My mother possesses an eerily keen sense for what’s to come and can feel future events in her bones. But I remember this one personal tragedy that had blindsided her. None of the talismans, trinkets, doodads, protection circles, shielding, prognosticating, or spirit guides prepared her for what happened. It shook her to her core and she had no choice but to acquire wisdom the hard way. Knowledge is one thing. Wisdom is another. If you accept that there is a greater Divinity, then sometimes our knowledge is blocked so that we can have clearer access to wisdom.

I recall once hearing an interview of a well-known celebrity psychic medium who attained fame and fortune for that ability to see what is to come, and yet when that medium’s own mother came down suddenly with a terminal illness and then passed on, that medium did not see it coming, at all. In the interview, that medium talked about the wisdom gained from that hard check to the ego.

Why is there such irony in this world? Those who seem to have the Sight cannot see coming the worst of all calamities. They’ve built a paradigm around the ability to forecast, so that we can plan ahead and prepare, and yet that one thing that needs the most planning and preparation they could not predict.

If you’re a skeptic, then for you, the answer is simple, right. This is where you declare with glee, “I told you so.” Prophecies are not a reality. There is no established human capability to foresee what is to come. So-called magic and the occult sciences is not real. Spell-crafting and ritual is a bunch of empty nonsense.

As for my beliefs, I believe that sometimes, there is an intentional block of our Sight, an impediment to our access to Knowledge, so that Wisdom can shine through. Sometimes there needs to be an unrelenting take-down of your ego so that your spirit can grow. Sometimes, we need to lose everything in our material world–not just things, but sentiments and emotional attachments to boot– so that we can gain something of great psychic value that cannot be quantified by capital.

The practice of craft, esoteric knowledge, divination, and elevating your consciousness deepens your Faith and will render you a better conduit for Wisdom when disaster strikes, but these practices in and of themselves do not prevent disaster, especially the kind brought down upon us with the intention of shaking us to the core so that an actualization of deeper personal significance can happen.

We are often given the tools to prepare for a rainy day but not given the tools to prepare for floods and hurricanes. Craft, sciences, divination, and elevated consciousness permit us to see our minor gains and losses before they happen but we don’t endeavor in these pursuits with any guarantee of preventing catastrophe. We are at once both powerful beings and powerless– nothing more than insignificant specks of stardust and even when we exert every last shred of power we have against the natural forces, the bitter pill we learn to swallow is that our power is nothing against the power of Mother Nature.

Does that mean we should stop trying? Therein lies the opportunity for attaining wisdom. Despite utter failure, we do not lose Faith in our own personal powers and we continue to exert those powers, to exert our Will. Just because today our knowledge of the physical sciences and all our technology have failed us, it doesn’t mean we stop studying the sciences or stop innovating. Likewise, just because our magical technologies have failed us today, it doesn’t mean we stop endeavoring in occult study.

To stop trying just because all that power and knowledge and access to Sight we thought we had wasn’t able to deter disaster is… I think… to miss the point, to have overlooked that one very important nugget of wisdom offered to us, the opportunity that the disaster was intended to provide. It is in that moment, I believe, we are given unfettered access by Divinity to discover the meaning of life.