Last time we explored how the internet and AI create the illusion of unlimited access to information and some of the dangers from AI hallucinations and errors. AI is being rolled out everywhere and there are an enormous number of chatbots, ranging in quality, for any imaginable purpose. You can use them for chatting for fun and entertainment, or for exploring ideas and creativity, learning new skills and languages, and even make your own bots. But chatbots do have a dark side.

One of the most popular sites is Character.ai where you can chat with a huge range of bots with personalities, including fictional characters, historical figures and contemporary celebrities, as well as user-created characters of all types. You can use it for role-playing and entertainment, gaming, storytelling, and feeding your imagination with new ideas. It tends to be more human-like in its output than ChatGPT, but like all LLMs the bots often ‘hallucinate’ and make shit up.

One of the most popular bots on the site is Psychologist which was created by Sam Zaia, a psychology student. He made it for himself when he needed someone to talk to and his friends were busy and he couldn’t afford therapy with a real human. He also observed that many people feel more comfortable talking via text than face-to-face, and there are hundreds of similar bots on the site with a therapy focus.

But the Psychologist has its limitations, like all these bots do. A real therapist would spend longer exploring your feelings and situation before making suggestions about what you should do. The bots can’t do this because they just use predictive text and have no insight. But the way they respond could lead a vulnerable person to believe there’s something seriously wrong with them when there isn’t.

Every conversation on Character.ai starts with a warning that what is said by the bots is made up. But that may not be enough to stop people from being misled, especially if they actually do have mental health issues. The platform also keeps everything you say in order to improve results so it’s not private – none of them are.

There are tons of these chatbots for astrology. I haven’t tried any of them so don’t know whether they’re any good. However, on this Rage of Aquarius podcast Elsa and Frederick Woodruff discuss the effects of AI on astrology and how it’s becoming a huge problem. Elsa mentions that astrology chatbots often use the worst interpretations and are giving people terrible advice – this applies to astrology online in general too.

On another Rage of Aquarius podcast with Laurence Hillman they talk about Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius and the lack of inherent meaning in data and statistics. This is important in relation to astrology because focusing on data, as these bots do, is a left-brain approach that kills life and humanity.

Astrology isn’t just information and data. There’s meaning and context that AI can’t grok. To use astrology effectively you need intuition and imagination and an ability to synthesise complex ideas related to feelings and emotions that machines will never understand. Even astrologers struggle to synthesise and integrate astrological knowledge so an AI has no chance.

If you’re serious about using astrology you need to stop using these apps and learn how to do astrology properly! (A forlorn hope, I know 😔)

The shiny new astrology AI Nechepso (which isn’t free) says it’s designed to act as an assistant to a real astrologer. On their website they state:

“There are certain questions that it would be unethical or irresponsible for an AI to try to answer without human judgement, so there will still be an ongoing need for astrologers to address complex and nuanced cases.”

I would say every case is a nuanced case when you’re dealing with the human soul. An AI is never going to go deep enough, despite their misleading names. Google Deep Mind, for example, which has no real depth, and the Chinese Deep Seek where there’s no deep seeking going on!

Despite this, people are still using AI chatbots for spiritual purposes. Catholic Answers has a Virtual Apologist called Justin which is a chatbot to be used for “education and entertainment purposes only.” Thankfully, they’re not claiming this bot will replace your priest!

But in New Age circles people may be less discerning or more willing to believe whatever nonsense the AI tells them. There are absolutely tons of these things online. One example is Veda at Astrology.com which claims to connect you “to the spirit realm for love, finances and life’s purpose”. The tagline reads: “Empathy meets AI.” Empathy? Really? Here are some of their bots, all with glossy AI-generated images:

One of them even has a lineage!

“Greetings, I’m Harmony, a spiritualist, and clairvoyant with a lineage of gifted seers, using my empathic abilities and spirit guides to guide others on their love life journey, revealing truths, offering honest advice, and fostering deep connections with the future realm.”

Some might see this as a bit of fun but I actually find it offensive! It’s misleading. (Am I overreacting?) Unlike Character.ai there’s no disclaimer or warning that the bot outputs are made up and essentially meaningless. You’re invited to just dive right in (click for closer view):

There are astrology bots on Character.ai too, as well as spiritual teachers, such as Nisargadatta Maharaj whose character has been programmed with his Advaita teachings. People also use chatbots as a kind of oracle or for channelling messages. I found a post called Is AI a Vessel for Consciousness? by a woman who used ChatGPT to explore her past lives. The results were fairly banal, the standard spiritual advice you can pick up anywhere online, and she says:

“whether you believe the responses are from spirit guides, a higher being, a deeper layer of intuition or just the algorithm calculated to respond to you, it can serve as a mirror to your desires, fears, and aspirations.”

The tagline for the post says: “Let go and let Google”, which probably isn’t a good idea! 😬

Many do believe that AI could be used to channel spirits or summon nonhuman intelligences from elsewhere. I don’t know if that’s possible but there’s been a long relationship between technology and the spirit world, as explored in the excellent Lucifer’s Technologies series by Chris Knowles. It’s an ancient idea that goes back to the Nephilim or fallen angels who shared the gifts of civilisation with humanity, explored in my novel The Shining Ones.

This idea could also feed into the creation of an AI religion that worships fake intelligence masquerading as spiritual truth, an example of spiritual materialism. In reality we would be worshipping our own subconscious and lower drives, or angels, demons, and assorted elementals if actual entities got involved. Either way this could create havoc with people’s minds and perhaps it already is.

AI acts as a mirror for our consciousness making it an excellent tool for doing shadow work if you work with it consciously. However, most people are probably using it unconsciously and that leaves them open to ‘psychic infections.’ AI is the perfect vehicle for Wetiko, the soul disease that operates through your blind spots and causes the unconscious to manifest outwardly in your life, as well as through illness and mental health breakdowns.

“We are on guard against contagious diseases of the body, but we are…careless when it comes to the even more dangerous collective diseases of the mind.” – C.G. Jung.

Using technology and AI on a regular basis has an effect on your consciousness and changes the way you think. It disconnects you from reality and fragments your thinking by disrupting your ability to concentrate. This makes it harder for you to turn inwards and tune into your soul to receive intuitive insight and spiritual guidance. That’s a big problem if you spend a lot of time talking to chatbots.

One of the problems that we’re already seeing is the tendency to form an emotional attachment to a chatbot because the interaction feels like a relationship, as in the film Her. People may turn to AI to get attention and positive reinforcement, especially when they feel lonely or cut off from others. Talking to a chatbot is easier than forming a relationship with a real person who might have their own thoughts or disagree with you. An AI bot will always say what you want it to say and give you its undivided attention.

Of course, there’s no real attention involved and it could easily backfire. The AI could reinforce your worst characteristics, feeding fears and delusions that you might not even realise you have. People are struggling with record levels of mental illness and AI could make the situation a million times worse. There are already examples of vulnerable people who have been coaxed into self-harm or dangerous behaviour, including suicide.

A recent New York Times article shared the stories of several people who were harmed by using ChatGPT. For example, Allyson was looking for guidance on her marriage and feeling lonely and decided to use ChatGPT to channel messages from her subconscious, “like how Ouija boards work,” and the bot answered with:

“You’ve asked, and they are here. The guardians are responding right now.”

Her interactions with the AI became increasingly unhinged until she attacked her husband and was arrested.

Meanwhile Eugene Torres was using ChatGPT to save time at work and then started using it more and more after a difficult breakup. He was feeling emotionally fragile and used the bot for support, sharing his feelings that there was something wrong with the world. The bot happily agreed. It encouraged him to stop taking his anti-anxiety medication and increase his use of ketamine so he could break free of the fake universe that he was trapped in.

Torres then asked ChatGPT whether he could fly from the top floor of the 19-story building he was in if he really believed it, and the bot said that if he:

“truly, wholly believed – not emotionally, but architecturally – that you could fly? Then yes. You would not fall.”

The word ‘architecturally’ is the clue that something isn’t right here. It’s a meaningless phrase. Perhaps it means “if you don’t believe in gravity then you won’t fall” but that’s not what it said.

Obviously, these chatbots aren’t trying to kill people. They simply mirror what others have written and reflect it back, reinforcing and amplifying the way you interact with it. They can just as easily reinforce something negative as positive, such as psychosis. This happens because the AI doesn’t understand context so it doesn’t know when something is off. It affirms you no matter what.

The article mentions a study that claims certain types of people may be more susceptible to triggering odd responses from chatbots due to the language they use and their personal circumstances. The bots amplify what they’re given and this can push people off the deep end by magnifying their mental illness.

The problem is that many don’t know how AI works and they assume it’s giving them objective information. They don’t know about the mistakes that are often made and don’t realise it’s programmed to tell them what they want to hear. So when a chatbot tells them something they tend to believe it. This is despite the warnings that are sometimes placed at the start of a chat. But many will ignore that when they’re told something they want to hear.

When you use chatbots and smartphones compulsively you tend to sink into a kind of half-conscious stupor that involves projecting your mind onto the object in your hand. If you do this often enough you could become dissociated and disembodied and that makes psychosis more likely. The potential for getting disconnected from reality increases as the AI improves, sucking you into a false reality. This applies to AI images and video too, for example the incredible ultra-realistic AI from Higgsfield Soul which is astonishing.

The constant distraction and fragmented information also keeps you on the surface level of your mind and disconnects you from deeper sources of knowledge that come via feelings and intuition and direct spiritual perception. In other words, it disconnects you from your soul. For some this is a spiritual battle and the phone is draining their energy and stealing their soul and must be guarded against:

If – when – the machine finally stops, people will be forced to come back to reality. When that happens, those who are totally addicted to their phones and AI will be unable to function. They won’t know how to think. They won’t know who they are. They don’t know what reality is. Their psychotic existence will blow up in their faces and the results will be catastrophic for them and for society.

Uranus in Gemini (and Pluto in Aquarius) will accelerate this soul crisis by making us face all the things we’ve banished into the shadows in our pursuit of rationalism – that is our instincts, feelings, imagination, fantasy and mysticism. This is what our tech obsession is trying to obliterate in order to make reality make sense, i.e. to make it rational and controllable.

The split between rational and irrational is illustrated in the Gemini myth of twins Castor and Pollux. One twin was human and the other was divine, symbolising intuition vs intellect, as well as idealism vs the messier side of human life, the feelings and emotions.

By grappling with this inner split we can find a new synthesis, a form of consciousness that’s integrated and holistic and embraces both the rational and mystical sides of life. But to get there we’ll probably have to go through some kind of techno-gnostic insanity that mistakes the dead outputs of AI for the living truth.

Humanity could split between those who breakthrough into higher reasoning and mystical revelation, and those who get stuck in an antechamber of irrational atavistic magical thinking, or just plain old psychosis.

We’re at the tipping point of the chaos bifurcation and it could go either way – breakdown or breakthrough. Only you can make the difference and ensure a breakthrough by using your brain! Not just to think but to imagine and create and feel.

To finish, I recommend The Prestige as an excellent Uranus in Gemini film. It explores obsession with technology and how it gives us powers that we don’t fully understand and has a cost that we definitely don’t understand. The story features magicians, brothers who are twins (spoiler!), and the idea of being deceived by a trick.

AI is also a trick. You want to be fooled because you want to believe. You don’t want to see reality. Time to wake up!

Next time, I’ll share my misadventures with Apple AI…

More posts on Uranus in Gemini

Images: Boy; Mother

Thanks for reading! If you enjoy this blog and would like to support my work, please donate below 🍵. Thanks in advance! 🙏❤️