 Hello there, and welcome to our exploration into the tarot. I know there's a few series in the works right now, and we're going to come back to those real soon. However, this has been one of our biggest projects for a long time coming, and we're really excited to share with you. As you may be aware, we've been developing a very special Spirit Science tarot deck called Patch Tarot, and at long last, it's complete. Truth is, I originally wanted to start this tarot series over a year ago, but realized that I needed to create the cards first, so that we could actually make some videos about it. It took some time, but now that the cards are launched, the tarot series may at last commence. A lot can be said about what tarot is, and may change depending on your perspective and relationship with it. Our understanding is that tarot is a pictographic, card-based diagram of everything in creation, the visible and the invisible, the known and the unknown. We consider it to be an ancient science rooted in hermeticism, kabbalah, and other ancient symbology. However, and one of the reasons why tarot is so controversial, is that there is virtually no historical evidence linking tarot cards to these ancient sciences and philosophies, yet they all match up so perfectly that it's more than a little mind-blowing. You see, tarot actually originated in the world sometime in the 14th century Europe, and herein it was a simple card game fashioned in a make-your-own-adventure style of game. It was not thought of or used as any form of science or thought sequence, other than a way for aristocrats to enjoy themselves in their spare time. And yet, sometime after its initial adoption in Europe, a few clever esoteric scholars recognized certain patterns within the tarot that allowed it to be developed in relationship to the established esoteric understandings at that time. And therefore, within modern tarot, you will find a harmonious fusion of geometry, astrology, numerology, thought, emotion, and the whole framework of Kabbalah, all striving together to form an image describing the essential patterns and vibrations that make up Heaven and Earth, and the pathways that we all progress on, on our journeys towards what could be described as enlightenment, ascension, or simply higher understanding. In a more geometric sense, these cards are said to depict a flowing toroidal field, showing how the four elements flow and move together through a torus, from singularity to singularity. The fifth element is then seen as the shape of the torus itself, which the four elements all intrinsically follow. To explain this in a more practical sense, the four elements consist of the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritually creative aspects of yourself. And the fifth element is your soul, the driver of the other four elements as though they were a vehicle with which the soul may interact and create reality through. Today, most people who practice tarot use the cards for divination, in which the observer develops an essential familiarity with the symbols, and then use these cards and images to reflect upon the past, present, and future circumstances. Their imagery acts as ideas, which illuminate for us our most complex dilemmas and desires. And in this, we intuitively reflect higher understanding through our conscious attention. Thus, the real power of these cards come not from their divinatory nature, but their ability to describe these naturally occurring archetypes, which exist within ourselves and in the world all around us. Those who practice with tarot often describe that by learning and understanding them, they expand their consciousness, become more aware of events and circumstances in their lives, and even develop psychic or intuitive abilities. The point here is not to replace the guidance of the heart, but to support the conscious mind in making more connections with the heart. In a bit of a modern, quantum-like sense, we sometimes like to think of it as a blueprint for ascension, which through pattern recognition is downloaded into one's body of consciousness. Now, the deck itself is put together with several key components, and traditionally composed of the sections called major and minor arcana. The major arcana is the fifth element, and the minor arcana are the other four. There's also a section of the minor arcana, often called the court cards, which in patch tarot we have identified outside of the minor arcana as their own section, titled royal arcana. In patch tarot, we have also applied four cards to the hidden locations of the Tree of Life, which describe the states of creation mankind cannot comprehend through anything but direct experience. These four cards are the final section of patch tarot, which we have called the holy arcana, or simply the god cards. Their purpose is to act as a reminder that the tarot itself is not the answer, but simply points the direction and maps our way towards it, which is the light found within each of our own hearts. The simplest way to understand the various arcana are through the suits. There are five elements, and it's likely that you are already very familiar with the first four. Modern playing cards and tarot have the exact same origin, and directly correlate with each other in most ways, minus the fifth element and the removal of one court card. In the minor arcana, we have the four elements, or suits, wands, cups, swords, and discs, which are also sometimes called pentacles. They represent fire, water, air, and earth respectively. To break this down further, they are your spiritual or creative will, your emotions, your mind and thoughts, and your physical body. Their playing card counterparts are clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds. Each of these four elements can be further understood by looking at the ten number cards, which sit upon the ten sefirot on the Tree of Life, and follow the essential numerological pattern from one through ten. Each of these four elements begin with one called ace, the potential for the manifestation of a thing, following through to the completion of the original potential and birth of a new cycle. Now within the royal arcana, you will see the familiar court cards of a playing card deck, but with the addition of a younger female energy, which had been removed from playing cards. Jack, Queen, and King in Tarot are called the Princess, Prince, Queen, and King. Although they have many other names across a variety of decks, most commonly Page, Knight, Queen, and King. Despite this, the pattern is always consistent to youthful male and female, and matured male and female. The significance of the royal arcana is that they each represent their element within each other. The princess is earth, the prince is air, the queen is water, and the king is fire. There is a royal court for each of the elements, and thus you have the four elements within each element, giving you 16 total cards. Then there is the fifth element, which is entirely different from the four elements we just looked at. These are called the major arcana, made up of 22 cards, and which are numbered from 0 to 21. They tell a story which you may find all too familiar to Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces, and both an ancient and quantum version of it at that. The 22 card story reflects the path of the individual, most often he is called the Fool, who exists in a state of possibility for anything to happen. The story reflects that the Fool is the beginning and ending of the story, pure potentiality for all life experiences to happen, and otherwise naive to the life lessons which they are about to experience. The Fool sets out on a path which reveals truth and discovery through deep and meaningful life experiences both internally and externally. Along the way, different archetypes play their part in shaping the experience, which leads the Fool to know and understand higher truth. This story and character represents all of us, for we are all the fools of our lives. We don't even know all that we don't know. Upon finding completion of the story or cycle, there is a new level of understanding about life based on the totality of the experiences that we had. And ultimately in this new higher awareness, we actually find ourselves right back where we started, in a point of infinite possibility as to where we could go next, once again naive to the next lesson we are about to learn, yet adventure calls. Again, this is the point of singularity, the journey from the beginning to the end around this toroidal flow. Through the depths of symbolism within these cards, we begin to see the way in which these elements engage with each other, the way that they support each other and even hinder each other. However, Tarot explains that when our emotions, our bodies, our minds, and our spiritual drive all work together in unison with each other and sing the same song, they allow for a spiritual transformation within. This new state is the complete embodiment of the fifth element, which is a state otherwise known as Christ consciousness. What's especially interesting about these elements and how they fit together is that just as the four in harmony give rise to the fifth, the fifth is actually what created the four to begin with. This can be observed on the Tree of Life as reality is created from the top down and upon hitting the physical reality the lowest level, it then changes direction and strives back up and reaches for its divine origins. Now, before we wrap things up here, we'd like to very briefly discuss this whole evil controversy thing. There's a lot of people who believe that Tarot is evil because it involves divination, which the Bible says is taboo. In a recent spirit side chat, this question came up and the responses and discussion that took place was quite interesting. Have a look. Okay, I asked sort of a sobering question. Yeah. For me, whenever you bring up divination and Tarot and that kind of stuff, I feel like for a lot of people it's going to be, I don't know, unknown and there's lots of negative connotations with that kind of stuff, right? Totally. So, go for it. I just want to draw a simple analogy as all it is because everybody's going to speak of Tarot or any level of divination with exactly what you just said. There's always that as a sort of takeaway. Well, what if it's the devil or something, right? What if you ask like this? So, these cards, if anyone's familiar with what an archetype is, it's a sort of universal force or flow that at any given point can be flowing through you and has a natural tendency through you. Now, what divination is, is we take the subtle understanding but let's just say even just faith or loose understanding of what's going on here and just expressing it and saying, if there's a way for you to communicate with the world, use this set of archetypes to tell me what I need to know right now. It's a simple question and a simple assessment. It's a simple sort of, this is going to be something that is taken by the hand of universe or God or whatever it is that you want to call your sacred thing. And it's using that as a medium through which to divine information to you. That's what divination, you can use stones and just assign meanings to them. So, that hopefully can dispel a little bit of that kind of misdirection of context. It's just really simple. It's just know that you're speaking to whatever your highest heart is feeling. You're speaking to love directly. Just like anything, don't blindly obey something, interpret it and observe it, right? Right. Yeah, don't let the card be your authority. Let yourself be your own authority. And I think the main problem most people have with these types of systems is that any fundamentalist Christian would say that my only authority is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And I know that the Holy Spirit is guiding the session. You know, it gets very... Why would it be anything else? Right. As a Christian, I have a Christian background, as a Christian the general belief is that you are a piece of God, that God is in everything, that literally he breathes life into everything. And so if you're divining the cards, doesn't that mean God is reading them? That's a profound insight. That's one that not everybody shares. So it's good that we can think that way, you know. In the end, there are nearly countless methods by which we may strive for higher connection. And there are nearly infinite tools with which we may use to understand the languages of the cosmos. Tarot is but one of these mechanisms and it's fair to say that it's one of our favorites, especially when combined with meditation. In our lives, we've had a lot of very meaningful experiences with these cards and we're really excited to share this formula with you today. And now that about wraps it up for today's episode, but if you'd like to learn more about tarot in the meantime, we've just launched a ton of tarot stuff up on our new website. Along with the card directory and informational sections, you can also visit spiritsciencecentral.com to jump in on our patch tarot launch, which comes with a free download of our 600 page book of patch. We are most certain you're going to love it. Also, we'd like to give a special thanks to all of our Patreon supporters who have been uplifting our studio and the continuation of Spirit Science. We love you guys!