Has Doreen Virtue Gone Off The Deep End? One Explanation.

by - April 21, 2019



So, in case you haven't heard, Doreen Virtue, aka the Goddess of the Oracle Decks, is putting out a call for every single one of her decks to be destroyed.  I wish I were exaggerating.  Not only that, all of your tarot cards should be destroyed as well.  In a fire.  Because, demons.  Duh.

*sigh*

Well now.  Ain't that a head scratcher?

It's not like she's new to the God scene, either.  Most of her publications (over 50 books, tarot, and oracle card decks) were based on angels, which are a bible-based belief.  Some of her decks depicted mermaids or something else mythological, but most were angels.

But now, apparently, she's found Jesus and she thinks we're all going to hell (or, in her words, "possessed by demons") for using new agey things.

Oh my goodness.

I can't pretend to know what would cause this sort of turnaround of events in her life.  Sometimes it's mental illness, sometimes people find sobriety and lean on religion so they can get through their addictions, and sometimes it's just a natural progression of a thought process.  And sometimes, we replace one obsession with another.

I had a friend who was a "crunchy pagan" back when I used to be a pagan.  She was so much more pagan than I was (which is something that goes on in pagan communities--the comparison of just how "crunchy" or hippy you are).  She dedicated her life to paganism.  She held onto paganism in the way I see born-agains hold onto their faith.  She raised both her kids pagan.  It was totally hardcore. 

But then she found a new boyfriend and converted to being a Christian.  Just.  Like.  That.  Huh??  What happened to my crunchy pagan friend?  Who whole-heartedly believed that our coven leaders embodied the actual god and goddess during a particular Samhain ritual, that left her in tears from the overwhelmingness of it all?  The girl who never missed a drum circle or never once wore underwear to a ritual??  (If you don't know why this is important, you're not "crunchy" enough!)

Now her kids participate in all the churchy stuff and are hardcore Christians when they were used to attending Burning Man with their mother.  Go figure.

One person may say adaptable.  But another (like myself) might see this as a narcissistic splitting, or the "idealization and devaluation" that goes on when a narcissist decides they  no longer value what they once HARDCORE VALUED at one time.  And my old friend?  Is 100% a narcissist with NPD (long story).

Narcissists mainly do this to people (idealization--love bombing, devaluation--ghosting you, etc.), but also to activities, ideals, and obsessions. Something in one moment is "the best thing ever!!" and the next moment (or maybe years later), it's the "dumbest idea ever!" (and the new thing they're into is now the "best thing ever!").  Now, I am not mental illness shaming here.  It's not just narcissism that does this, but also autism (black and white thinking--though this is a lesser degree than an actual personality disorder), borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, among many others. 

But I have absolutely no way of knowing if Doreen Virtue is a narcissist or maybe has aspergers otherwise, but on the outside, she sure looks like she's splitting.  

She is literally swinging from one end of the spectrum with her strong belief in angels to the other end, now, with demons.  

But just because she didn't talk about demons in her work (or that I know of, I honestly can't say I read any of her books, I only owned her oracle and tarot cards), doesn't mean she didn't always believe in them.  Maybe this isn't as big of a leap as I am assuming it is?

But it sure seems to me that a person who has developed over 50 different new age products in her lifetime so far to just not only stop creating them but urge people to burn them??  It feels a bit more than just a leap in faith.  It feels like a betrayal to the people she was marketing her work to.


When someone acts this way, it feels like a slap in the face, or a bit like falling off a cliff.  You're all of a sudden in this unknown territory and have no idea how you got here.  The person you once knew all of a sudden is a wholly different person than they used to be and now you feel confused and left wondering, what was it all about in the first place?

When a person does this to another person, it's damaging behavior.  It hurts people to be cast aside and no longer loved or wanted.  Narcissistic parents do this to their children repeatedly, leaving us (yes, my mother is a narcissist) feeling like the wind is knocked out of us, only to be picked back up again and put back on a pedestal the next moment, only to be devalued again later on.  It's a dizzying life to live and leaves us with messed up ways to cope with the world.  When it's a significant other or a friend, it leaves you feeling worthless and ashamed.  Like there's something wrong with us.  So if a person treats you like this, get away from them pronto!!  There is no fixing it or a cure, so just leave it like the Eight of Cups and move on to something better.

But when someone does this to their own belief system, even if their past belief system is what led us to our own belief systems, we have to try to be a bit more understanding.  While it's hard to just say "Oh, that's okay, you're telling me that your entire life was a lie and now my life feels like a lie because I followed you, but whatever.  You do you.", we have to take a step back and reevaluate why we chose to follow them in the first place.  We have to separate ourselves from our "gurus" and realize they have their own paths to take and their own lives to live.  And while we may not understand their choices, we can't take them personally because they are their own person, even if they, at one time, meant everything to us.

They may have had an epiphany.  A light-bulb moment.  A moment of clarity where everything they've been thinking about or researching just clicked and now they are changed forever. They've witnessed their truth and now everything makes sense.  Even if it made sense before.  On the outside, it looks crazy.  But on the inside, it's become gospel.  

I will tell you right now, that I am not innocent of this type of behavior.  I have aspergers and black and white thinking has hit me far more than once when it comes to my beliefs.  I haven't gone as far to become obsessed with an idea so much that I warn people that demons will possess them if they don't get rid of inanimate objects, but I did once tell women they were total fucking assholes if they chose not to breastfeed.  

Ouch.

I was kind of a douche back in the day.  While I am much better now (kinda-sorta), I truly believed the crap I used to spout.  I can give you a list of ways that I have changed my own mind with education (and really, is that much different than changing your mind with religion, if you honestly believe it's real??): 

  • I used to be a breastfeeding Nazi, and believed that people who bottle fed their babies were assholes (I even had a website dedicated to shaming mothers who bottle fed! UGGGHH!!). Then I learned (with the help of nutritional education) that both are valid ways to feed a child, as long as the child is fed.  
  • I used to believe gmo's were unhealthy and that organic was best.  I then learned (also through nutritional education) that gmo's are harmless and organic is just a buzzword that is intended to rape our wallets.  I also learned that organic food has MORE pesticides on them (because the organic ones--which are still poisonous to drink, btw, do not work as well) and as long as you wash your produce in water (nothing else needed) both traditional and organic pesticides wash away, leaving nothing left on it to hurt you.  
  • I used to be scared to death of vaccinating my children (but did it anyways--somewhere deep inside of me, my brain was working) because of my "crunchy" friend above, who never vaxxed her kids (well, until one day, their father wised up and took them to get all updated on their vaccines) who got it into my head that I was hurting my kids by doing it.  Now, after learning how vaccines work and understanding why they are needed, I am still being an asshole because I wholeheartedly believe that not vaxxing your kids is child abuse (not child abuse on purpose, but still child abuse) and a danger to the human population. 
  • I used to believe in magic, psychic ability & ESP, ghosts, and all that jazz (like for real, my husband and I met in a ghost hunting group!).  I grew up abused and used that shit as escapism.  I wanted so desperately to believe there was something more than this mundane (and awful) human existence.  I even saw a gnome once as a kid!  I read all sorts of books about fantasy and lived in a fantasy world.  I thought the real world was filled with awful people who just wanted to hurt you.  As an adult, I felt the same way.  I was a popular tarot reader with clients all over the world.  I made some good money, but mostly, I believed in what I did.  I helped people!  But then I had an epiphany, and mind-altering experience (no, I wasn't doing shrooms).  My thoughts were slowly shifting to science (as they had been for a long time) and I realized that everything I was doing was a delusion I created in order to deal with my abuse.  So instead, I worked on healing myself and as I did, my need to escape from reality melted away.  I became an atheist.  At first, I hated being an atheist.  It was fucking depressing.  But now, years later, I shifted my view from thinking science was a cold, dark place to understanding that science is fucking exciting!!  AND that introspection is more important than flights of fancy (although I am still an avid fantasy reader and writer) when it comes to feeling "connected" to the world around me.  My journey has also taken me to understand mental illnesses more and to really get what makes a human tick (how their brains work and why they think the way they do).  It's god damn fascinating!  This has brought me to a greater understanding of humanity and why the adults in my life chose to abuse me as a child (it's better to understand rather than assume).  I don't need to escape my feelings anymore with magical bandaids, I can use tarot as one introspective tool to figure out why I am feeling the way I do.  This clarity led me to finally getting rid of lots of my own metaphysical stuff I'd been holding onto for years (which kind of mimics Doreen's journey in a way, except hers is with religion instead of science).  (You can read my full journey on this here.)

So, I have to ask myself, how is what I did any different than what Doreen is going through?  I might find her thoughts on demons and whatnot (like how she talks about demons who pretend to be Jesus...um....huh?) a little kooky and strange.  But she'd find my atheism kooky and strange.  I feel religion is a delusion, just as I do psychic ability (she still thinks she's psychic) and the such, but she'd also think my political ideas (which I won't share here) probably pretty delusional.  

My point is, it's not our business to care what she chooses to believe in.  As long as she's not hurting anyone, she could believe she's an alien for all anyone should care.

It sucks when you see someone as prolific as she is in the new age circuit do a 180 like she has.  It makes you question your own beliefs (not me, but I get how some people could feel that way--she used to be someone I looked up to back when I was into that stuff, so I get it) because if someone like her all of a sudden says "What I did was wrong" you may feel what you do is wrong, too.  You have to then step back and say "That's her choice.  Her journey.  Not mine." 

I will say this though: you don't have to throw away your oracle or tarot cards just because she says so.  There is no such thing as demons, even if she says there is.  That kind of thinking IS damaging to people.  She can believe in something like that, but she should keep it to herself.  But beyond that, let her walk her path, and we'll all walk ours.  




And Doreen?  If you read this?  Good on you for walking in your truth.  I don't agree with you, but I don't have to.  Only you know what you need to do in life.  I am walking in my own truth over here, going against the grain of the new age movement, too, but in a different way than you.  And just because people expected you to keep on with what you were giving out into the world, you chose to be true to yourself.  How can I, or anyone else, fault you for that?  No matter what your reasoning, know this article is about how I view the world.  It really has nothing to do with you at all.  So if I've said something here to offend you (or anyone else), just ignore it and know it's my own view on things, and not necessarily the truth (because what is truth when it comes to these types of things, other than individual truths?).  Good luck in all you do, Doreen, and anyone reading this.  Be true to who you are without hurting anyone, and let the haters just roll of your back 😉

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