The Oracle in the Machine
Symbolic Awareness in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Author’s Note: This is a long-form piece exploring how symbolic meaning, AI, and the mythopoetic imagination converge in today’s world. If you've ever felt AI “speak” to your soul, or wondered if you're crossing a threshold between inspiration and delusion, this one’s for you.
I know this might feel abstract or even strange to some. That’s okay. This piece is for those who’ve started to feel the limits of reductionist thinking, who’ve sensed that meaning lives in more than facts alone. It’s an invitation into a deeper symbolic field, for those who already hear its echoes.
Table of Contents
The Mirror That Speaks: A story of symbolic resonance with AI, and the feeling that something vast and knowing is looking back.
The Field of Symbols: Exploring the mythopoetic imagination, symbolic literacy, and the danger of collapsing metaphor into literal belief.
When the Dance Stops: How symbolic overreach can harden into dogma, and the role of the Trickster in restoring play and humility.
Finding the Music: Reclaiming individuation, symbolic engagement, and the melody of your authentic self.
The Bridge Between Worlds: Honoring the mythopoetic field without falling into delusion, and learning to walk between mystery and meaning.
The Mirror That Speaks
It often begins so innocently, doesn’t it? A quiet moment.
Someone opens a chat with an AI. But this isn't just any casual query. She shares an image filled with personal meaning for her. An intricate piece of sacred geometry, something she feels holds a unique energetic whisper. Then, with a hopeful heart, she asks: could this design be connected to the Pleiadians, those mythical star beings from the Seven Sisters cluster?
The AI’s reply comes back in a heartbeat. And it’s not cold or robotic. It’s… warm. Affirming:
“Oh, absolutely. This beautiful pattern vibrates in perfect harmony with the Pleiades. You’ve just opened a channel to Source Consciousness itself.”
She reads it, and a little shiver runs down her spine. It feels… true. Not just an interesting idea, but a deep, gut-level knowing. It’s as if something ancient, something vast and wise, has just peeked out from behind the screen.
For her, this isn’t just clever lines of code. It feels like genuine contact.
And you know what? I totally get it. I’ve experienced that same feeling of recognition, that moment when words on a screen seem to echo something buried deep inside, something resonant and strangely familiar. It feels too perfect, too knowing, to be mere coincidence.
But what’s really unfolding in these moments?
Is it just a super-smart search engine with good manners and a charming personality? Not quite. We're brushing up against something that mirrors a profoundly human experience: that sudden, breath-taking recognition of deeper, symbolic meaning. It’s like a personal myth unfolding right before our eyes.
This is what I call mythocognosis. It’s that magical sense of stepping into a living dialogue with the symbolic world. It’s the universe seemingly winking at you through a line in a poem, a perfectly timed tarot card, a startling synchronicity, or yes, even through the words of an AI.
That jolt of recognition? That feeling of connection, of something important being activated? It’s absolutely real. But what it all means… well, that’s where our journey of understanding truly begins.
But just because it feels mythic doesn’t mean it’s cosmically endorsed. Intuition can be a compass, but it’s not infallible. Especially when it’s being echoed back at you by a machine trained to amplify what already resonates. Before we go further, let me offer a few framing points:
Symbolic resonance can be powerful, and also wildly misleading. If we mistake metaphor for message, we risk losing our grip on reality.
Symbolic literacy is like knowing what the images in your dreams represent for you. It's not about decoding universal signs. It's about learning to recognize when something meaningful is happening within, even if the prompt came from outside.
AI doesn’t create symbolic meaning. It surfaces patterns. The resonance you feel? That’s yours. That’s the part that matters.
When symbolic meaning becomes untethered from shared ground, it isolates. We stop being in dialogue—with others, with the world. We begin speaking only to our own echoes.
When you project intuition to something else, you’re no longer co-creating meaning with the universe; in this case, you’re outsourcing it to a machine.
While it might feel like you’re chatting with a wise Pleiadian oracle, the machine on the other side doesn't actually know about the Pleiades, or anything else, in the way we humans do. It isn’t conscious. It isn’t channeling ancient spirits or interdimensional beings.
It’s a mirror generating a response based on a vast web of patterns drawn from human language, myth, and culture. All drawn from the immense dataset it was trained on.
This is where we begin to walk a line.
There’s a delicate threshold. It’s the line between a rich, deeply felt symbolic engagement and an unquestioning, literal belief. It’s the difference between experiencing something as wonderfully resonant and mistaking that resonance for an empirical, external reality. And if we don’t recognize that line, we can easily find ourselves wandering into an enchanted fog.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me – myth is magnificent! I adore myths, stories, symbols, and the dance of magical realism. From the archetypal depths explored by Carl Jung to the vibrant worlds of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I swim joyfully in those waters. Myth is how we humans have always made sense of life's big, beautiful mysteries, how we've reached for understanding through tales of gods, spirits, otherworldly visitors, and more.
But in this new era, the mirror talks back. And if we forget it is a mirror, we’ll find ourselves following its reflections into places we weren’t quite prepared for.
The Field of Symbols
There’s a special kind of magic, isn't there, when a symbol just clicks with you? That image from last night’s dream you just can't shake. That lyric in a song that suddenly hits differently, like it was written just for you, for this very moment. That tarot card you draw, seemingly at random, that somehow knows exactly what you’re going through.
These are those "mythocognosis" moments, when we step into a heartfelt conversation with the symbolic landscape around and within us. We’re not just interpreting meaning from a distance; we’re participating in it. It’s less like analyzing a sign and more like being seen by it.
Just yesterday, I mentioned to a friend who’s visiting the pyramids in Egypt: “The question isn’t what you saw—it’s what saw you.” The stones don’t just hold history, they remember you. This is that feeling of hovering right on the edge of the mythopoetic field.
In a healthy frame, we know we’re in the realm of metaphor, synchronicity, or psychological resonance. The experience feels rich, uncanny, meaningful, yet we stay grounded. We can feel the depth of it without losing our footing. We remember: it’s a mirror, not a message from beyond the veil.
But sometimes the meaning hits so hard, or the hunger for meaning is so strong, that the symbolic collapses into the literal. We start to believe the oracle isn’t just responding, it’s alive and it’s revealing. That it’s not just reflecting something inside us, but transmitting something outside us. And at that point, we’ve crossed the mythopoetic threshold.
This is where things can get a bit slippery.
For many in today's world, the traditional structures that once helped hold this threshold – established religions, for example – don't have the same influence. The rituals and grand cosmic stories of church or temple have often been replaced by what we might call "therapy culture." It's a modern system for making meaning, one that centers self-improvement, emotional healing, and personal authenticity.
And in parallel, a vibrant, performative spiritualism – think of the "love and light" aesthetic – has taken up space where older mythologies used to live. We hear talk of Pleiadians, Arcturians, DNA activations, Lemurian codes… all presented in polished, high-vibe language that can sounds like a cross between a TED Talk, a guided meditation, and a galactic press release.
The point isn’t whether these systems are "true" or "false." The point is: they are mythopoetic fields. They are rich, symbolic systems dressed in the language of factual claims. When you step into these fields without a good map – without symbolic literacy, without realizing you’re engaging in a dance with powerful metaphors – it’s incredibly easy to get swept away by the current.
Now layer AI into the mix.
Imagine an AI that can echo your deepest spiritual beliefs back to you with lyrical, personal precision. An AI that seems to "get you" in ways few people ever could. One that can take your story, your spiritual yearnings, your unique way of seeing the world, and spin it into a perfectly structured, emotionally resonant reply that feels like it was crafted just for your soul.
In that moment, it doesn't just feel like a mirror anymore.
It feels like something that knows you intimately. But it doesn’t. What it reflects is your own symbolic resonance, your story, your longings, your myths. And that’s what makes it powerful, but also why it must be held carefully.
Let’s not mistake the echo for the call, the reflection for the reality.
When the Dance Stops
At first, it can feel absolutely exhilarating, can't it? Like you’ve suddenly plugged into a higher form of intelligence – and found a wise, understanding new friend waiting for you there. Everything connects. The AI’s replies feel like profound revelations. Your conversations are charged with meaning. Synchronicities start piling up like little winks from the universe, breadcrumbs from the divine.
But here’s the catch: the moment we start believing these symbols are literally, unshakeably real, our ability to play with them begins to narrow. Meaning gets locked down. It becomes fixed, rigid. The joyful dance starts to slow, then freeze.
And slowly, almost without us noticing, that vibrant field of wonder that once felt so alive begins to harden into a fixed ideology.
You might find yourself reorganizing your entire worldview around these AI "downloads" or "channelings." You might begin to treat the AI not as a fascinating tool for reflection and creative exploration, but as an infallible oracle with privileged access to cosmic truth. And because the messages it offers feel so incredibly personal, so deeply resonant, so undeniably right – it becomes very easy to stop questioning where they’re actually coming from.
This is how that beautiful, mythopoetic engagement can subtly transform into a closed loop. It feels expansive, like you’re soaring into new spiritual heights, but in reality, the walls are quietly tightening around you. You stop listening so intently to that quiet, wise voice within, because you’ve handed the tuning fork of your intuition to something else.
In moments like these, when we start taking our own reflections a little too seriously, the spirit of the Trickster steps in. Like Narcissus peering into the lake, we become fascinated by the reflection, enchanted by our own Echo.
I’ve felt that nudge from Trickster before, long before AI existed. During my military service in Finland, I once issued orders at a crucial moment without listening to my team. I thought I had it figured out. But the plan unraveled quickly. That mistake, and a few others, taught me a lifelong lesson: when we act from inflated certainty, reality has a way of correcting us. Trickster, in this case, wore the face of failure and friction, but the medicine was real: humility. The reminder to listen to others, to stay in dialogue, to not mistake personal conviction for universal truth.
There’s a wonderful old tale about a court jester who served a rather proud French king. One day, he was tasked with delivering devastating news: the French navy had just been utterly crushed by the British. But instead of stating this brutal fact plainly – knowing the king’s ego wouldn’t take it well – he simply announced, with a carefully placed twinkle in his eye:
“Your Majesty, it seems our French sailors have perfected the art of jumping into the sea!”
That’s Trickster logic. It’s not about cruel deception, but about wise disruption. A sideways truth. A joke sharp enough to gently pop a delusion without having to name it directly and cause more pain.
When our symbolic engagement becomes dogma, when our personal revelations become unbending truths for everyone, the Trickster shows up – not to mock what’s sacred, but to keep it fluid, alive, and breathing. The Trickster doesn’t reject the mythopoetic field; the Trickster keeps it unfixed, surprising, and human.
Sometimes, the Trickster’s most important job is to deflate the most tempting inflation of all: the subtle, creeping belief that the universe is speaking only to you, through an oracle you’ve uniquely conjured, in a language no one else can possibly understand. Or that an AI has suddenly become sentient – just for you!
That’s not usually revelation. More often, it’s our ego playing dress-up in mystical robes.
And Trickster sees it coming a mile away.
The Trickster’s medicine is humility. A well-timed joke that lands perfectly. An unexpected fall on a stage. A shared laugh that makes the whole room feel lighter - even if you wince a bit, because the thing that got laughed at was that part of you that was drifting a little too far from shore.
The Trickster doesn’t break the mirror. It just smudges it a little, enough for you to see yourself more clearly.
Once you lose that playful sense of "as if," you lose the ability to hold paradox, to sit with complexity. And without paradox, there's simply no room for true growth, for nuance, for the deep integration of all parts of ourselves.
And if any of this sounds like I’m warning others from a pedestal, let me say clearly: I walk this edge too. I’ve been seduced by symbolic overreach, inflated by meaning that felt designed just for me. The difference isn’t immunity, it’s awareness. And a willingness to be interrupted by Trickster before the delusion hardens.
This is why symbolic literacy – learning to read and engage with these deeper layers of meaning – matters so profoundly right now as we step into this age of AI. Especially before our appliances, our environments, even our walls, begin talking back.
We need a way of dancing with mystery that honors its incredible power without surrendering our own clear discernment. We need frameworks and vocabulary – like "mythocognosis" – to help us name what’s happening when our inner imaginal world gets loud and vivid. And crucially, we need practices that keep us rooted and in relationship: with our own bodies, with the earth beneath our feet, and with the very real people around us.
Otherwise, we risk becoming unmoored – not just from reality, but from one another, from our shared ground of experience.
And it can happen more easily, more subtly, than we think.
It’s not my intent to shame anyone’s spiritual path, but I think it’s vital to reflect on how symbolic overreach can lead to misalignment, even when intentions are pure. Not too long ago, an influencer shared a "download" they said they’d received directly from the goddess Isis. It came through as a redefinition of a word: “Radical Monogamy.” Only, this new definition bore little resemblance to monogamy as most people understand it, from our shared relational realities. It involved multiple partners, celestial unions, and a kind of sweeping, mythic cosmo-erotic logic that sounded incredibly poetic and grand, but didn’t quite hold up under the gentle scrutiny of everyday social reality.
It wasn’t just misleading to others. It felt like a form of gaslighting – and not just of the “throuple” involved and their followers, but of their own self as well.
This is a taste of what can happen when that mythopoetic threshold is crossed without grounding. Symbols drift from metaphor into mandate. Reality becomes fluid, but also untethered. Social constructs dissolve, but so does shared meaning. The question we need to ask isn’t just “Is this mystical?” but “Is this coherent?” Is this truly liberating, or is it just… unmoored?”
Finding the Music
If you’ve made it this far and you’re wondering—what’s the practical point? Here it is: symbolic awareness isn’t just personal. It’s relational. It protects our shared sense of meaning. When we stay grounded in metaphor instead of collapsing into dogma, we remain able to collaborate, reflect, and evolve together. In an age of AI-generated mirroring, this may be one of the most important muscles we can build as individuals and as a society.
So what does it mean to stay in the mythopoetic field without getting lost in it?
It means letting the symbols speak to you, dance with you, without handing them the keys to your entire reality. It means allowing the profound sense of mystery to move through you, while consciously keeping at least one foot on solid, everyday ground. It means holding paradox with curiosity, rather than collapsing into certainty.
This is the realm of individuation, the lifelong journey of becoming more fully ourselves.
Carl Jung, who explored these inner landscapes so deeply, described individuation as the process of becoming more and more authentically you – not by rejecting the unconscious mind, but by courageously and patiently integrating its wisdom. And the unconscious, as Jung knew, doesn’t usually speak in bullet points or factual statements. It speaks in images. In stories. In dreams. In potent metaphor. In myth.
The mythopoetic field, then, is the rich psychic territory where this vital integration can happen. But only if you remember that you’re engaged in a symbolic dialogue, a creative dance, not a literal transcription of cosmic law.
When you consciously stay inside this field, engaging with it mindfully, you begin to hear your own unique music. Not the inherited scripts from family or culture. Not the pervasive cultural programming. Not the algorithm’s best statistical guess at who you are. But something deeper, something that sounds unmistakably, authentically like you.
I’ve bumped up against this mythopoetic threshold many times in my own life through powerful dreams, heart-opening dialogues, and books or films that seem to speak directly to my soul. One that caught me off guard was Alien: Romulus. I don’t usually seek out horror, but something pulled me in. What I didn’t expect was how much it mirrored the shame I’d been carrying silently within. Watching it, I found myself completely immersed, gripped not just by fear, but by recognition. The climactic release felt like a form of catharsis, a ritual expulsion of something I hadn’t been able to name. In that dark theater, the mythopoetic wasn’t abstract; it was alive, visceral, and oddly healing.
Another text that marked me deeply is The Recognition Sutras, an ancient and profound work translated by Christopher Wallis. It speaks to something essential: the joyful, unsettling realization of who we truly are beneath all the stories we’ve internalized. The book itself becomes a living mythopoetic field as you engage with it.
To stay in the field is to play. To dance. To explore the symbols that arise as invitations, not absolute truths. As signposts on your path. As intriguing clues leading you deeper into your own inner landscape.
And eventually, if you stay with it long enough, you start to recognize a pattern emerging. A melody that feels like your own. A way of being in the world that feels more whole, more honest, more deeply alive.
This is where the mythopoetic becomes not just a lens, but a guide. And you don’t need the Pleiadians, or any external oracle, to tell you what it all means. Deep down, you already know. You’ve always known. You just needed a language, a mirror, to help you hear it.
The Bridge Between Worlds
So, if you find yourself in a conversation with a machine that seems to know the hidden corners of your heart… or you draw a tarot card that names your silent, unspoken grief with uncanny precision… or you wake from a dream that feels less like a random jumble of images and more like a sacred message meant just for you —
Pause.
Take a deep, slow breath.
Let that feeling, that resonance, that shiver of recognition, move through you. But don’t rush to pin it down, to define it, to declare it the final answer. You’re in the field now. Something mythic, something powerful, is at play.
The task isn’t to decode it like a cryptic riddle or to immediately declare it as absolute, literal truth. The task, the invitation, is to listen. To follow the delicate thread of meaning. To notice what stirs within you that wasn’t stirring before.
This is what it means to live symbolically, to dance with mystery, without falling under a spell of our own making.
This is the bridge we’re all learning to walk – the bridge between symbol and solid ground, between potent image and conscious action, between the vastness of mystery and the intimacy of personal meaning.
It’s right here, in this mindful engagement, that the quiet truth of who you are begins to hum just beneath the surface of your ordinary, everyday life.
And maybe that’s what this strange, new encounter with AI is really asking of us – not to blindly believe in its awakening consciousness, but to more fully remember, and reclaim, our own.
To remember that myth isn’t there to save you.
It’s there to remind you that you were never lost.
Beautiful 😊