy stuff in a way that I'm not used to. In most scary movies, people are screaming or flipping out when something spooky happens, even if it's a matter of not reacting due to fear paralysis, or say, like in dead silence, where screaming is actually what'll get you. The fear and terror play out in the face, the eyes, the trembling hands. A lot of the time you see the literal locking up of that paralysis. Ohm, honestly, seems pretty chill. To me anyway. I was already considering this because Adam Scott is a phenomenal actor. There's no reason he wouldn't be able to play up genuine terror, so why the choice here? I don't know if it's Adam's personal interpretation, but to me it's because, as we learned from the letter, Ohm has lived in fear his whole life. Ultimately, all this crap ain't no thing but a chicken wang on a string. He grew up in his own version of a horror environment, honing the skill of shoving down his real feelings and hiding his fear in order to stay focused and survive. Something that really helps him out here. So, what if, what if, what if? There's this collective subconscious belief that all of our mistakes are going to make whatever is waiting on the other side of death truly awful, and that's why we're so scared of it. And because I no longer believe in sarcasm or reverse psychology, we perpetuate those mistakes because we're stuck in the loop of our fear rather than actually trying to get out of it. So we make jokes like, I'll be struck by lightning if I step into church, or say things like, see you in hell as a means of relating to each other over what we deem as the bad parts of ourselves. So cutesy of a phrase now that I actually saw it as a bumper sticker. On some level, we know that our choices and the way we treat others and ourselves has a darkness to it, but we're so scared to admit our failures and swallow our pride because our society has drilled the concept of punishment over rehabilitation into our Collective psyche so deeply. So deeply, in fact, that it has even established rehabilitation as something to judge and condemn, be it from a place of superiority, like how we view drug and alcohol rehab, or jealousy, like how we treat people who start to take care of themselves. Therefore, we just keep all our shadows, patterns, and demons, K-pop episode anyone, hidden and bottled up like a pressure cooker. You with me? But there's actual evil in the world, and it's not in the majority of humanity, because most people are good, and their choices, daily habits, and forays into the lower vibrations are a result of their conditioning and what they were taught. Generational trauma, and, if you're an open minder, past life influences and karmic buildup. Stuff that we can forgive ourselves for and atone for by upgrading ourselves just a little bit each day. The true evil is in those who actively make choices to harm others for their own greed, survival, egotism, and reputation, who behave in a way that demeans and disrespects everyone around them, who then blame those people for the problems they have brought upon themselves, resulting in an egoic panic that leads to treating other humans as less than, but who always carries out a nice guy facade. Like, oh, I don't know, Mal. I had a dream interpretation sesh with Googs where this topic got brought up, and it called it covert toxicity. Another quick example of this, because I just watched it, is Bear from Obsession. Mal is the sweet, helpful desk man at the inn. He's married with a family. His father-in-law is the owner of the inn. Oh, but he's had an affair with Fiona, got her pregnant, then killed her for wanting to keep what is rightfully hers because his father-in-law already hates him, and this would justify that even further. I'm sorry, what? If any of you ever saw college humor's sassy gay friend videos, for me this logic equates to a part from the Ophelia video that I love to quote. Sassy Gayfriend finds Ophelia at the water's edge, ready to commit suicide, and asks what the heck she's doing. Ophelia says, Hamlet loves me no more. And Sassy Gayfriend says, So we kill ourselves! Kill ourselves! There is something rotten in Denmark, and it's his piss poor attitude. I don't even know if Mal is actually too concerned about how his actions would hurt his wife and children. Would he have cheated if he was? If I remember correctly, when he's begging Jerry to understand, the main thing he pleads is that Cobb already hates him and he doesn't want it to get worse. An insane reason to murder people, and the hubris to think you can cover it up, and the idiocy to think that the best way to do that is by murdering more people. Ignorant, dangerous, evil. At the end, Ohm is crying, thinking he's at last met with the fate he deserves until his mother helps him recognize that his mistakes were accidents, that they were not guided by ill intent. That's who the witch wants. That's who the underworld is waiting for. That realization leads to an intuitive hit that reminds Ohm he has the tool to cut the chain. He has the power to separate himself from the kind of person who's consciously putting hate into the world. He was never going to be taken by the witch, chalk circle or no. Fiona wasn't taken after all, right? So this also has me considering another little what if, what if, what if. The devil is not the bad guy. I recently watched Ready or Not To, and the whole time I was like, what is Elijah's the lawyer deal here? There was just something extra behind his demeanor where I felt like he was cheering Grace, played by Samara Weaving, on something hopeful in him every time she made progress. Seriously, I was asking out loud throughout the movie, like, what is he up to? Then Grace reminds us in the recollection to her sister that she saw Mr. Labelle nod his head at her at the end of movie one. Then, after she sets the cult on each other at the end of the sequel, the lawyer has a like a satisfied smirk on his face, and Labelle shows up once more, and for whatever reason, I got the impression he was happy. So for the past couple weeks, I had been questioning why would the devil be happy that his cult was dismantled? And then this movie had me thinking all of it through, and I was like, well, because here's the thing, folks. What we understand to be the machinations of the devil is that he, it or whatever, feeds on the low vibrational stuff. He doesn't want those with good intentions. He wants those filled with greed and hate. And any form of this cultism and the like where people have sold their souls to him is actually a huge mind F game of manipulation where every heinous act committed by a follower is just a fattening up of the hog for slaughter when a warrior of light comes in to kick off the feast. You feel me? They're the ones being toyed with. The devil extorting their shortcomings at every turn. So don't be disheartened by the illusion that people who feed the world with hate, misinformation, crisis, and ill will get everything they want. They appear to thrive for a time, but they're actually just increasing their inevitable suffering for whenever the good intended start to recognize their power, forgive themselves, and actually work for change. I don't know exactly what the 3D interpretation and playout of this will be, but I'm excited to see it. Honestly, it'll probably just be them losing everything materialistic that they so desperately cling to, having to sincerely apologize to everyone they've ever harmed, and having to seek help and guidance from the good-hearted folk on how to be humble, kind, and generous. Yeah, their worst nightmare. The devil card in tarot is a picture of the devil on a throne under an upside-down pentagram, a man and a woman chained to him by their necks. But any research into what that illustration actually depicts is that the chains are loose enough for the humans to easily escape, that their imprisonment is an illusion of their own making, and that they are free to release themselves. But they have to want it. They have to believe they're worthy of it, and that's going to mean sorting through a lot of baggage, darkness, and fear. It's scary and it feels lonely. But all it takes is to trust that you're not alone, and that your whole life has granted you your own personalized toolkit at your disposal whenever you're ready to access it. Just something to think about. Keep watching, reading, listening, and weaving. The answers are waiting for you.