The Spiritual Social

Tag: tarot

  • In case you need a fright…

    Happy Halloween! If you’re like myself, alone for Halloween and need some cultural stimuli to pass the cold, dark hours of the night then I’ve got your back with this post. Here is a mix of genuinely frightening and gently spooky resources which have proven to be oddly comforting to me in this period. Sift through them and perhaps you will find something that has a chance to become your latest obsession.

    MOVIES

    Weapons (2025)

    The topic of witchcraft is probably the most over-used Halloween theme of all, but in this movie it is handled in such a strange and innovative way, through the medium of a classroom of children who dissappear one night, leaving the members of a small suburban community to rage among themselves as to where they could’ve disappeared. Reminding me a little bit of the weird tension contained in the movies “The Sweet Hereafter” or even “The Leftovers“, this movie doesn’t contain the same emotional depths but it is eerie and highly watchable, entertaining and in equal parts brooding. I loved every minute of it! And Amy Madigan’s interpretation of a part witch/part clown madwoman is masterful.

    Longlegs (2024)

    After watching ‘It follows’ and really being pulled into that movie more than I would have imagined, I can safely say that Maika Monroe is slowly growing on me as a scream-queen presence. Different from that movie, the evil presented in Longlegs is bone-deep frightening and not necessarily related to sexual diseases. What makes the evil in Longlegs so suffocatingly awful is that it’s not something you can prepare for or defend yourself against, as it is all-pervasive. It’s also an interesting tale about appearances which can be deceiving: Are your parents good, kind people? Are you actually safe in the house in which you grew up for years? What determines a family member to turn against their own? And what would you do if Evil wants to strike a deal to keep your child alive?

    Aside from the rather funny and dramatic make-up that Nicholas Cage is clad in, throughout the entire movie, the story is not really about him but it is about what drives him and uses him. It’s his passion for bonding with the darkness that sets the story alight and the lead detective is merely someone waking up to a truth that is so harsh and shocking that it destroys whatever security she ever felt in her life. It’s also a well-filmed and perfectly executed movie, which lingers in the mind. I slept with the light on, the night that I saw it.

    Handling the Undead (2024)

    I wouldn’t have imagined that a movie about zombies would make me cry, but somehow this understated European movie did exactly that. In its original depiction of dead people literally rising from their graves and coming back to life during a hot summer day in a non-descript Danish city, this movie is strangely grey, heavy and also weirdly funny in parts. The brilliant Renate Reinsve creates with very little, such an emotional atmosphere around her relationship to her undead son, that by the end of the movie my face was soaked in tears. All, I can say is that I agree with her difficult decision which the movie ends on, and I hope I that I’ve made you curious enough to watch it now.

    Natatorium (2024)

    Since we are still on the topic of small, understated, atmospheric movies that induce subtle chills, I felt like including the debut feature film of Icelandic director Helena Stefansdottir in the list, a little movie called “Natatorium”. The kind of evil present in this movie is subtle and it feels familiar, domestic even. Very much in line with the tales of Shirley Jackson about the family being the epicentre of some truly horrific thoughts and emotions, Natatorium shows the viewers what happens when a family member has a dark ‘hobby’ that she can’t get enough of, a hobby that can be both purifying but also murderous. In certain circumstances, keeping your relatives at arms length can be a life-saving decision and this movie brings this point home like none other.

    Something wicked this way comes (1983)

    If you are looking for a vintage thrill, then I suggest a dive into the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s book ‘Something wicked this way comes’. It’s a sumptuous and well-acted piece that has a big heart at the core of it, that being the relationship between a father and his son, laced as it is with guilt and redemption. The Devil is a showman in this story, and he rules over a spooky circus storming into a little American town during a period reminiscent of the Great Depression. As the Devil does its best to fulfill everyone’s deepest desires at a cost, ghosts from the past also begin to emerge and haunt the lives of the townsfolk. The cinematography is really beautiful and the special effects, although incipient for that time-period, are not that bothersome. On the same note, if you want to explore the “creepy circus” theme a bit more in-depth, then I recommend the heart-breakingly disturbing series “Carnivale” (2003-2005).

    Totally Killer (2023)

    This one is not so much a frightening watch, as it is a ruthless one. I was completely surprised by this awesome movie, involving colourful and spunky scenery and pretty sarcastic dialogues making fun of the Gen Z, Millenials and Gen X divide. I also love to finally see Kiernan Shipka’s talent utilised well (after the fiasco that the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina sadly was), but she really pulled her strength in this one and gave one of the best performances of her career so far (in my view). Although the movie is pure 80s nostalgia (remember a time when people didn’t have smartphones to interact with each other?!), the killings are pretty brutal and they happen at such a rapid pace that it keeps things interesting and …well, thrilling. You should definitely give it a watch, if you are more of a light-horror/thriller fan. Oh, and there’s also time-travel involved.

    GAMES

    Nightmare Frames

    From the cut scene that ushers you into this game all the way to its sad denouement, Nightmare Frames is such a treat, in terms of story and character portrayals. The dialogues are interesting and often sarcastic, the twist in the plot is kind of unexpected, and the atmosphere is split between the sunny vibes of the 80s Hollywood scene to that of a creepy, rain-afflicted, poor town in the middle of nowhere, in which the haunting elements of the game really come to life. I felt like I was playing two games in one to be honest, much like how our protagonist is split between his real life and that of the stories he builds in his mind through his scripts. I played this during a hot August weekend with the curtains drawn over my bedroom windows and made such a cool memory of the whole experience. Highly recommend.

    Welcome to Elderfield Demo ( plus any Halloween mix from Ill-Advised Records)

    I have never resonated with a game more than with this creepy little cozy game, that appeared in my life during the summer of one of my deepest depressions. Losing my father this year was a shock to my system that kept me crawling through the last months, devoid of the pleasure of doing anything. As I was healing, I felt increasingly drawn to horror movies, dark tales, murder mysteries and crime thrillers, as if to balance out or maybe to reflect in the exterior my crippled inner world.

    When I stumbled upon Welcome to Elderfield, it was like that moment when I discovered Stardew Valley in 2021 and my life changed for the better! I dedicated countless hours of my life playing that chill game as it lowered my cortisol in the morning while I had my coffee. But I could no longer enjoy playing Stardew Valley this year, as all that sweetness and positivity felt like a hoax seeing as I was at the mercy of raging emotions and dark thoughts. So finding the twilight equivalent to a farming RPG was right up my night-striken alley.

    The game also began blending with my reality, as I found farmer Hans a comforting presence like my father’s ghost, the tentacled creatures that attack me in the game the same as all the people billing me during a time of economic crisis, the zombies attacking me in the spooky mall, very similar to mindless shoppers bumping into me on the streets of Bucharest. Welcome to Elderfield feels to me like waking up to a world of horrors that I gradually had to adapt to and make some sort of weidly beautiful sense of. This game means so much to me and I highly recommend that you try it out, at least for the awesome soundtrack that it comes with, if not for the story or the excellent atmosphere it brings to the table. I cannot wait for this game’s full release and also for Concerned Ape’s “Haunted Chocolatier” too!

    TAROT & ORACLE DECKS

    Lastly, I wanted to share with you some of my favourite divinatory resources. As a tarot reader, I like to celebrate Halloween or Samhain by using these decks: 1) Ghoulish Garb’s Terror Tarot, a deck composed of delightfully drawn major arcana cards; 2) the Horror Oracle, a deck I received as a gift from a subscriber, and was pleasantly impressed to find out that it depicts classic horror movies; 3) the very cute and colourful Halloween Tarot (get the tin box edition, for extra ASMR appeal and a sensual experience when you unbox and shuffle); and 4) the one with the most spiritual potential, especially at it can help one confront their Shadow Self, this is the Deep, Dark and Dangerous Oracle, an incursion into creepy mythological Archetypes. I’ve been using it with my clients for a while now and it always gives us something special to think about during each reading. And last but never least, I need to mention the Seasons of the Witch: Samhain Oracle, which is already a cult classic in the spiritual community and it ignited my love for this holiday.

    That’s all from me. Remember to eat some pumpkin soup, drink cinnamon-flavoured coffee or have a hot chocolate with some spicy chilli, record the dreams you have during Halloween night and sit and have a meal with your dead ones, honor them by their name and light candles next to their portraits on a home altar.

    May you thrive in the darkness!

    With spooky love,

    Lexi

  • Thank you

    The year is almost over and it’s been a very difficult one for me on an emotional level. My mental health has severely fluctuated following from a diagnosis with extreme anxiety and paroxysmic crises at the beginning of the year – for which I had to take medication for 3 months – to the news of my father’s bone cancer. I struggled to really do my work and enjoy creating like I used to, as I was overwhelmed by negative feelings and depression. My misophonia which began in 2023 when I moved into my new apartment that was besieged by loud noises and construction work for months on end, accentuated to the point where I could only exist if I wore headphones at all times throughout the day to feel calm and balanced. After 3 months I also ended my therapy and relationship to my therapist because I found out she was swindling me for money and kept saying ‘let’s be friends’ throughout our session, when I actually needed a trained professional to help me make sense of the deep pain I was feeling. I decided to take my healing into my own hands and go to the gym, take herbal supplements of Magnesium and Valerian and try to get a corporate job, to have a steady income at least and pay off my taxes. The plan was hard to sustain as I often struggled to work in the hectic corporate environments where people would play music or speak loudly over each other and trigger my misophonia. I tried 5 jobs and failed at all of them for various reasons but looking back the reasons where all me, and the pain I was experiencing and that I couldn’t control.

    As August came by and with it came extreme heat, I kind of gave up on everything and spent most of my days sleeping, going to the cinema or drinking beer to cool off, since film tickets and beer where under 5 euros and I was on a budget. Looking back on that period which contained the majestic Lion’s Gate Portal energy, I can clearly say I was a mess and felt horrible and I argued with my mom, but I kept it all to myself, like I always do, not wanting to bother anyone. I preferred showing my crew images with me at the local community pool than discussing openly my deep despair. From time to time, I would return to the tarot but all of these attempts I had at trying to ‘live normally’ while feeling like I was slowly dying inside gradually built up and made me just want to give up on tarot as well. An opportunity for another job came by in September (and I need to say just how grateful I am that Spirit kept offering second, third and fourth chances for work this year, to the point that I feel my eyes tearing up as I am writing this) and I took it. I needed the income and I thought that the job was interesting, only to discover a month into the job that the income I agreed upon when I signed the job contract was not reflected in my pay check and the stress from having been lied to and taken advantage of (yet again) just got to me and amplified my misophonia. I was working for the largest corporation in the world and I got pennies in return and I felt sick to the bone and decided to liberate myself. although with a heavy heart as I seemed to have been stacking up so many failures.

    One fated and beautiful moment during this job was when a person started talking to me in the lady’s bathroom about how she knew about The Spiritual Social and how much it helped her in the past. I thanked her but felt like I was slowly burying my work into oblivion, and she wanted me to know that I shouldn’t give up and told me to keep going and to take our meeting as a sign. We hugged and I guess she doesn’t know just how much that encounter meant to me and how it was part of the decision to keep working and uploading and posting again. That was the beautiful pearl hidden inside this harsh year: that occasionally, Spirit would send me a benefactor, a friend, a gentle life-line, a sign of a hopeful kind that reminded me to keep rolling with the punches and to not give up on everything.

    The last two months of 2024 have been quiet and slow but they have also been productive. I started writing articles here again, I became a Hermit and mostly spend time indoors, creating and I cannot say at all that I am not enjoying it! I am aware that it will take some time and perseverance to get back to the level of light, love and inspired dedication that I was at in 2021, but I had better astrological transits back then and less neurological damage. A part of me still wishes that none of this would have happened and that my dad would still be healthy and going to the cinema with mom, that my sister would still be talking to me, that my channel would unproblematically grow, that my income wouldn’t have halved itself and I that I would feel safe and happy in my new apartment, but I guess these things just had to happen. My recurrent breakdown this year was in some way fated. I’m usually very strong, so it was hard for me to make sense of what was going on. I still can’t say with clarity I have the answers…other than Pluto is on my IC and it feels…..like a cinema of inner horrors that wash over me like the waves of a sullen, forgotten sea.

    As I gradually gave up on things, I pulled into myself for some peace and safety and as a consequence I pushed some people away – not because I had problems with them, but because it hurt me if someone wanted to get closer to me, as I felt I couldn’t reciprocate in a loving and enthusiastic way. The merest sign of kindness, love and support I would receive would get me to sob uncontrollably and I would feel like my skin was burning; and I usually cry alone, I struggle to cry in front of other people and it takes a big hit to get me to do that. I think this is because in a year in which I needed the most to cry and to release the pain, I just couldn’t do it, something inside of me just froze off. It was a dry, emotionally heavy and anxious year. And yet I am still here, I made it through and I recommitted to my spiritual work because I am aware that no psychiatrist or medication can do me good for too long, especially when I can’t trust my therapist. I need to be brave to continue to live and to create. What I need is yoga, meaningful work through tarot and astrology and exploring my environment. What I need is friends, to paint, to walk, to drink water, to keep to a clean diet and to be of use to others, helping them within boundaries so that I can heal my heart as well in this process. What I need is to go to sleep surrounded by my three cats, my little family of survivors.

    On this final note, the highlight of my year has been meeting and adopting Noa, my little family’s tomcat. I met him in the Bellu cemetery, as I was having my lunch during my work break and suddenly about 8 cats were surrounding me begging for some crumbs; one of the cats was on the outside of the circle and all the other ones where pushing him and he didn’t seem able to fight them off as he was too weakened. When I saw this, I felt like he wouldn’t survive for much longer and he was such a beautiful cat underneath all that grime, so after I went back inside the corporate building I was working in and quit, I came out and took him in my arms and ordered an Uber to get us home so I could wash him. One woman who was doing the graveyard cleaning, started shouting at me and saying obscenities like “I should search for men and get fucked instead of caring for these awful cats” and after an exchange of tough replies I realised she is dead inside and that life was brutal to her and that I wouldn’t win this argument. I left her screaming and got inside the car and I started crying because Noa was almost asleep in my arms and he opposed no resistance. When the driver saw this, he switched the radio channel to one that played ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleep’s tonight’ just to make us feel better after I told him I just adopted Noa and was verbally abused for it. He got us home safe and I gave him a generous tip. We were now a family of 4.

    Since I moved into the new apartment, I seem to be adopting a new cat each year, and while this has always been my dream (to adopt and nurture animals who have been neglected or mistreated and to honour Artemis, the Goddess presiding over my Sagittarius stellium), I am conscious of the fact that I am going to need a bigger place and maybe also a patch of grass to keep doing this work. My dream now is to purchase a small farmland somewhere in the centre of Romania, in the country-side and to plant vegetables and herbs and to raise chickens and ducks while I grow my cats and dogs’ family. And another dream would be to solidify my training as a psychologist by becoming a Jungian analyst; because the corporate world is not the right environment for me and I seem to be struggling to make an income from just tarot and astrology, since the pandemic ended. For this I will need time and money and will attempt in the next year to redirect these efforts by doing two jobs at the same time (I worked in a similar rhythm when I was writing my PhD and I think I still have it in me, to do it from next year). As Saturn will conjunct my Sun together with Neptune and the North Node in Pisces for my 38th birthday, I feel it is time to put in the hard work that will hopefully help me manifest a dream or to. I just hope that Romania remains a free country, in the sense that it will stay in the EU and that we won’t be politically wreaked by a right-wing, extremist president. In the absence of these things, it would be impossible for me to buy a farm or train as an analyst, as I will need to flee the country.

    But that’s just a bad dream for the time being and there is still so much hope that after some restrictions we can live in prosperity once more. I cling to such hopes, dearly. In the meantime, let’s come back to the present and to my thanking you from the bottom of my heart for still being here! I appreciate you so much and I find it humbling that you all find meaning in my work and words. If you are a follower to this blog, thank you especially and I promise you there will be a lot of cool articles coming up. I just felt like unburdening my heart in this post, so that I may leave some of the emotional baggage in 2024, where it belongs. I’m sorry to everyone I pushed away this year, and I hope that if by some weird twist of faith you will read this post, you will understand why I acted in this way. I just didn’t have the right words at the time being, as I was overwhelmed by emotions. Let’s see that 2025 will inspire better coping strategies in the minds of those of us dealing with grief and pain. For the time being, from me, Noa, Luna and Sol, we wish you a happy, safe and pleasant entry into the New Year and a happy New Moon in Capricorn!

    With universal love,

    Lexi