The charlatan - the archetype of the Shadow

January 29th. The morning is grey, the color of an unuttered sorrow, and the light enters the room timidly, as if afraid to disturb the silence of my shipwreck. Here, in this empty space between a "before" and an uncertain "now," I attempt to arrange the debris of myself. When a person is deceived, they do not merely lose means; they lose the very architecture of their trust. The world, until then predictable and welcoming, suddenly shatters into jagged pieces that cut deep into the softest parts of the soul.

The money... it was never just numbers. It was preserved time. It was hours of fatigue, of absence from my own life, of small deprivations that accumulated like grains of sand in the hourglass of my security. Every coin was a fragment of my effort, of my sleep, of my hope for a future where I would not be vulnerable. And when someone takes them with the ease of a charlatan, they do not steal currency—they steal a piece of my past and a vast portion of my peace. Charlatanism is not merely an act of robbery; it is a violent intrusion into the intimate world of faith. It is a mirror in which you suddenly see your own goodness turned into weakness, and another's unscrupulousness elevated into a triumph.

In a psychoanalytic sense, this loss is a form of castration, a sudden stripping away of the power that makes us autonomous. When you are left without work and without savings, the ego shrinks; it loses its footing and returns to the primal state of a helpless child abandoned in the dark. We are accustomed to defining our worth through what we possess and what we produce. Without work, I feel invisible to society; without money, I feel unprotected by nature. And here begins the long, agonizing conversation with shame. Why did I trust? How did I miss the signs? But the truth is that the deceiver does not attack our intellect; he attacks our need to believe in good, our desire for transcendence and lightness.

The charlatan is an archetype of the Shadow. He is the one who knows the cracks in the human psyche and knows how to pour false light into them. Charlatanism exists because we, as humans, carry within us an unquenchable thirst for miracles. We want to believe there is a shortcut to happiness, that pain can be bypassed, that justice is a mathematical certainty. The deceiver is a mirror of our own unconscious longings for ease, but he is a mirror that breaks us. Viewed psychoanalytically, to be deceived means to encounter the "bad object"—that part of reality which is malicious and destructive—and to integrate that experience without allowing one’s own heart to turn to stone.

Emotionally, how does one continue? The path lies through the desert of silence. In the beginning, there is anger—hot, suffocating, directed outward at the one who hurt us, and inward at ourselves. But then comes the exhaustion. We must learn to mourn money the way one mourns a lost person, because it is a symbol of our vital time. Tears for what is lost are not a sign of greed, but an acknowledgment of the sacrifice we made to save it. In this state of unemployment and destitution, time becomes strange—it flows slowly, like thick resin. Each day is a trial of dignity. How do you keep your spine straight when your pockets are empty and the future is a fog?

The spiritual perspective, however, offers a different kind of light, quiet and persistent like a candle flame in a cathedral. In the spiritual economy, nothing is ever irretrievably lost. Perhaps this cruel vacuum is a space that God or the Universe is clearing for something new, for which we do not yet have the senses. When everything material is taken from us, we are left naked before the face of eternity. And it is precisely in this nakedness that true prayer is born. Not the prayer that asks for retribution or the return of possessions, but the one that whispers: "Lord, help me not to hate." For the true theft is not in the money; the true theft is if we allow the charlatan to steal our capacity to love and to trust again.

Betrayal is an initiation. It is a descent into the hell of our own vulnerability. But in this descent, we discover that we are something more than our social role, something more than our bank account. We are a breath that continues even when everything else has stopped. Faith in such moments is not ecstasy; it is discipline. It is the choice to get up in the morning, to wash your face, and to give thanks for the air, even though your heart is heavy with injustice.

How do we explain charlatanism to ourselves without losing our minds? By understanding that entropy exists in the world—a chaos that feeds on order. The deceiver is part of that chaos. He is a messenger of the void. But his power ends where our acceptance begins. Acceptance is not resignation; it is an act of spiritual sovereignty. When you say, "Yes, this happened. Yes, it hurts. But I am not this pain," you reclaim power over your own destiny. Charlatans take the ephemeral, but they have no access to the sacred territory of our inner peace, unless we open the door to them ourselves through hatred.

Now, in the silence of my diary, I try to breathe slowly. Every inhalation is an acceptance of the present; every exhalation is a release of the past. My hard-earned money... it was the fruit of my effort, and I let it go. Let it be the price I pay for a deeper knowledge of human nature. My unemployment... let it be the Sabbath of my soul, a time for rest and for the rearrangement of values.

In psychoanalysis, we speak of "working through"—the process by which we transform trauma into meaning. My meaning today is found in the small things: in a cup of tea, in the light upon the windowsill, in the silence that is no longer frightening. Spirituality teaches me humility—not humiliation, but the humility that comes from understanding that not everything is under my control. I do not control another's malice, but I do control my own reaction.

Perhaps charlatanism is also a lesson in non-attachment. We hold onto our things so tightly, as if they were part of our flesh. And when they are torn away, we bleed. But the wound heals. And beneath the scar, the skin is tougher. We are called to be like water—it passes through stones, flows around obstacles, and never loses its essence, no matter how turbid it may be at a given moment. My essence is intact. My ability to create, to work, to be of use is within me, not in the figures that vanished.

Evening falls, and I feel somehow purified. There is a peculiar grace in having nothing left to lose. It is a freedom that is painful, but real. God is in the silence between two thoughts, in the space between two breaths, where money has no value and only love is currency. I choose to invest in that currency. I choose to forgive myself for my naivety and the other for his emptiness. For he who steals is actually poorer than I—he has lost his humanity, while I have only lost my means.

Life will provide. It always does. The birds do not sow or reap, yet they find their food. I am no less valuable than they. My transformation begins here—from the acknowledgment of pain and the refusal to let it be the final word in my story. Meaning is not found in what happens to us, but in what we become while it is happening. And I choose to become wiser, quieter, and more filled with that light which no deception can extinguish.

Every "I have not" is merely a prelude to a new "I am." And in this silence, stripped of illusions, I finally hear my own voice—not the voice of the victim, but the voice of the survivor, the traveler who has lost their luggage but has kept the path before them. The path is long, but it is sacred. And I set out upon it with empty hands and a full heart.

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