The Empathic Revolution

A student of mine sent me this great piece by Richard Noelle in his blog on AstroPro.com commenting in his 2010 forecast on all the changes going on lately:

"This is not just a cyclical economic downturn. As I’ve already written, since 1980 we’ve been in a long-term (forty-year) transition from one cycle of civilization (the Industrial Revolution) to the next. I don’t know what this next one will be called, any more than anyone knew what to call the Industrial Revolution at the time it was beginning – other than a calamity, which is what most people thought it was at the time. (This time around, it may be the Virtual Revolution, Nanotech Revolution, Bioengineering Revolution, Quantum Revolution . . . any one might fit, and yet each one is probably too narrowly focused.)

Looking back on the economic, social and political evolution taking place at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it’s clear that it was not an easy birth - as is typical of the onset of historical epochs. Agriculture and muscle power had been the order of the day; which meant that nobles were supported by the labor of tenants and their livestock, who produced the crops and cut the timber. (Ironically, two energy sources that far predated the Industrial Revolution will long outlive it: wind and water, both being forms of solar energy.) With the rise of machines to supplant muscle power (animal as well as human), and coal to replace wood as fuel, the wealth of the lords was diminished: capital was no longer mere land for producing food and fuel, and the tenants were leaving the farms to go to work in the factories in the cities. The socio-economic structure people had known for centuries was disintegrating, and a new one was taking its place. Anxiety was widespread then – as it is now.

This radical change was perceived as threatening by many. Those who tried to hang onto the old were run over by the new. Lords were steadily losing income as they lost their tenants. In order to maintain their expensive estates, they cut staff as much as possible, and sold off tracts of land. The subsistence family farmers watched as their village infrastructure emptied out to the cities. People from the bottom to the top of the old social hierarchy bemoaned the increasing poverty and decaying security all around them. Sound familiar? It not, you haven’t been paying attention since 1980, when the current dawn period – the one analogous to the 1802-1842 Earth Trigonalis dawn – got underway.

The 1802-1842 Earth Trigonalis dawn was a time when the social, political and economic institutions that had sustained a civilization for centuries were just plain falling apart. People and institutions trying to maintain the old order were run over and crushed by the new system. The old occupations and industries became less and rewarding, eventually bankrupting nearly everyone who didn’t move on into the new system. It looked and felt like the end of the world . . . and yet it turned into what we have been pleased to call the Modern World over the past couple centuries or so.

That’s exactly what’s happening now. Yes, it is the end of an old era, an old economy, an old world. At this point, we’re about halfway through the dawn period. This is why I’ve been saying for years now that the salad days are gone – and that when they do come back, it will be an entirely different salad. In 2020, when the Air Trigonalis of the Great Chronocrator finally arrives, a new long-term boom epoch begins: a new means of production, a new form of capital, a new economy and new markets. Until then, the new normal is transition: the decay of the old (and the suffering of the people who try to hang onto it); and the birth of the new. What we’re seeing, in short, is not the end of the world,but the end of a world. And worlds like that end all the time, every generation at least – just not so much all at once as now, or back in the early 19th Century.

I bring up this difference between the end of a world and the end of the world because I think it’s essential first to survival and then to happiness and prosperity at all levels, from the individual to the collective. If you think the Apocalypse is imminent, you won’t do one thing right for tomorrow, because you don’t believe there will be a tomorrow. If you think a total collapse of the financial system will happen any day now, you won’t invest what capital you do have in such a way as to grow it over the years to come. The Chicken Littles will have none of this "don’t put all your eggs in one basket" stuff. They’ll go to cash, convert it all to precious metals, and then be at the mercy of the governments that show an historical penchant for confiscating those same precious metals. I know, I know, governments are perennial confiscators of everything anyway. But the more baskets your eggs are in, the fewer will get snatched up in one fell swoop by the agents of Big Brother."

I agree with everything he says above and wanted to add what I am seeing in the collective. Yes, we are moving towards a new technological paradigm that will probably be the basis of the new name that this coming era will eventually receive, like Richard Noelle suggests above. However, this new name belies that the real shift that is going on is not technological like it was with the Industrial Revolution, but a revolution of values and emotions. Like the Enlightenment or the Renaissance, this is really a shift that is less material and more about human consciousness, but even more low-key and internal than those eras. People are letting go of the old largely because they are bored. The whole world is shifting largely because of a deep lack of meaning that the capitalist-material paradigm has failed to deliver contrary to its original promises. I have students and clients expressing to me all the time with regards to their jobs, money, and the material dream "Is this all there is?". I am seeing that everywhere. Money and comfort isn't enough to sustain people's inner lives anymore. That sounds like a truism but you have to remember that it was only a few decades ago that money and technology was genuinely enthralling not because it had more life-force or anima then than it does now, but because even something as simple as the invention of a vacuum cleaner or washing machine in the 50's symbolically represented that the technological-scientific paradigm was genuinely looking to make our lives easier and give us back the most valuable commodity of time. By contrast, now we are jaded consumers who do not view technological innovation as culture and time saving but at best as something neat and maybe helpful, and at worst a scam. No longer does our consumer trust reside in the hands of marketers and manufacturers. We might still like illusion for illusion's sake but the jig is up.  We  might want to catch the latest gossip on famous athletes and ingénues but we know it's all meaningless. These illusions no longer symbolically represent something for us, as much as even a few years ago. We know what is real and what isn't. The great material-scientific paradigm is as much of an open failure in fulfilling its promises of more time, meaning, and happiness as communism was a failed utopian dream. The illusions have crashed and we are now doing what we have been taught in the last 60 years of turbo-capitalism to do best: shop. We are now shopping en masse for new cultural values.

Most people are looking for something more and are finally willing to take risks to pursue something that feeds their soul. It is subtle but the workforce is shifting around based on values, not money. And the people who are still working for money and security alone by leveraging their individuality, gifts, and potential are suffering because they still don't get it. As soon as they are willing to do what they love, what makes them feel human again instead of a cog in the machine, the universe will support them because this is the evolution humans are going towards.

It probably won't get named this, but I think Jeremy Rifkin (economist and big-picture thinker/writer) nailed it when he wrote his recent book The Empathic Civilization. Given what's happening the next era should be called the Empathic Revolution. People are less tolerant now than ever before of others inflicting suffering on the less empowered. Because of mass education and economic independence and prosperity in industrialized countries people are empowered enough to start saying "Enough! By the grace of God there walk I. I want to help the less fortunate and fight the unjust." But it will be less about pitchforks and more about creative re-wiring of our society by just finding alternatives around the existing power structures.

So what I see is talented people who are currently working for the old power structure eventually going off and starting her/their own alternative or joining one of these communities. Most of us have talents that are not being fully utilized in our existing jobs. In this era of diminishing natural resources, our collective consciousness will shift to start valuing the one thing that has never been valued in human history: the vast untapped resource of human potential, not as work horses or cheaper than robots, but if we give a kid an education will s/he go on to be the person who invents the next renewable fuel source or cure cancer etc.? We believe in this potential more now than ever. Bill Gates proved that someone who a few centuries ago would have been plowing a field or a merchant in the city, could go on to be a pivotal mind in the creation of a new wave, because he was given an education and some socio-economic mobility. This was more than a technological revolution but the beginning of a revolution in consciousness.

What are your values? What makes you feel alive? Impassioned? What makes your heart overflow with empathy or happiness? What are you willing to fight for or give up? And what creative solution lies just around the corner?

Intuition for Pain-Free Dating

Are you single? Have a better Valentine’s this year. The number of single people asking me how to use intuition in their dating lives has doubled in recent years. Finally people are getting that intuition can be applied to everything, even finding your soul mate. Intuition can reduce the amount of fruitless dates to a few plum selections that are enjoyable and productive. It can also help people to manoever through the stickier aspects of dating (don’t want to kiss them at the end of the first date? who picks up the cheque? should I call them first?) with grace and effectiveness.  By tuning in to the other person you can sense what their dating style, values, preferences, and even schedule, is like. Is he not calling me because he is busy or because he’s just not that into me? No, he really is busy and he also doesn’t want to appear desperate. He’ll call Thursday so I will chill out because he’ll unconsciously pick up my desperate vibe and I’ll mess this up. Or perhaps you’ll sense that no he really isn’t that into me. He wants somebody more fast/slow/tall/short/pink/purple whatever, so I am moving on and am grateful that he let me go in a graceful way that I can save face. Besides, if I’m honest, there was a lot I liked about him and wish him well, but I need somebody more fast/slow/tall/short/pink/purple etc.. Suddenly dating becomes a little more respectful, humane, and subtle but less mystifying.

There is real mystery in dating, the mystery of why two people can want to open up their safe, comfortable lives to confusion, possible rejection, potential re-wounding, you name it. But we do it everyday. Everyday people take that risk and fall in love and make (or adopt) babies and share their love in the world. That is a great Mystery and it is beautiful. But we don’t need to be mystified by the mundane and neurotic aspects of dating. We create all this drama around situations that would be entirely easy if we simply knew, knew that he was actually just talking to his ex-girlfriend to get back with her, or knew that she was really just trying to bounce back after a bad break-up and wasn’t serious about the date, or knew that the person really actually liked you but was just nervous. Everybody wants to be loved so there are no villians in dating just confusion and occasional poor choices. But if we know what the deal is going in we can make choices based on whether it works for us or not. They’re just shopping around? So am I! So perfect, we can just have fun and not take this date seriously. But everybody is so afraid the other person won’t want to go out with them if they admit that or that it would be awkward to be that honest or often they just don’t even know themselves what their agenda or intention is. Intuition takes the guessing and drama and to some extent, the ego, out of dating. When you can sense the other person’s perspective, you don’t need to take it personally if they aren’t that into you. Bottom line: intuition makes dating less painful and more productive.

So try this a day or so before a date. Sit down somewhere quiet and let yourself relax to the point where you are almost going to fall asleep. Now ask yourself silently, “What is this person’s intentions? Are they serious about finding someone? Are they truly available? Will I want them? Will they want me? What’s the lesson in this meeting?” You might want to pause after each question to hear/feel/see/sense/ the answer. Sounds simple, right? The trick to intuition is you have to get out of your own way which means you have to drop all of your preconceived ideas, biases, belief systems, agendas etc. to become like a blank slate for the other person to be able to be whatever they are without any reaction from you. So let’s say you have a history of being dumped. Naturally you are going to be afraid that you will be rejected or dumped again. So when you ask the above questions, your past experiences, in other words, your fear will answer instead of your intuition and you will not get accurate information. Your fear will say “This person is not serious, not available, won’t want me, will hurt me.” Then you will be nervous or defensive on the date in a way that will baffle the other person and if that doesn’t push them away, you will feel like, “Hey, I gave you a chance to leave before humiliating me and you’re still here, which means you really are trying to mess with me. This is cruel. Now I’m angry.” And that will sabotage the dynamic for sure. So your fear has created this situation, when perhaps the other person was genuinely open to having a relationship. It could also go the other way too, where you have a history of not getting what’s being put out there. So your hopes will answer, “Yes, this person is interested in me, serious, and available so I give myself permission to like them demonstratively.” So you are very friendly, even flirtatious on your first meeting, assuming a level of reciprocity and intimacy that isn’t there and what happens? The other person thinks that you are desperate, easy, delusional, or needy and they pull away when they might have been more open to you if you had sensed they were genuine but conservative.

Now sometimes we luck out, and our mistake just happens to be a dating style that jives with the other person but that would require us to rack up lots of chances to hit that small percentage who will co-incidentally have the same style (or material) as us. This is why some people call dating a “numbers game”. Just date as many people as possible, the proponents of this theory say. Then we hear the urban myth of the woman who pledged to date any guy who asked her or the other who dated practically every night for a year and a half, and after dating some  400 guys finally found The One. I have one question: did this woman have a job, friends, hobbies, a life? I don’t think it is healthy, productive, or necessary to date like that. Dating should be a meeting with someone we are genuinely interested in getting to know better because we have reason to believe that there is a good potential of them being compatible, not that “you’re my Tuesday night desperate random meeting”. We are not cattle to be thrown at each other  in the hopes of mating. Intuition elevates us to what we are at our best: spiritual, conscious, ethical, mature human beings looking for love. So that even if the person doesn’t turn out to be The One we go home feeling good about ourselves, about our lives, about the way we conducted ourselves, and with a pain-free lesson about ourselves and dating that brings us closer to The One and sustains reasonable hope.

Find out what intuition can do for you, whether you need help learning to read people better, get out of your own way, or whether you blame yourself for your singleness when really it is something else entirely. Learn in a one-on-one session with a professional intuitive, in an intuition workshop, or from an intuition development book, but instead of feeling disheartened this Valentine’s feel empowered and find reasonable hope again.



The Return of Intuition

Intuition is back in vogue again. Gone are the days when psychics were only included in pop culture as humorous figures solving crimes like Whoopi Goldberg in “Ghost”. Now psychics are front and centre with TV shows like “Medium” and “Rescue Mediums”. More importantly, their work is increasingly being portrayed as real, ethically challenging, and of service to those around them. By extension, intuition is beginning to be taken seriously. Or at least, judging by the number of shows on this topic that have proliferated in recent years, mainstream culture is mesmerized.

Psychics represent the extreme cultivation of intuition, and by definition not all choose to develop their instincts to this level or purpose. This does not mean that Canadians are not interested though. In a survey conducted in 2000 by noted sociologist Reginald Bibby, 68% of Canadians believed in an afterlife, 45% believed we could contact a spirit world, and 31% were convinced we can communicate with the dead. So, clearly many people believe in the existence of something beyond that which most of us see. In the same survey, 70% said that spirituality was important to them. Book sales support this growing interest in extra-sensory perception and a world beyond. Indigo.com produces 1,132 titles upon a search of “psychic” and 377 titles for “intuition” alone. According to the American Association of Publishers, sales of self-help books, lumped together with religious books, grew 14.2% from 2002 to 2005, a compound growth that is larger than the mass market paperback (-3.2%) or adult hardbound (1.7%). Even the bastion of conservative skepticism, corporate culture, is starting to see the merits of intuition. The Schulich Executive Education Program has delved into the world of empathy with their leadership course in “Developing Emotional Intelligence (EQ) In Your Workplace”, empathy being a short skip and a jump to intuition.

This is due in part to the gap left for spirituality by the major religions of North America says Bibby. Citing noted spiritual author Tom Harpur, he states there is a growing number of Canadians who are “deeply searching for a centre to their life beyond shopping malls.” Many who have seen reputable psychics express that this need had been met in their intuitive reading. As one woman said, “My session with her (the psychic) made me realize that in essence I had been walking around my own neighborhood for years, unable to remember where I lived. She not only showed me my home, but she gave me the keys to get inside. She showed me that my instincts are correct, and that I can trust them, even when at times they seem irrational. My beliefs were confirmed, and aspects to my life that were previously confusing were explained. The reading has opened a door behind which lies the greatest journey of my life!” After attending an intuition class one man explained the effect it had in his life, “From that point on, I was able to use the skills she (the teacher) taught me in real life situations and to trust my instincts. She made me understand that I could make pro-active decisions and be true to myself at the same time.” So intuition given in a reading, or cultivated in one’s self, seems to empower, to enliven, and to make us happy. Said one man, “Immediately after my (intuitive) session, I felt profoundly transformed. I remember sitting on the streetcar on the way home, beaming silently to myself when a woman spoke to me, having mistaken me for someone she knew. I smiled a full, broad smile and when I spoke I knew something was different. I felt more present, more alive than I had in a long time, perhaps even ever. A significant portion of my heartache, angst and anxiety was healed on that occasion. Since then, I keep looking for it, as if it should be there, but I find only a fraction of what had been there.”

You can find intuition classes in local colleges’ and schools’ continuing education programs, mentorship with local respected psychics, and books through major retailers and local specialty shops. The “Roots of Empathy” program to end school bullying by fostering empathy among children shows that intuition can have surprisingly profound effects when brought out into the world. Get in touch with your inner psychic, your intuition, or even your skepticism, and test out its power to not only change your life, but your world around you.



2010 Forecast

As a professional intuitive I am always wary of making predictions. I believe that part of the gift and the challenge of our lives is to exercise our free will to the utmost in the face of factors that are beyond our control. However, knowing what the collective energy has in store for us helps us to better navigate our individual lives and exercise our free will. I have seen how helpful it is to describe the collective energy to a client for them to orient their personal feelings within the collective experience. Knowing the collective energy acts like signposts along the road. It is not a prediction of where we choose to go. It just orients us on our journey. So here are what I intuitively sense are energetic signposts within the collective for 2010.

 We have undergone intense and transformative energy in 2009. It often felt like a rough ride but this energy’s gift has the ability to awaken us to our potential, individual power, autonomy, values and responsibility. If everybody wakes up in this way the earth would shake like everybody jumping up and down at the same time. So you can see how transformative this energy can be and why it is worth the trouble of embracing it.

I see there will roughly be three waves of transformation:

The Initiators

The first wave is comprised of the most sensitive people: healers, intuitives, and people who are just plain super-sensitive. That wave has already begun and will continue till about three-quarters into 2010. Then it will be smooth sailing for the first wave. This group represents the energetic leaders, the ones who create alternative visions of how the world can be and then spread the news and ideas. The biggest challenge for this group has already peaked and is now moving into decline. They will continue to experience the challenges of 2009 in the form of sickness, insomnia, allergies, letting go of old relationships and dynamics, but largely they will start to see re-growth and seeds of hope of in early 2010. They will begin to grow in strength by mid 2010, and finish the year strong in a good position to assertively lead the pack in 2011. The key thing for this group to remember that will help them when facing the challenges of 2010 is that this is all training to have an understanding of what everybody else they are serving will be going through, having gone through it themselves. They are the translators of psychic astronomical energies. So the gift of 2010 to you first wavers is that the deep perceptions your sensitivities bore that were so marginalized and dismissed before will be recognized as the forward thinking visions that are necessary to construct alternate workable systems in the future. By 2011 you will finally be thanked for being a visionary.

The Adopters

The second wave will be people who are less sensitive but open, curious, and wanting empowerment. This is the single largest group, the mainstream. The most sensitive of the second group have already begun to feel the rumblings: more colds, illnesses, accidents, challenges. This group will really feel the challenge of this transformative energy throughout 2010 and half of 2011. The savvy ones will follow their instincts to transform themselves on a deep level and seek psychological and spiritual growth. Due to their large numbers, this group represents the group with the most power so they are the ones who decide on whether to accept or adopt the new ideas and visions of the world and make them concrete. The biggest challenge for them in 2010 is to get used to this new position of conscious power. They were powerful before in numbers but now they are getting the call to be powerful through their conscious choices. With that power comes responsibility so it may at times moving forward into 2010 feel like they are getting blamed unfairly for the decisions made in the past or the lack of progress being made in the present but they need to see past the accusations to the fear that inspires this criticism and recognize that only the powerful get criticized and held accountable. So rejoice second wavers! Your thoughts, voice, and choice count! No longer are your choices going to be attributed to an unconscious process that can be easily manipulated by advertising or political campaigns; now you are choosing more consciously than ever and this shift in your process and the way you hold your power will force the powerbrokers to adopt more honesty. In turn the gift of 2010 to you will be that your creativity, initiative, and passion that have been buried for so long will now have a real chance of making an impact in the world.

The Keepers

The third and last wave is a small but vocally resistant group; the spiritual naysayers.  They will feel the changes that are blatantly obvious to the first wave, and that the second wave has already begun to learn about, but for them it will only register unconsciously. On the surface they will be even more resistant, more argumentative, more confrontational. Before we are quick to judge this group, there is something constructive even in this resistance to change. This group asks us “Are you sure you want to get rid of….?” The third wave’s attachment to the status quo will be the last call for all of us to see whether there is still anything of value in the old systems before we toss them out. If after we hear all the arguments from the third wave for keeping an old way of being or doing something, we still want to throw out the old ways out, then we really have evaluated and found the old systems wanting and we can be assured that we did not throw out anything on a whim. Also, by forcing us to evaluate old systems and ways of doing things, we start to develop a clearer vision of what we want to replace the old systems with. The challenge to the third wavers in 2010 will be to realize that their conservatism’s usefulness is not in rigidity but in discernment, that they can better uphold old values and maintain cultural continuity and stability not by being adamantly rigid but being the voice of discernment and scrutiny when it comes to values. In its most distorted form this energy becomes prejudice and fundamentalism. In its most enlightened form to becomes scholarly and keepers of the sacred. The third wavers’ largest challenge in 2010 is within themselves to choose the more enlightened energy described above so that their opinion is valued and considered a helpful contribution to evaluating old systems and rebuilding a new vision of the world. Only through this self-examination will the third wavers get their gift of 2010: recognition that sometimes, in this era of wanting everything new, fast and young, that old and slow also have value.

I see this all starting energetically in 2011 and the energy manifesting physically in 2012  in lots of people debating about belief systems more in the public forum than before. The third wave group will challenge everyone else in a highly charged way, likely inciting lots of aggressive energy from all groups. 2012 promises to be a volatile but transformative, progressive year.

For 2010, get on board and enjoy the perks of riding the wave. So take a class, go to therapy, read self-help books. If you have already been doing that, then deepen your studies with more serious training because you are probably part of the first wave and the world needs its pioneers to lead the way for the next few years to something more peaceful. And those pioneers who have been struggling a lot in the last year, and to a lesser extant, their whole lives, need community for support. So if you don’t already belong to a serious study group of some sort, this is the year for the first wave people and the more sensitive of the second wave.

As a result of all of this, 2010 is going to be a banner year for healers, professional intuitives, the esoteric arts, and spiritual training. And people will really start having fun with their spiritual studies. As a result of these conflicting energies, I see the economy continuing to be weird, sometimes very light and fluid, other times dramatic and dire and to switch moods more than a hormonal teenager. For those empowering themselves with spiritual, meditative, or intuition training, they will be able to ride these waves without getting sucked in to the drama like the last year.

To kick off the new year, I am implementing a whole bunch of new measures to offer support to any fans of intuition and mindfulness, and consequently are sensitive to the energy out there: at home exercises downloadable from iTunes for free; hot Tweet tips on interesting learning and social trends related to general spiritual, environmental, and social change; a coming blog with articles like these ones, and a Facebook forum where I lead online discussions focusing on intuition. I continue to welcome readers to send me questions or comments about what I wrote, or on intuition and psychic matters, which I will happily respond to. Of course, I also have comprehensive intuition training programs for those who seek more support and deeper learning. So whatever stage of interest you are at, I hope to be of service to you in the new year and wish you an enlivening, transformative 2010!

Katherine Opashinov is a psychotherapist, professional intuitive, and founder of Intuitive Centre, Canada’s most comprehensive program for intuition studies for personal and professional development. For more information or to contact her with questions or comments on this article, visit her website www.katherineopashinov.com or www.intuitivecentre.com.



Why Vampire Stories are Popular Now

It seems everywhere we turn these days we are seeing another vampire tv show or movie, from the massively popular Twilight book and movie saga to The Vampire Diaries and True Blood on tv, not to mention the countless other stories with supernatural creatures. I'm a big fan of them but I know that a lot of these aren't even good quality writing. So I asked myself why are all these stories so compelling to me and, judging by their popularity, to many other people.  I thought about all the clients and students I know who also are big fans and why they love these stories and I finally figured it out: the Persephone myth.

For those of you who don't know the Greek myth of Persephone, here is a simple version of it: The earth Goddess Demeter had a maiden daughter named Kore who was playing with some nymphs in a meadow one day when she was abducted by the God of the underworld Hades. Now we sometimes say things like "It is hotter than Hades" as if it is a synonym for hell, but that is not accurate. Yes, it is downstairs but it is not the same as Christian hell. It is not particularly hot or evil. Hades in Greek mythology is the place where all souls went when they died. It psychologically represents the darkness of the unknown (the greatest unknown being what comes after death), so it represents the unconscious, the psyche. So maiden Kore is brought underground to be the young bride of the King of the unconscious and the psyche which then makes her the Queen of the unconscious and the psyche. This transition from innocence to insight through death and the supernatural makes her archetypally associated with psychic ability. The transformation is so big that she gets a new name: Persephone. The myth ends with Persephone's mother, the goddess Demeter, being so heartbroken that her daughter has been taken from her to live for eternity underground that she is not able or willing to make spring come back which threatens to starve all of humanity. Without humans, Zeus would have no one to pay homage to him so he negotiates a settlement between Demeter and Hades. Persephone will spend half the year underground with Hades (death, winter) and half the year above ground with Demeter (life, summer).

Like a detective, I started going through each of these stories and saw that there was a consistent pattern that supported my theory. Every popular vampire story of late has a romance between a Hades-like vampire character who because of his death-like status represents the underworld figure; a Kore-like maiden of the light represented by a young, good-hearted, virgin initiated into the dark, like Kore being sucked into the underworld; and lastly, and an element of the psychic. The most recent vampire stories emphasize the Hades-like characters desire to be part of, or connected to the world of the light directly or through Kore.

In The Vampire Diaries, it is partially Elena's independent and strong mind that makes her attractive to the Salvatore brothers, and shows her potential to be good vampire material in the future. Like choosing a Goddess Queen, only those humans who are of unusual quality are chosen in the stories to become vampire heroines. That is because both the role of Goddess Queen and vampire are figures of immortal consorts, like a marriage that lasts forever with no chance of divorce, you would want to make sure you chose someone interesting to spend eternity with.

In Twilight, it is Bella's psychic inscrutability that partially makes her so attractive to Edward who not only embodies the Hades figure by being dead but also by being psychic himself. Like the Salvatore brothers, he can go into literal daylight himself but still needs Bella, as they need Elena, to go into the metaphoric light of life, to keep him connected to the world of life, to wanting to be alive.

In True Blood, heroine Sookie Stackhouse is telepathic and her attraction to vampire Bill is initially fueled by her inability to hear his thoughts. In his deathly presence, she feels the first quiet of her tumultuous psychic life.

In the classic series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, in the episode where Buffy is temporarily telepathic she can't read her vampire boyfriend's mind because as he succinctly explains, "Like the mirror, I reflect no thoughts".

So why would the Persephone myth experience a resurgence of popularity? Because our culture badly wants psychic peace and quiet; we want respite from our manic fear of our own mortality through a glimpse into the unknown. That's the whole point of these stories: the uniting of light and dark transcends the fear of death and gives us insight into the great mysteries of life. In other words, it gives us intuition to see beyond the regular binary way of perceiving our worlds. I think that there is a clear shift in the collective consciousness towards a greater intuition that starts with a idle curiosity, even fascination (evinced by the popularity of shows like Medium, Ghost Whisperer, The Listener, etc.), and ends with a need for psychic harmony and peace that are represented in the vampire/Persephone stories. So I predict that vampire stories will continue to be as popular as they are now as long they continue to capture the zeitgeist of intuition that we are collectively experiencing now.

An increased interest in intuition in our culture is obvious. One just needs to check what is selling in our pop cultural venues from the tv shows listed above to the exponentially growing market of books and classes on intuition and psychic matters. What is less discussed is that people are actually getting more intuitive but don’t know it yet. People aren’t growing more intuitive because of the books. They are buying the books, watching the shows, taking the classes to understand what is happening to them. When I first started teaching intuition seven or so years ago,  my classes were full but many of the people there didn’t even know what they had signed up for. I mean they knew the subject of the class was intuition but would actually say to me, “I don’t really know what intuition is”. They had a longing for something that they only knew instinctively. Whenever I asked them questions, they were regularly stumped. Now my classes are full of people who have very definite ideas about what intuition is, answer my questions with confidence, and often have fairly developed intuition for beginners. And when I ask them if they have read any books on intuition or taken classes already, the vast majority say no. So why is the collective’s intuition growing naturally? What I see is that people’s sensitivities in this culture are growing along side of our growing interest in not the occult, but in meditation and other practices of peaceful observation or mindfulness, like yoga. The next step for people is to recognize that their intuition is growing even if they are not making an effort to develop it. Many people who are naturally sensitive are osmotically growing their intuition. It is for that reason that the intuition training I teach through my school, Intuitive Centre, is not just about developing and harnessing intuition, it is about integrating it in a healthy way into our identities and lives. The number one fear of intuition I have heard over the years from countless students is that once they become intuitive, once they touch the unconscious, that they will never be the same again. And my answer is: they are right. You won’t be the same after you develop your intuition, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It wasn’t for Kore who then matured into her full power to become a queen. So next time you find yourself drawn to watching a vampire story, bring into consciousness what your psyche needs for its healing and growth: that the vampire story mirrors your own increase in intuitive interest or ability and shows you in an archetypal way how one can make the transition from Kore to Persephone, and still get to live in the light after touching the great mystery.