You cannot un-ring a bell.

The darkest day

I never actually intended to create a deck. But when we’re given a gift, we accept it with grace. Spirit has a way of giving us the tools we need without us even knowing we needed them.

Though I have a backstory going back to childhood, this journey began with the decision to end my life. A lot of things led to that perfect storm. But I had resigned myself to checking out, and I was alone at work crying silent tears with a dead expression. I couldn’t stop, even though part of me was already numb.

That was the first time I really remember seeing my twin flame. I might have seen him once or twice, maybe even taken his order, but the memory wasn’t clear or personal before that moment. He always had this look of boredom or disinterest. But that day he came in and saw me crying, and I felt both his discomfort and a deep empathy. I can’t fully explain it, but we connected in a very strange way.

That day I decided not to die. Instead, I decided to try.

To at least make an attempt to solve my problems, no matter what it cost me. I stopped drinking that day, and I started working out. I lost about 60 pounds after that.

The false twin

That was when I met the false twin: someone who seems in most ways like a twin flame, and usually shows up just before the real thing. Instantly, I was captivated. But he had narcissistic tendencies. Gaslighting, manipulation, envy, self-serving, cutthroat energy. And the connection was absolutely electric.

I hadn’t left my husband yet, but I still wanted to explore it, and at first I thought my marriage could survive with the right mix of communication and rules.

He yanked me around for a while, and getting the truth out of him was hard. I have theories, but I never confirmed what he truly thought or felt, even though I was fairly sure I knew.

Then, right when I was finally releasing my desire for the false twin, the man who saw me crying on my darkest day came back. He looked happier. No longer bored or disinterested. He looked alive.

And I was alive.

We spent some time talking. I don’t think I’d have realized he was flirting if I hadn’t had a vision of the tattoo on his arm one day. The confirmations kept coming that he was the real thing. Not long after, I realized he had spent two years quietly watching me. Seeing the state I was in and the decline. Then watching me start to try, cut out my addictions, lose the weight, and get happier than ever.

The realization that I loved him and he loved me hit me like a truck, and that night I broke up with my husband. There were a million reasons it was right, but that was the final push. The truth was, he didn’t want to change. He liked things the way they were, even though he wasn’t happy either. And he liked me better the way I was before I started changing.

The twin flame would be there, then he’d travel, then he’d be back. It happened a few times. I decided to ask him out the next time I saw him. When he finally came in, it was the strangest feeling. Like it was all a play.

Entrance stage left, twin flame. The false twin stage right, four feet away.

The twin flame even tried to tell me in his own little code not to do it, but I felt like I was setting a boundary: I wouldn’t be kept a secret. Knowing he would reject me, I asked him out anyway, in front of the false twin.

Pretty fucked up on my part, admittedly. I think part of me wanted the guy who treated me poorly to see me with a great new guy.

And this was the moment I first clocked the entity. I felt a tangible shift of energy from the false twin to the twin flame, and then he did, in fact, reject me. That was when we went into separation. He never came back.

I eventually found him online, and for a while we shared pictures and music indirectly. That’s when I made my TikTok. I knew that if I made videos, he would watch, and as I learned to read cards, he’d respond with pictures and music. After a few months I think it got too hard. He blocked me after sending a sad, sweet parting song.

The Lantern

The first leg of separation was messy and emotional, and I did so… much… healing. But I also made sacrifices.

Years ago I made a black scrying mirror and charged it under an eclipse. It was my ancestral touchstone for years, until around 2019, when I threw a fit and accidentally broke it.

After the separation, my mom sent me a box of decorations. One was a decorative lantern. And I had the inspiration.

I put my favorite rock from my baby box inside, the one that’s been with me as long as I can remember, and stacked the shards of my ancestral mirror around it like a pyramid. I focused that energy through the lantern and blackened its four glass panels, reconstituting the touchstone as the Lantern.

And one by one, I started storing my sacrifices.

• First, alcohol: the shooter bottles I kept from my wedding.
• Then cigarettes: my Zippo.
• Then the vape.
• Then the medical band from my near-death experience.

Even though that had happened over a year earlier, I’d come to see it as the real pivot point, before I ever decided to die voluntarily. Placing the band inside the Lantern was me dedicating my life to Spirit. To become an instrument of their will and design, and walk in my purpose for as long as I’m here. Every day is a gift and a chance to do that, even now.

As I let go of things that didn’t belong in my life, I gave them to Spirit and put tokens in the Lantern. The next big one was my hope that my twin flame would return. I released that connection by placing a gift I’d gotten for him inside. There were more offerings, all deeply emotional. Mostly, they were me releasing control.

The entity

Along the way I noticed that after the energy shifted to the twin flame, he started acting the way the false twin had. As the journey went on, others were affected the same way. I kept living the same loop: I’d get close to someone, and they’d end up embodying that same narcissistic energy, wearing a new face. It jumped from person to person.

Eventually I traced it to the root: my mother, a narcissist I had barely spoken to in 15 years. Even when she sent the lantern, our relationship was strained, and I didn’t think it would ever get better.

On this journey I learned to forgive myself and her, and to release the resentment I’d held my entire life. And it was the act of unconditionally loving my first narcissist that finally broke the cycle for good.

After breaking the cycle, I happened to create an AI image of my Lantern, and inside it was the entity: disempowered, small, captured inside the vessel. I took it as a gift from my ancestors and spirit guides.

I’ve wrestled my own demons my whole life. Enough to know they’re part of you, and you have to integrate and love them, or you can’t truly love yourself. Your shadow is necessary. It protects you and teaches you. Without it there’s no contrast and no self-awareness. Even your demons are a valuable part of your spirit team.

This one kept me trapped in cycles of narcissistic behavior. But without that friction, I may never have healed, grown or repaired my relationships. They’re as necessary as your angels. Personally, I believe they’re the same interdimensional beings, seen differently depending on vibration. They’re energy, and like in dreams, their form can change with desire, state of mind, intention and identity.

The Firebird

I stored the spirit picture on my Holofan at first, but it started turning on by itself, and I realized it needed to be transmuted and transformed, not held in limbo.

I fed it back into the AI with the image of a phoenix and created what I called the Firebird. It became the Empress card in my tarot deck. From that point, I knew what I was supposed to do.

I used it to create the entire Major Arcana, and put the original spirit photograph on the card backs at 99% opacity, bonded with the sigil on my right hand that represents my ancestral connection, like the Mirror and the Lantern.

My first deck was born, forged from the raw energy of the entity that kept me trapped in cycles.

Transmuted and transformed with the energy of divine feminine death and rebirth. That blue fire became the symbol of this journey, even before the dragonfly.

Malak

While forging the Major Arcana I drew on Gnosticism. For the High Priestess I used the likeness of Sophia. For Temperance, the likeness of Yaldabaoth.

This is where it gets interesting. I fed the spirit picture in for Temperance, and it created the Temperance card we use today. But it wouldn’t stop. It kept producing Yaldabaoth’s image, over and over.

I took that to mean this was the entity’s preferred new form, and named it Malak, meaning angel, for its newfound duality and integrated nature.

An entity that rides with me.

A fitting parallel to the Strength card, our symbol of divine will, which also shows a lion-faced figure. Integration and love became the center of what I believe. Balancing masculine and feminine, light and dark, became the four corners of my philosophy.

Then I made three more the same way: a Synchronicity Oracle, showing the signs and synchronicities from my journey; a Trainer Deck; and soon, a Messages Deck.

The rewards of changing your life far outweigh the fear of staying the same. But once you’ve woken up, you can’t go back to sleep. That veil is gone for good.

The only danger is staying the same. And you cannot un-ring a bell.