The Lost Technology of the Imaginal Realm
This Substack by Vanese McNeill, a podcaster, blogger, and producer of the Magical Egypt series who curates the Wisdom of Women Symposium annually.
Yesterday was both an excellent and totally shit day.
You know the kind—equal parts transcendence and dumpster fire. One minute you're contemplating the divine; the next, you're checking your phone and discovering that three people you love have just been emotionally body-slammed by betrayal. Classic Tuesday.
Under any other circumstances, that would’ve taken me down. Hard. But the reason it didn’t—the reason yesterday was also excellent—is because I attended and hosted Kerrie Basha’s Imaginal Playground. And let me tell you: it was nothing short of astounding.
I went in curious. I came out cracked open.
Yes, I learned things. Deep things. But more than that, I felt things—emotions I’d nearly forgotten how to have. Not performative catharsis. Not spiritual bypassing dressed up in gauze and glitter. I mean the kind of raw, unfiltered feeling that makes you question whether you’ve been living in grayscale and someone finally turned the saturation up to eleven.
In a world that rewards numbness, I felt flares of something ancient and strange—something that once pulsed through every story, every ritual, every myth our ancestors ever told. I didn’t just access the imaginal—I remembered it.
Because the imaginal realm isn’t fantasy. It’s not escapism. It’s not what you visit when you’ve run out of things to binge-watch. It’s the original workshop of transformation. The place where grief can grow wings. Where symbols speak louder than facts. Where healing doesn’t arrive in a straight line, but in spirals, tears, archetypes, and belly-laughs that crack something loose.
And here’s the kicker: it’s not just personal.
This isn’t just my goo.
We are collectively inside the chrysalis right now. And before you get too inspired, let’s be clear: the caterpillar doesn’t grow wings and flap off into the sunset. It liquefies. It becomes ooze. It surrenders completely to the unknown. The only thing that survives this radical undoing are imaginal cells—tiny biological codes of future potential that already know how to become a butterfly.
They cluster. They connect. And they build something entirely new from the ruins of what was. This was how Kerrie sees it anyway and it is the most perfect analogy I have ever heard!
So when I talk about the imaginal as a lost technology, I mean it quite literally. We once knew how to enter this space—through breath, through myth, through play. We used to apprentice to it. We had rites for it. But now? We’ve been trained out of it. Schooled out of it. Scrolled out of it.
And that’s a problem. Because imagination isn’t optional. It’s not a luxury for artists and daydreamers. It’s the engine of evolution—the place where new maps get drawn, where new realities are even allowed to be conceived.
So when Kerri opened the space and named it Imaginal Playground, she wasn’t being whimsical. She was being precise. Because play is how we learn the rules of other realities. It’s how children build inner maps. It’s how adults recover lost ones.
And I realized something in that space—something I didn’t know I was missing. My own inner landscape had gone dim. I hadn’t updated the terrain for a while. There were ruins I hadn’t visited, sanctuaries I’d forgotten, entire psychic cities overgrown with neglect.
But now I’m back.
And I need to be because let’s be honest: the outer world is on fire.
Institutions are crumbling. Truth is elastic. Algorithms decide what we think. Systems that once felt stable now teeter like bad scaffolding in a windstorm. And no matter how many petitions we sign or supplements we take, it’s becoming painfully clear—we are not going back to how things were.
But maybe we’re not supposed to.
Maybe what we’re being asked to do now is evolve. Not by adding more noise, more information, more control—but by turning inward. By learning to navigate an inner terrain that’s been left fallow for far too long.
We’ve lost the technology of the imaginal, and with it, we’ve lost the ability to hold vision through chaos.
In ancient cultures, there were maps—not just of the stars or the land, but of the psyche. There were initiations designed to break you open and guide you through. Not with checklists or prescriptions, but with symbols, archetypes, dreams, and rites that aligned you with something older than fear.
Now, we anesthetize instead of initiate. We doomscroll instead of dream.
We are taught how to replicate, how to comply, how to survive in broken systems. But very few of us are taught how to imagine something different. And yet that’s exactly what we need most—not another strategy, but a vision. A felt sense of what wants to be born, even if it’s messy, nonlinear, or hasn’t been named yet.
This is why the imaginal realm matters—urgently, ferociously, now.
It’s not self-indulgence. It’s self-reclamation. And collective reclamation, too.
Because in this outer turmoil, our inner landscape might be the only salvation we have. Not as a hiding place—but as a seedbed. A forge. A place untouched by propaganda and programming, where your own soul still remembers what’s real.
The imagination is not a weak thing. It is not a child’s toy.
It is where the butterfly blueprint lives.
It’s where you go to retrieve the future.
So if the world feels like it’s melting around you, maybe that’s because it is. And maybe that’s not a sign of failure—but the sacred goo phase of our collective metamorphosis.
The question is not: Are you willing to remember the parts of yourself that know how to build the new?
And that remembering begins in the shadow. Not just the dark, scary bits we avoid—but the fertile, unknowable territory we were never taught to map. The imaginal realm is not all light and fairy wings. It’s also compost. It’s where our broken pieces go to be re-formed. It’s where the parts of us we’ve buried begin to whisper.
Which is why I want to tell you—truly tell you—about the extraordinary woman who held space for that rediscovery: Kerrie Basha.
Kerrie is offering two upcoming experiences in the imaginal, and I can’t recommend them enough.
First, there’s a free event on April 6, called Embracing The Shadows as Medicine of the Moment—a timely, necessary invitation to stop running from your shadow and instead treat it as the medicine of the moment. This isn’t about bypass or blaming. It’s about recognizing that shadow work is no longer optional—it’s a rite of passage for anyone serious about healing themselves and the world. Through deep inner exploration, dialogue, and ritual, you’ll learn to meet the uncomfortable with reverence, and come away not just clearer—but more whole.
Then on April 17, Kerrie will lead a two-hour paid workshop, Shadow Work in the Imaginal Realm. This is not surface-level journaling or lip-service to integration. This is descent. This is excavation. This is meeting the neglected, forgotten, disowned parts of yourself and walking them home. Through guided imaginal journeys, protective energetic tools, body-based practice, and symbolic play, you’ll learn to reclaim lost aspects of your power, creativity, and clarity.
You’ll explore:
How to hold space for your own process with gentleness and sovereignty
How to use imagination as a tool for real transformation
How to set strong boundaries while still descending into deep waters
How to turn your shadow into a source of treasure, not terror
And yes, there will be play. And ritual. And that particular kind of laughing-through-tears that only happens when something ancient inside you says, “Finally.”
So if you’re feeling it—if the world feels like it’s melting and your soul is stirring—this is your invitation.
Come introduce yourself to a place you might never have known existed before.
A place beneath the noise.
A place outside the algorithm.
A place where your wholeness has been waiting for you to remember.
The imaginal isn’t gone.
It’s right where you left it.
If you want to come play with Kerrie there are all kinds of ticket : 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