Everyone seems to be in the prediction game these days. At least that how it seems. In reality though a lot of predictions are born of a strong and growing appetite for people to outwardly project their own desires and fantasies (and sometimes fears) into the world, to create them as the reality which everyone else must inhabit, and to call that prediction. You see this in 1-2-1 predictive readings, as well as among many who claim to be able to see the future. What they in fact see is the future they secretly want (or privately fear). Rarely, these days, do we encounter people with genuine clairvoyance (clear sighted-ness).

It is like this now because access to information has been restricted. A strange thing to say you may think, given that we have an Internet awash with articles, blogs and analyses, in written, visual and audio form. Except that very little of this is actual information. It is mostly opinion and viewpoint, the externalisation of inner hopes and fears, the outward projection of an inner narrative. As such, the Internet (including social media and YouTube) has become like a Hall of Mirrors, where you can constantly see your own distorted thoughts and feelings reflected back at you, but can never see clearly enough or far enough ahead to actually know what is really going on.

This state of affairs suits those in power down to the ground. It might even be said that they set it up like this. They certainly want it to continue because it is good for them if ours is the most ignorant society in all of history. Medieval serfs probably knew more about the reality of life than most moderns do. I’m not even joking.

Modern society is infected by the arrogance of illusory knowledge, a state where the intuitive and instinctive faculties which keep humans alive have been submerged beneath a sea of words, thoughts and ideas, none of which bear any relationship to reality, or take us any closer toward happiness. This state of affairs is presented to us as the triumphant result of progress and the joyous fruit of our evolution. Yet by every possible metric things in our society are getting incrementally worse, not better, and in 2024 we will see, more clearly that ever before, how any real attempt to change that is shut down by those who benefit from the status quo.

2024, numerologically, sums to 8 (2 + 0 + 2 + 4 = 8), the number of power. And because everything in this realm operates through duality this will be the year of empowerment for some, and disempowerment for others. Which one will you experience? Well, that depends on your willingness to exit the game. In the UK this means accepting that a Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will simply be Tony Blair 2.0 and that his election will accelerate this country into the gutter. From centre of a global empire to failed state in one hundred years, I suppose that’s got to be some kind of achievement. And accelerate it will, for it is as the controversial and cancelled journalist Chris Hedges said,

“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, government destroys freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals and the banks destroy the economy.”

He was talking about America, but it’s true for any Western country.

Now, I won’t spend too much time on politics, but I will say here what I have always said; it really, really matters what you believe. I mean it matters to your soul, to your karma as well as to your general wellbeing. Put very crudely, conservatives might well be going to Hell, but no socialist ever got into Heaven. This is not because of the respective merits of the Right or the Left, but because all politics, as currently constituted, is anti-spiritual, with politicians taking unto themselves rights which they simply have no authority to possess. Those who conspire in this deceit, that is to say anyone who legitimises their greed through the charade known as democracy, automatically make the world a worse, less spiritual place, because no politician, of any stripe, is able to improve the spiritual condition of people, which is, in the end, the only thing that counts.

All this matters because the condition of our world is determined by power – who has it, what do they do with it and in whose interests do they exercise it? The hidden reality is that God is the only one who really has any power at all, but humans – including politicians – are engaged in attempts to seize that power from God and to exercise it for their own ends. If you are on the political Left you might read this and say “oh yes, that’s those damn Conservatives alright, always out for themselves” while if you are on the political Right you might switch that round and denounce the Left as pretenders to God’s Throne. But the truth is that both the Left and the Right are anti-spiritual, because they mistakenly believe that power rightfully belongs in human hands. It doesn’t, because we can’t handle it and we do no good with it. It is as my late teacher, Arthur, said,

“Power is always misused until control is learned.”

All this might be a bit much to take on board, so let’s go even further! All human attempts to exercise power involve a destruction of the sacred and distance us from the Divine. Attempts to ‘understand the world through the power of science’ have resulted in our vision being darkened and our perspective narrowed. Attempts to spread ‘wealth and prosperity to all’ have created an unsustainable asset price bubble which has shut out millions of people from the chance to own their own home or direct their own lives. Attempts to bring ‘health and long life to all people through the miracles of vaccine technology’ have created a class of permanently sick people who will never again know what it is like to be healthy. I could go on, for there are many such cases where the modern attitude of progress through science and technology, fuelled by constant economic growth, all under the control of so-called liberal democracies, has created hell on earth. In 2024 more and more people will experience that hell, as it becomes clear how almost every choice placed before us has been pre-approved – curated, as they they say online - and how even though you are constantly told that you are powerful, you are in fact – unless you take steps to the contrary - the most disempowered you have ever been.

Esoterically, all this is explained by the Rider Waite Smith Tarot card Strength, card number 8. Here we see the lady – note that it’s a lady, not a man - wrestling with a wild animal, while upon and above her head sits two crowns. First is the crown of nature, a garland of some kind, signifying the power which the lady may – if she is strong enough – draw from and exert over the material world. But the leaves, twigs and flowers of the garland, like all material things, must wither, fade and die eventually. This is the lesson for all those who seek power in, from and over the material. All those who bow down before the altar of the material, who seek political, economic or even cultural power, must in the end, fail, for these things are not simply transitory, they are not even real! The real power – ultimately the only power – appears to the lady in the Strength card as a Divine Crown, the lemniscate which hovers above her head. This is an invisible form of energy which guides her and from which her power flows.

But there’s even more going on here, with this card, this number, and this coming year. The garland crown, the crown of power, born from and wielded over the material world, is an illusion. Humans have no power, not really. We are constantly acted upon by forces Divine and Demonic which are mostly beyond our awareness and comprehension. The only power worth anything, the only power able to do anything constructive in this world is the power of the Divine, which humans regularly try to seize for, or attribute to, themselves. Expect to see plenty of this in 2024. Buckets of moral righteousness will be poured out by holier-than-thou claimants to the truth, and it might get very noisy and rather distracting. But if you are clear-sighted enough you will be able to penetrate through to the reality, that the so-called free and fair elections in Britain and the US are simply plain old-fashioned power grabs, one type of human from another.

Last thing. We cannot think about 2024, and the number 8, without also thinking about the chief manner in which power is exercised in this world - money. And on that topic I will simply say this: for years people have been predicting economic collapse. Many of these predictions were in fact nothing more than desires, with those making them secretly (and sometimes openly) wanting the pain and misery that such an event would bring. Yes, people can be funny like that. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and if it’s going to happen then 2024 is a good year for it. This may, or may not, show itself in the stock market (whose performance has, in recent times, born less and less resemblance to the well-being of the nation), or it might show itself in the property market (which is now much more like a bureaucratic process than a market). It might show itself as a banking crisis, or in a geo-political crisis with profound economic effects. The effects of the prominence of the number 8 may even be literal, with disruptions to the power supply grid. Whatever happens the material conditions of most people’s lives seems ripe for a shake-up. There will be fights between politicians and the people, the people and the courts, businesses and consumers. Peace is possible, but…

In short, because 2024 is the Year of Power it must also be the Year of either God or the Devil. You don’t even have to be religious to use those terms. God is power, beyond the reach of human hands. The Devil is that same power, placed in the hands of humans who don’t deserve it and don’t know how to use it. They think they know of course, and that’s the problem, and that is why 2024 will almost certainly see an acceleration of the collapse of Western civilisation, with no clear sign – yet – of what might replace it. Everything will be alright in the end, I’m sure, but for now, hold on tight! Those with power rarely give it up lightly, while those hungry for power rarely know when to stop.

Let us know what you foresee for 2024, and beyond, in the comments below…