Shadows of the Gift in Times of Darkness and the Light of Awakening

The gift of intuition, clairvoyance, mediumship, and contact with subtle energies has always accompanied humanity. At times it was revered and honored, at others it led to the stake or to prison cells. There were eras when kings and emperors could not imagine making decisions without astrologers or alchemists, but there were also times when possessing heightened sensitivity could end tragically.

The story of my great-grandmother is a poignant example. She was a clairvoyant, able to sense the energy of other people so strongly that she knew where they were. She carried within her a gift that could have changed lives, but she lived in a place where the Gestapo was stationed. Instead of developing her abilities openly and passing them on, she had to hide them deep within herself. The gift did not vanish, but it was covered in silence, and with her, knowledge departed that could have enriched future generations.

There were many such stories. This was the fate of those blessed with inner light who had to live in shadow. The world was not ready to receive them, and they – to survive – chose silence. But the truth is this: the gift of intuition cannot be destroyed. It flows in our blood, in the memory of our ancestors, in the reincarnational continuity of souls. It returns in every generation that dares to embrace and develop it.

The Nazis and the Thin Line Between Fascination and Fear

The Third Reich was a peculiar time. Hitler and his circle had an ambivalent relationship with all things esoteric. On the one hand, in his youth he was fascinated by astrology, mythology, and Germanic legends, while Himmler created the Ahnenerbe – an institute which, under the guise of historical research, also delved into occultism and myth reinterpretation. On the other hand, independent clairvoyants and mediums were seen as a threat.

After Rudolf Hess’s flight to Scotland in 1941, in which astrologers were rumored to have played a role, Hitler unleashed a wave of repression. Practices were shut down, books confiscated, and many practitioners were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. The Gestapo understood that a prophecy could sow more unrest than a thousand pamphlets.

The experiments conducted in camps were inhuman. Officially they dealt with medicine and biology, but there are references to research into telepathy and hypnosis. Perhaps prisoners with heightened sensitivity fell under the scrutiny of their captors. We will never know the full truth – too many documents were burned, too many lives silenced forever.

The Cold War and the Race for the Invisible

After the war, interest in paranormal phenomena moved to a new stage – the Cold War tension between East and West. In the United States, the CIA launched Project Stargate. Remote viewing was meant to provide intelligence information inaccessible by other means. Teams of “distant readers” described objects thousands of kilometers away. The results were sometimes surprisingly accurate. Though the project was officially closed in the 1990s, many believe it was never truly ended, only hidden deeper in the shadows.

The Soviet Union developed its own programs. Leonid Vasiliev conducted experiments on telepathy, and CIA documents coined the phrase “psychic gap” – the fear that the enemy would gain an advantage in the realm of consciousness.

China in the 1980s experienced a qigong fever. Zhang Baosheng demonstrated abilities that astonished the public: seeing through walls, passing objects through solid barriers. According to reports, the Chinese military ran a program for more than a decade, researching paranormal skills for espionage purposes.

In Japan, parapsychology evolved in academic circles. The Japanese Society for Parapsychology studied telepathy and remote viewing not as oddities, but as part of serious scientific research into consciousness.

Counterculture and the Renaissance of Consciousness

The 1960s were a time when the West exploded in its search for new paths. Hippies, the New Age movement, psychedelics – all this created a great wave of awakening. LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin opened people to experiences of contact with subtle dimensions and deepened intuition.

Alexander Shulgin, chemist and visionary, created and documented hundreds of psychoactive substances, studying their impact on perception. For him, it was not just laboratory work – it was an exploration of consciousness. His writings laid the foundation for modern psychedelic research, which today is returning to science as tools for healing depression and trauma.

The contrast between psilocybin and alcohol is striking. Psilocybin supports neuroplasticity, eases tension, restores balance. Alcohol – legal and ubiquitous – is a neurotoxin that damages the brain and severs intuition. The question practically asks itself: why did the world legalize what numbs, while banning what opens consciousness?

Intuition and Business – Tools for Seeing Ahead

Intuition has never been the domain of mystics alone. For centuries it has been present in politics, warfare, and economics. Kings had their astrologers, shamans stood beside chiefs, emperors consulted spiritual advisors. Today’s corporations do the same – only the language has changed. Where once people spoke of prophecies, now they speak of foresight, trend forecasting, and strategic intelligence. Yet the essence remains the same: to try to look into the future before it looks into us.

In the 1970s, Shell introduced what is now a textbook example of corporate foresight. Teams of analysts created scenarios of the future – not based only on economic data, but also on faint, almost invisible signals. When the oil crisis shook the world, Shell was among the few not caught off guard.

Today foresight is not a luxury but a necessity. Siemens builds technology roadmaps decades ahead. Google and Amazon employ futurists who “feel” cultural and scientific changes for a living.

Entire industries now specialize in forecasting. WGSN decides what colors and styles we will wear in two years. The Future Laboratory advises luxury brands on how to prepare for tomorrow’s society. The Institute for the Future in California analyzes global megatrends. Their reports are expensive, but the value of foresight is priceless.

Business also employs tools that are, in essence, ways of systematizing intuition: scenario analysis, weak signals scanning, backcasting, or the Delphi method. These are modern forms of ancient oracles – gathering voices and interpreting signs.

Finance has never been free from intuition either. Traders talk about “gut feeling” – the sense that tells them to enter or exit the market even when models say otherwise. J.P. Morgan was said to remark: “Millionaires don’t use astrology; billionaires do.” Whether apocryphal or not, the point stands: those who play at the highest level know that logic and analytics are not enough.

Intuition is not emotion or whim. It is the calm voice of the soul, speaking clearly without fear or calculation. It differs from reason, which doubts, repeats, and analyzes endlessly. More and more companies now recognize that the future belongs to hybrid intelligence – the fusion of big data algorithms and human intuition. Numbers are the ground, but intuition shows the direction.

The Time of Awakening

What was hidden for centuries is now returning with doubled strength. Our ancestors had to conceal their gifts, many took their knowledge to the grave. But the energy of the soul never dies. It returns in new incarnations, in generations willing to listen again.

We live in a time many call a global awakening. It is not a fad or a trend, but a natural stage of the evolution of consciousness. More and more people are learning to trust their inner whispers, to distinguish the voice of fear from the voice of the soul. Science and spirituality are beginning to meet. Quantum physics points to consciousness as the foundation of reality. Research on meditation shows the tangible effects of spiritual practice on brain and body. Psychedelics, demonized for decades, are returning as tools of healing and opening.

And above all, memory returns: that we are not only bodies, but consciousness; not only individuals, but parts of a greater whole. We are our own ancestors – souls returning to complete old paths. What we began centuries ago, we can continue now.

Toward the Future

History teaches us one thing: no power, no system, no era has ever been able to destroy what comes from the soul. Neither the stakes of the Middle Ages, nor the brutality of the Gestapo, nor the laboratories of the Cold War, nor the demonization of psychedelics. Intuition, visions, and contact with the spiritual world – all of it survived.

Today we have the chance to live differently. In times of awakening we can develop our gifts consciously, openly, without fear. We can pass on knowledge not in shadows and whispers, but in light that inspires entire communities.

The future belongs to those who trust intuition. To those who merge logic with heart, technology with spirituality, data with the voice of the soul. They will be the guides of a new era.

This awakening is a return home – to the place where we feel we have never been alone. Our ancestors walk with us, our past lives, spiritual guides, and the very energy of Source.

The gift of intuition has not only survived. Today, it has the chance to bloom more fully than ever before.

Love,

Laura