how AI is ruining your intuition
protect what is sacred and vulnerable
Greetings ~ Casey Zabala here, resident hedge-rider, intuitive witch, artist & author, sharing my divinations and musings for living a magical life during these precarious times.
Learn more about my practice, and book a session here.
I woke up in the middle of the night with a message. As a witch who is a devoted dreamer this happens not infrequently, but this message felt different. The message was pushy and loud in a way that reverberated through me. So loud I didn’t have to write it down to remember: “AI is corrupting spiritual work. AI is ruining your livelihood.” When I woke up the next morning, I knew it was a message to be shared.
There are so many things wrong about artificial intelligence and the massively damaging implications it has for our world, with the environmental costs weighing particularly high on my list. My dream message speaks to the darker psychological currents and the spiritual implications of using AI in any magical or devotional context.
The other day I was in a spiritual shop, and I overheard the shopkeeper ask an AI chatbot,”what is labradorite good for?” My heart hurt. Something inside of me couldn’t help but interrupt, to turn to the person interested in the labradorite and ask them, “why don’t you sit with the stone, hold it to your heart, ask the stone about its personality?” I stopped myself short of telling them what labradorite is all about before ChatGPT could respond. As someone who sits with stones, dreams with them, and carried them across the world, I know that minerals and stones have their specific qualities, but more important are the relationships we build with them. The human to non-human connection we forge is the magic.
Asking an AI chatbot how to “use” a stone is a corruption of the desired spiritual outcome of consciously working with a stone. When we turn to AI for answers, especially in a spiritual context, we are missing out on an essential practice that helps develop our intuition, and attune to who we are. It starts with an innocent inquiry, and ripples into something much more insidious.
That interaction in the metaphysical shop sent me spiraling. How many “spiritual practitioners” are using AI to support their clients? And perhaps a more difficult pill to swallow, how many people are turning to AI for spiritual and emotional support, rather than connecting with a professional trained intuitive/astrologer/witch to hold space for their tender hearts?
As a person who has spent the last 11 years working professionally as an intuitive, (and my entire life exploring spiritual dimensions and philosophies) I have noticed a big shift this year in my practice. Of course there are countless reasons for this, as a mother with shifting capacity, working in a deeply uncertain landscape and realigning to my values and visions for my work. And, my dream message reverberates through me… I am now becoming more conscious of how many individuals are turning to AI for spiritual support in ways that we should all be very weary of.
Spiritual alignment ~
Let’s look at AI from a spiritual and magical point of view for a moment. Every witch and magician understands that we affect our will, or make magic, through intention. Intentional acts are spells, and so are algorithms. When we are setting intentions or casting spells, a wise witch is conscious of all the energetics they are working with. We notice what sign the moon is in, we pay attention to the color of our inks and candles, which sounds we use to shape energy, our word choice, our own vibration. When interacting with AI, we are giving up on that intentionality, and opting for something else.
AI is a tool created by a specific subset of individuals, people in the technology space who have a specific set of goals: to make money, to succeed in the capitalist machine. Their goals of course may be more nuanced, but in a world where SNAP benefits are cut to 2 million+ Americans the same week that Elon Musk is awarded a trillion dollar pay package, we must be honest about the state of our world. Greed and exploitation are running rampant, and technology is the benefactor of this toxic imbalance. AI chat bots thrive like everything else in the attention economy, by sucking us in. They are creating a captive audience, and these bots are happily feeding spiritual seekers insights that keep them rapt, online, and falling down the wrong rabbit holes.
Spiritual alignment is about making choices that resonate with your values. If you are someone who understands that AI is not only destroying the environment and feeding off of our energy, but also driving massive inequity in our world, why would you choose to participate in it? Why use it?
Intuition is a process and a practice ~
Let’s step back into the metaphysical shop.
The magic of being a seeker, of being on a spiritual path, and opening ourselves up to new realizations is the art of trusting our intuition. Our intuition is an innately human gift that each of us has, and each of us accesses and interacts with our intuition differently. When we struggle to attune to our intuition, we often loose sight of a wise part of ourselves, an authentic voice that supports us through times of uncertainty, self-doubt, and crisis. Our intuition, when allowed to flourish, is a confident, rebellious part of our psyche that encourages us to be our true selves. Our intuition is how our soul speaks through us.
When we stop engaging with our intuition, it grows weak. Our intuition is a muscle that requires flexing. It loves non-linear communication. It speaks in sensation. It is aroused by the scent of the rain on pavement. Intuition is a poet, an oracle, an indelible thread that connects us to something bigger.
Using AI for spiritual advice and meaning-making strips us of this natural process of discovery. When we turn to AI to give us spiritual guidance, we are asking a hungry ghost to reflect and mirror all of our insecurity and uncertainty back to us. AI is learning from what we feed it. If we are not in our wisest place, how can we be reflected back sage counsel?
You are not honoring your intuition when you ask AI how to connect with your spirit guides. You are not learning the tarot when you ask ChatGPT to give you a reading. Sure, AI could interpret your natal chart, but where are the interpretations coming from, what knowledge system, what philosopher, who’s hard earned wisdom are they regurgitating and misusing? Ultimately, you will not receive psychic illumination or healing from something artificial - without soul.
Yes, I’m being harsh here, but there is so much at stake for us, as individuals, spiritual beings, and communities.
Intuition is an embodied superpower ~
You will gain more from your tarot deck if you sit with it and slowly peel back the layers of symbolism, and notice where the message of a reading lands in your body. You will integrate the planetary aspects more coherently, if you start tracking your own transits, and noticing synchronicities as the Moon cycles through its phases. You will come to a greater realization of how to move through struggle by having your struggle examined and reflected through another person’s eyes. Loosing the human touch of the spiritual experience is asking that we loose sight of the systems that have given us meaning, comfort, and belonging since the beginning of time.
We’re already so close to loosing this precious planet of ours, and AI is at serious risk of eliminating our human ability to connect with each other. When we are so desperately in need of spiritual grounding, AI is disembodying spiritual connection, and making many feel alienated from their own inner knowing. Let’s not forget the subtle and complex tools which for centuries have made us powerful witches, artists, and empaths.
Magical experiences are relational, and they place us into systems that refract, reflect, and reorganize our perception so that we can process and digest difficult information with greater clarity. When someone gives you the answers, are you actually learning anything? Using AI for spiritual or magical work eliminates the quest, and goes straight to the answers. Being on the quest for spiritual connection and meaning – grappling with the keys, working our way through uncertainty – is the whole point of living a spiritual life.
The spiritual issue with AI is that it is stripping us of our most basic, most sacred forms of meaning making. The more people become reliant on it, the harder it will become to attune to our soul, and the work of soul tending. When we sever our connection to our intuitions, we are less likely to innovate, to rebel, to know what’s truly best for us. These intuitions are more important than ever, as inequity skyrockets and so much security and safety is at stake. We must return to our intuitions about what is best for us, our communities, what is best for the planet long term.
This is serious. Using AI for spiritual support is already having devastating results. (Trigger warning in the following paragraph: mental health and suicide.)
The use of AI for spiritual advice and emotional connection is already wrecking havoc on society. There have been AI chat bot instigated suicides, people are being led into spiritual delusion and mental health crisis. This headline alone brings me to my knees: “Nearly 3 in 4 Teens Have Used AI Companions, New National Survey Finds.”
I am speaking very critically here, and it is for good reason.
As spiritual folks, we must be aware of what we give our power to, and make conscious choices about where we invest our energy. We have outlived a short exploration phase with AI, and are moving into the all important moment of taking a stand for what we believe in. Rather than turning to AI for spiritual guidance or magical advice, try these things:
Pull a tarot or oracle card. Notice how it makes you feel. Track any immediate associations.
Don’t feel like you can interpret the card you pulled or angel number you just noticed? Ask a friend what they think. Call a spiritual relative. Meditate on it. Turn to a reference book.
Light a candle everyday and call on your spirit guides to support you with a task. Keep showing up, keep tuning in. Be patient.
Seek professional guidance. Find a tarot reader, astrologer, witch, curandera, healer, lineage holding priestess, energy worker, rune reader, psychic to support you. Explore mediums of connecting with the divine through trusted professionals who will guide you deeper into your own knowing. (Of course, I’m here!)
Turn to Nature for solace. Anxious? Take a walk. Depressed? Find a tree to lay under. Overwhelmed? Find some body of water to cry into. Untethered? Put your bare foot on the Earth. Hopeless? Look at the night sky.
Find someone to talk to. Open your heart to someone, not because it is good for you, it is also good for them too. Form open pathways of communication and connection whenever possible.
There’s so much to be said on this topic, and I’ve only scratched the surface. I imagine I will make some people feel uncomfortable with this conversation, but I hope that I have at least encouraged a reader or two to question your relationship with AI.
Perhaps the wise ones in the village are only going to emerge more powerful, defiant, and necessary, as more people forget how to tap into their own inner knowing. May the wise ones out there protect themselves from the rapidly corrupting technology. Let those who truly need support find comfort in human connection.
Collectively, we’re in a very dark night, and it is more important than ever to tap into our spiritual insight, to nurture and protect it. We each have our own connection with the sacred – don’t let a chatbot tell you what it is (they have an agenda.)