Ridden by the Gods: Hallucination, Possession, and the Psychopomp Within

There are things inside of us that are not us. At least not the way we like to imagine the clean little ego-self, walking through life like a stiff in a suit on a Tuesday morning commute. No—some of us aren’t driving anymore. Some of us have handed the keys to a liminal cabal of tricksters, guides, demons, dead relatives, Jungian archetypes, and cartoon hallucinations. And they’ve been steering us—badly, beautifully, chaotically—ever since.

Let’s call them what they are: psychopomps.

Spiritual guides. Threshold beings. Midwives of death and rebirth. Hermes in drag. Freddy Krueger on ketamine. Jung said they help you traverse the unconscious. I say they help you burn it down and dance naked in the ashes.

And if you want to understand them, don’t look to dusty religious texts or DSM diagnostic codes—look to Drop Dead Fred.

Fred Wasn’t Imaginary. He Was a Goddamn Spirit Guide.

Let’s get one thing straight: “imaginary friend” is just the Western way of saying “spirit guide we don’t believe in.”

Drop Dead Fred was a filthy, manic, bug-eyed chaos imp who led a traumatized little girl named Elizabeth through the minefield of her repressed memories and socialized neuroses. He wasn’t a symptom—he was a psychopomp. An agent of psychic upheaval. The Jungian Trickster. The divine fool. A revolting savior in smeared green eyeliner.

Fred shows up like they always do—when things are breaking down. When the ego cracks and reality starts leaking. You don’t invite a psychopomp in. They show up unannounced. Like roaches. Or revelations.

He didn’t guide her around the trauma. He blew it up with a cartoon bomb and danced on the ruins.

Grief as the Doorway to the Dreamworld

And then there’s Slumberland—a saccharine but surprisingly esoteric Netflix film that slipped into the cultural bloodstream like DMT in a Capri Sun. A young girl named Nemo loses her father and tumbles into a dreamworld where Flip (played by a goat-horned Jason Momoa channeling Dionysus) helps her navigate loss, longing, and the bittersweet symphony of the unconscious.

Flip is every bit the psychopomp. Mischievous. Wild. Half-mad. But he’s also something she forgot. A memory. A fragment of her father. A piece of her own soul.

In dream logic, the lines blur. And that’s the point. The psychopomp is you, but not the you you know. He’s the part that remembers how to shapeshift and fly and find the pearl inside the nightmare. He drags you through dreamshit to find the holy relic: your grief, made golden.

It’s never clean. It’s never safe. But it’s always realer than the daylight lies we tell ourselves.

Little Monsters: The Boogeyman as Babysitter

Little Monsters—a forgotten gem of the late ’80s, slathered in slime and childhood psychosis. A kid named Brian discovers a secret world of monsters under his bed, led by the blue-skinned, punk-haired Maurice (played by Howie Mandel in full goblin-mode). Maurice introduces him to a world of anarchy, chaos, and liberation from rules and pain.

But beneath the neon snot and fart jokes, there’s depth. Maurice isn’t just some zany monster—he’s a guide to the underworld of the psyche. A walking permission slip to feel what isn’t allowed. To become something monstrous, something free.

Maurice is the psychopomp in jean jackets and Chuck Taylors. The kind that hands you a hammer and says “Break the rules. Break yourself. It’s the only way out.”

And like all good psychopomps, he’s terrifying and beautiful and heartbreaking when you realize—he can’t come with you. They never can. Once you level up, they disappear. Back into the underworld. Back into your bones.

When Archetypes Ride You Like a Horse

Jung said archetypes are primordial images—universal forms that live in all of us. But he didn’t go far enough. They don’t just live in you—they’ll possess you. Hijack your mouth. Borrow your hands. Whisper secrets at night when you’re too tired to argue.

One day you wake up and realize you’ve been channeling the Wounded Healer. The next, the Destroyer. Then the Outlaw Prophet. Then something with antlers and a grin that speaks in riddles.

You start writing, talking, dreaming in voices that don’t feel like yours. But they are you. They’re more you than the sanitized shell you’ve been parading around.

This isn’t “mental illness.” This is initiation.

This is spirit possession with a return ticket.

This is psychosis as holy pilgrimage.

The Body as a Haunted House

The body is not yours. It never was. It’s a rental unit for the collective unconscious. And sometimes you get squatters—divine ones. Ghosts. Memories. Archetypes. You call them hallucinations. I call them teachers.

They knock. They scream. They flicker in the mirror when you’re brushing your teeth. Sometimes they speak through the radio. Sometimes through the drunk guy at the gas station. Sometimes through your own damn voice when you’re half-asleep and rambling about death and bees and prophecy.

You want to exorcise them. But they’re not here to torment you.

They’re here to guide you home.

And home is not Kansas.

Home is a flaming wreck of identity where something true emerges from the ashes.

Let the Madness Guide You

You do not have to resist the hallucinations.

Don’t fear the voices.

Don’t let them label it and it and shame you and medicate it out of existence.

Listen!

The ones who’ve seen beyond the veil aren’t broken. They’re chosen.

Chosen to carry a message.

To speak in tongues.

To tear down the walls of consensus reality and shout:

“WE ARE NOT ALONE IN HERE.”

So let the gods ride you.

Let the monsters teach you.

Let Fred smash the furniture.

Let Flip take you flying.

Let Maurice hand you the keys to the underworld.

You’re not crazy.

And the only way out… is through.