I Am Blind
This Substack by Vanese McNeill, a podcaster, blogger, and producer of the Magical Egypt series who curates the Wisdom of Women Symposium annually.
Kerrie Basha took me—and others—on an imaginal journey as part of the Women of Wisdom 25 Summit. Not the soft, feathered kind, but the kind that waits until your back is turned
before it slices you clean through. The point of the journey was to meet your oracle. Not just any oracle—yours—the one that has waited just out of reach, behind veils of thought and breath.
I was nervous. I admit that. And I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone who might one day take that path, so I’ll just say this: there comes a moment when you are to look into the oracle’s eyes and ask it a question.
Kerrie, in her way, doesn’t instruct so much as invite. She offered something simple but profound: Find your question—not just from your head, but from your stomach, and from your heart. Choose one of those questions to ask. Ask from the places that don’t need language.
But what she couldn’t have known is that when I arrived at the threshold, I couldn’t see the oracle’s eyes.
I mean—I literally couldn’t see them.
And so, from all three places within me, the same question arose:
Why can I not see your eyes?
The imaginal answered—swiftly, unmistakably. Not with a dreamlike murmur, but with the kind of feral, cutting clarity only the real can deliver:
YOU ARE BLIND.
That was the answer. And it hit like prophecy always does—so true, you’d never have thought to imagine it.
It floored me.
No—it flayed me open.
The imaginal, sensing my destruction, offered comfort. A hand held mine. At the time it felt like little comfort at all. I was shaken.
When I came back to consensus reality, I couldn’t say what really happened. How could I? I’m the one who’s supposed to have answers—and there I was, wrecked. Broken open by the imaginal. So I talked about the prettier parts of the journey, wiped my eyes, and left it at that. For then.
I wrote about the power of the imaginal only hours ago, but I didn’t mention that my insides had been scraped raw by an invisible truth. I couldn’t even process it. The honesty of it. The violence. The medicine. All at once.
Just now, I messaged Kerrie to organize her next session. At the end of all the practicalities, I added a note—half-laughing, half-bleeding. Trying to make light of the devastation. Trying to sound clever about something that had quietly wrecked me.
And Kerrie, in her fucking wisdom (and I mean that with every f-bomb it’s earned), responded instantly.
First, she named what should be obvious—but never is when you’re inside it:
That the imaginal, the oracle, the inner child, or frankly anything that emerges from that deep interior world never shows up the way you expect. Never. That’s how you know it’s real. It doesn’t play to your fantasies. It bypasses the well-rehearsed scripts and hands you something raw, something precise, something that can only be described as true.
Not comforting.
Not convenient.
But true.
And then she said:
“You held the oracle’s hand. There was connection—bodied, undeniable.”
There was relief in that. It was true.
And then she added:
“What springs immediately to mind is Lady Justice.”
And there it was again. That cold, burning clarity.
The kind you don’t see coming—because you can’t.
Blind.
Not just blind to the oracle.
Blind to what I see in the world.
Kerrie explained it’s an old archetype: blindfolded, sword in one hand, scales in the other. Not swayed by what is seen, because to see in that sense would be to be compromised. In myth, blindness isn’t always a curse. Often, it’s a kind of sacred insulation—a refusal to be manipulated by appearances. A turning away from the seductive spell of the world’s illusions.
Blindfolded—not impaired, but insulated.
Not corrupted by appearances.
Not seduced by illusion.
Blind, yes—
But seeing true.
Again, I felt relief. Because I don’t get swayed. I don’t get pulled under by the false, the cosmetic, the glittering projections. At least, I try not to. :)
Kerrie also mentioned something I’m still chewing on:
That this blindness—this way of not being moved by the visible—is connected to a deep peace.
Or maybe she said, “It’s a piece”… of the puzzle.
I don’t know yet which she meant.
But I do know I want to dive deeper into that with her.
Something is still unraveling.
And I suspect it always will be.
If you want to come play with Kerrie there are all kinds of tickets : free, pay what you want, and VIP tickets, available here at
https://www.magicalegyptwomen.com/me2025
Workshop tickets available here at
https://www.magicalegyptwomen.com/shadow-work
My post on the The Lost Technology of the Imaginal - and why we need it now - is here.