Reclaiming the Inner Trinity: The Divine Mother, Father & Child Within

One of the most powerful aspects of healing is learning how to recognize—and restore—the balance of our inner dual nature.

Carl Jung referred to this as the union of the anima and animus, the feminine and masculine energies within each of us. These inner archetypes act like guiding forces, shaping how we give and receive love, relate to the world, and cultivate a sense of wholeness. I often refer to this same dynamic as the inner mother and father.

Whenever imbalance exists between these two forces—whether from neglect, trauma, or inherited patterns—we feel the effects in both our inner and outer lives. Our relationships often mirror these distortions. Our self-talk becomes critical or avoidant. And our ability to navigate life with confidence and trust gets stunted.

In my work with clients, I've noticed a recurring truth: these internal imbalances often originate with our actual mother or father. Whether they abandoned us—literally or symbolically—or simply didn’t know how to meet our emotional needs due to their own unhealed wounds, we unconsciously absorb those patterns. Unless conscious work is done to reclaim and reparent ourselves, we may go through life feeling like something is missing or misaligned—like we've always been trying to find our way back to something unnamed.

As children, we look up to our parents as protectors, providers, and first teachers. But many of the lessons they passed down were subconscious, inherited from their own wounding. And much to my clients’ surprise and sometimes grief, I often share this truth: they were meant to fail you in certain ways—not as punishment, but because these very wounds are the lessons you came into this life to transform.

Once we can see the blueprint of our experience clearly, we must take the next brave step: conscious inner work.

This means establishing a dialogue with the spiritual mother and father within us. It means tending to the neglected inner child who still longs for protection, structure, and unconditional love. And yes, it takes courage. But once that dialogue begins, something incredible happens: the parts of our lives that once felt stuck, fearful, or shut down begin to soften. We start to feel guided rather than misguided. And we begin to live from a place of inner trust, rather than inherited fear.

In the Tarot, this divine inner trinity is expressed clearly through archetype:

• The Empress (the divine mother) nurtures, comforts, and offers receptivity.
  

• The Emperor (the divine father) brings structure, protection, and encourages bold action.
  

• And by extension, the inner child—that part of us that seeks to be seen, supported, and expressed.
  

This child is best represented by The Fool—Tarot card “0”, the number of infinite potential. The “0” is symbolic of the Orphic Egg, the cosmic womb from which all life emerges. The Fool archetype represents new beginnings, unshaped by past fear. It’s the pure expression of curiosity, trust, and divine potential. A healed inner child embodies these same qualities—creative, alive, and connected to the present moment.

When the Empress and Emperor energies are balanced within us, the inner child doesn’t have to fend for themselves anymore. Instead, they feel held, and can safely emerge as the spark of life they were always meant to be.

The Jungian Tarot: The Mother, Child, and Father Archetypes Within

And this brings us to the power of 3.

Across spiritual, religious, and psychological traditions, the number 3 holds deep symbolic significance. It represents wholeness—the sacred union of two opposites birthing a third, unified force. We see this in the Holy Trinity, in Jungian individuation, in the triad of body-mind-spirit, and in the family archetype of mother-father-child. When these three aspects within us are brought into harmony—not dominance—life begins to reflect a deeper alignment. This is the foundation of true healing and transformation.

Unfortunately, this kind of inner work was never taught to us growing up. Many of us were raised in environments that honored outer achievement more than inner harmony. But the beauty is: you can begin now.

Journaling can be an excellent way to initiate this inner dialogue—with the divine mother, father, and child. You can also meditate on the Empress, Emperor, and Fool cards, reflecting on what each of these energies might be trying to teach you. What does your inner mother want you to hear today? How might your inner father offer you strength? What does your inner child long to express, now that they are finally safe?

Above all, remember: you are the sacred container for this reunion. You are the one who can unify the pieces. You are the one who can give yourself the love, protection, and guidance you may have never received—but always deserved.

And the best time to begin?

Now.
Because time is the one precious thing we never get back.

Until next time,

Be well

The Present Is the Portal: Healing Beyond What Hurt Us

We all carry echoes of the past—experiences that shaped our inner world, imprinted instincts, and informed how we respond to life. Our wounds may not be visible, but they speak through our reactions, fears, and the protective layers we’ve built over time. Often, we find ourselves behaving not from the clarity of the present, but from the pain of what once was.

It’s easy to wish for a time machine—to go back and confront what happened, or even rescue our younger selves from the confusion, neglect, or loss we faced. But the reality is, no matter how much we ache to revise the past, we can’t return to it. And perhaps, in a strange way, that’s a gift.

Because what we do have is the present moment. Not as a cliché, but as a genuine, living space where we can choose to become aware. Here—in this breath, this heartbeat, this pause—we have the power to stop marinating in the past and start gently unhooking from it.

As Pema Chödrön so wisely said, “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” The wounds we carry, the patterns that repeat, the emotions that surface again and again—they’re not proof of our brokenness, but invitations. Invitations to listen, to learn, to heal.

Part of that healing means learning to listen to the hurt part of us that’s still speaking—sometimes quietly, sometimes in a roar. That inner part often doesn’t want to be fixed; it wants to be heard. When we slow down and hold space for it—without judgment or the pressure to “get over it”—something begins to shift. By simply allowing that part of ourselves to speak, and by listening with tenderness and patience, we begin to rewrite our relationship with the pain.

And yet—presence is not passivity. Honoring the moment also means honoring our aliveness, even when we're feeling stuck or self-identified with what ails us. Sometimes, what helps us reconnect isn’t deep reflection but a state change—an intentional shift in energy that breaks us out of a looping inner narrative.

That shift doesn’t need to be grand. It could be as simple as taking a walk in nature, visiting a museum and letting beauty reawaken us, reading about a subject that fascinates us, listening to music that moves us, or creating a piece of art—like a mandala—that gives form to our inner world. These acts don’t bypass the pain; they coexist with it, offering breath, expansion, and glimpses of peace.

Recognizing how our old wounds inform our instincts isn't about blame or shame. It’s about becoming conscious. It’s about noticing, “Ah, I’m reacting from fear again,” or “This anxiety feels familiar—it’s not about today.” And in that noticing, we create space: space to respond differently, to breathe, to tend to ourselves with compassion rather than criticism.

Healing doesn’t require perfection. It requires presence. When we learn to meet ourselves here, without the weight of what we wish had been different, we begin to reclaim our peace and restore our sense of inner safety. The present moment doesn’t erase the past—but it can transform our relationship to it.

And in that transformation, we move forward. Not because the past is forgotten, but because we no longer allow it to define us.

Until next time,

Stay present

The Game as Psychomagic: How Symbolic Acts Can Transform Your Life

David Fincher’s 1997 thriller The Game isn’t just a suspenseful mind-bender—it’s also a hidden blueprint for radical transformation. At first glance, the film seems like a high-stakes mystery. But peel back the layers, and it begins to resemble something closer to a Psychomagic ritual, the kind that Alejandro Jodorowsky might orchestrate: theatrical, symbolic, and designed to shatter the ego.

The story follows Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas), a wealthy but emotionally frozen financier. When he’s enrolled in a mysterious “game” by his estranged brother as a birthday gift, his carefully curated life begins to unravel. Bit by bit, he loses his money, status, and sense of control—until he’s forced to confront the very things he’s spent his life avoiding. His fall (literal and figurative) becomes the ultimate ego death. It’s the Tower card from the Tarot made manifest: a violent collapse that clears the way for rebirth.

What Is Psychomagic?

Psychomagic is a therapeutic practice developed by filmmaker and mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky. It’s based on the idea that the unconscious mind responds more to symbolic actions than to rational explanations. Jodorowsky would prescribe rituals tailored to a person’s inner wounds—actions that bypass the intellect and speak directly to the subconscious.

A Psychomagic act is so effective because it works through metaphor—the only language the subconscious mind truly understands. And, ironically, it’s often within those metaphors that the deepest healing can be found. The subconscious doesn’t respond to analysis or logic; it responds to images, sensations, archetypes—symbolic experiences that mirror the emotional truth beneath the surface.

For example, someone grappling with guilt might be told to carry a heavy object through a public place to physically “bear the weight” of their emotion. These acts are strange, visceral, and deeply symbolic. But they work—not because they’re logical, but because they’re emotionally real.

In The Game, every twist Nicholas endures feels orchestrated with this same purpose: to dismantle his emotional defenses and force a confrontation with his buried fears. The game is a ritual—an immersive psychodrama meant to provoke transformation.

Crafting Your Own Psychomagic

We often wait for life to disrupt us—through heartbreak, illness, loss—before we grow. But what if, like Nicholas Van Orton, we could consciously design our own “game”? A controlled symbolic crisis that helps us break through fear, grief, or stagnation?

Here’s how to create a personal psychomagic ritual for healing and self-transformation:

1. Identify Your Core Psychological Block

What fear or belief is keeping you stuck?
Is it the fear of failure? Abandonment? Vulnerability?
For Van Orton, it was his obsession with control and his fear of becoming emotionally exposed—especially in the shadow of his father’s suicide.

2. Create a Symbolic, Ritualistic Act

Design an experience that mirrors the emotional terrain you want to move through. Some examples:

• Fear of loss? Voluntarily give something up.
  

• Fear of public judgment? Do something mildly embarrassing in public, like singing on a street corner.
  

• Low self-worth? Write yourself a love letter and mail it.
  

• Fear of poverty? Spend a day with no money, relying solely on kindness.
  

Jodorowsky often went to extremes—he might suggest walking naked in the woods if you hate your body—but even small, meaningful acts can disrupt the inner narrative.

3. Commit Fully—No Half-Measures

The ritual only works if you believe in it.
The Game succeeded because Nicholas believed everything was real. Your symbolic act must feel emotionally convincing.
Immerse yourself as if your life depends on it.

4. Reflect & Reinvent

Transformation isn’t in the act alone—it’s in what comes after. Ask yourself:

• How did it feel?
  

• What came up emotionally?
  

• What new choices feel available to you now?
  

Like Nicholas after his symbolic death and rebirth, we too can emerge changed—more open, more present, more alive.

What’s Your “Game”?
If you could design your own personal Psychomagic ritual… what would it be?
What part of yourself are you ready to let go of, symbolically destroy, or radically confront?

Transformation doesn’t always need to come through chaos.
Sometimes, the most powerful changes come from the rituals we dare to create ourselves.

Until we meet again,

Be well

How To Read Like A Seer

Symbology is the native language of the subconscious mind—and this is precisely where tarot lives. Tarot is a map of symbolic intelligence, a tool for navigating the unseen realms. To work with it effectively is to develop what we might call symbolic literacy, a kind of intuitive fluency that deepens over time. This process requires practice, trust, and most importantly, an open mind and heart.

From the moment we’re born into this physical world, we arrive as oracles. Each of us carries within a vast, living library of experience—not only from our physical journey, but from the Otherworld as well. The challenge? Most of us have been conditioned to privilege the conscious, rational mind—the outer world—while neglecting the rich inner terrain of the subconscious, where our true guidance lives.

One of the greatest challenges in working with the tarot is learning to bypass the analytical mind in favor of the deeper, quieter wisdom of the subconscious. This is the seat of feeling—the place where our inner language of symbology is stored. When we shift our awareness into this space, we become receptive—like antennas—tuning into messages from beyond, whether we name that source spirit, the collective unconscious, or simply intuition.

This is where magick happens.

The key difference in any tarot reading lies in how we engage: are we thinking through the cards with our rational mind, or feeling into them from a deeper, intuitive place? Intuition flows. It doesn’t force. It whispers. And yet, ironically, that quiet inner voice is often the one we ignore—dismissing it as mere imagination, irrational, or somehow untrustworthy.

But the truth is: that voice is the reading.

When we doubt it, when we override it with logic or fear, we surrender the magic. The reading becomes flat, mechanical, and disconnected. So when in doubt, turn off the head—and turn on the heart. Let the symbols speak. Let the subconscious guide. This is where tarot comes alive.

Until next time,

stay magical!

Pain Needs A Home

From long ago, experiences we may have thought were once lost to time never fully left us. Whether they were terrible or pleasant in memory, they remain etched within the psyche of our subconscious mind; which functions much like a museum for these memories which we rarely feel the need to visit. Although in the case of negative experiences, similar in taste to a past episode, chances are very good that they will trigger a sounding of the guard within us. At which time, our own safety mechanism of fight or flight springs forth into action like a noble knight. After all, this is war and there’s a new battle waging just above the surface of our subconscious.

Once our guard has been roused into action, we naturally fear the worst, believing this new threat might even fair worse than its past predecessor. In response we often retaliate in such a way that we overcompensate in the hope of warding off or even destroying this new menace. I prefer to think of these unwelcome beasts as dragons, randomly manifesting throughout our waking life to remind us of unfinished business, often spiritual in nature and desperately in need of our attention.

In terms of our response, we might attempt to ward off the beast with substances like drugs, alcohol, self-inflicted physical abuse or possibly just shutting down or isolating ourselves from the living world altogether; until the dragon takes flight and temporarily leaves us once again, just long enough for us to regain our emotional and psychological equilibrium. 

In order to overcome the unfinished business of any past hurt, many might assume that we need to challenge the beast head-on to a duel. Although ironically it’s really not necessary nor productive to work against these forces in this way, largely due to the fact that we are destined to lose such a fight. No, what’s needed is to welcome the beast, even shine a light of understanding across its body in an effort to acknowledge the wounds of another age. In the end, pain needs a home and by providing safe harbor from the wreckage of our past, gradually we transmute ourselves from survivors into thrivers. 

The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.

- Caroline Myss

This sort of inner alchemy begins with the soft and almost whisper-like summoning of patience for ourself and our predicament. And it is this same spiritual elixir which need not mire itself in judgment or any kind of conditional expectation. Instead, patience is the beginning of healing, of finding the way back to our higher self as well as reuniting us with our true path. For a nice reminder, one might meditate upon the Major Arcana tarot card, Temperance. Overall this card offers a recalibration that leads to balance, as well as inner calm, inner peace. 

Until next time,

be well.