Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
I propose that the body is a temple for the energy of the archetypes. In the chaos of the shuffle, the cards react to the energy of the shuffler’s archetype of the moment. So much so that when the client’s hands shuffle the cards, the energy of the heart Chakra with all it’s [sic] archetypal energetic information affects the cards. The cards magically fall in line with a synchronicity that is part of the mystery of the cards. The resulting segmented pictorial layout is a portrait of the client’s psychological state or their inner worldview.
— Toni Gilbert, Messages from the Archetypes
This passage describes holistic nurse and transpersonal counsellor Toni Gilbert’s hypothesis on how it is that tarot works — how it is that we seem to get just the cards that we want or need during a tarot reading, whether as reader or as client.
To explain two of the terms that she uses, and which I often refer to in my writing:
Synchronicity is a term that was first used by psychiatrist Carl Jung to describe, in his words, “an acausal connecting principle.” Wikipedia explains it as “relationships that are not causal in nature [which] … can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurrences that are meaningfully related.”
A bit of a mouthful, but I venture that most of us know it when we experience it. For example, several years ago I was driving in my home town, and I kept passing cars with number plates that had three consecutive sevens on them: 777. The frequency started to become a little unsettling, but I rolled with it … until I passed a car, looked at the plate, and burst out into incredulous laughter: 777 777. “Okay!” I said out loud (and I paraphrase). “If this is some kind of sign, then show me one more thing that I absolutely cannot pass off as coincidence. Come on! Show me!” I looked ahead, saw a car coming towards me. It had a personalised number plate: 777 WIN. That, for me, was a sublime moment of synchronicity. My thoughts — and also my feelings — and the number plates I encountered — all of them converged at a single moment in time.
Archetype, in the context in which Toni Gilbert uses it, refers to a blueprint of a behaviour, characteristic or feeling. Tarot cards are “archetypal,” in that they reference people and situations that we can identify with both deeply and immediately. They are collective: they describe an aspect of the human condition in which we all share to a greater or lesser degree, consciously or unconsciously, at one time or another. If you are taking a risk by stepping out into the unknown, then you are embodying the tarot archetype of The Fool. If you are encountering a moment of grace, where you feel in the flow, then you are encountering The Star. If you feel part of a joyous celebration of love and harmony, then you are in a dance with the Three of Cups.
And so, back to Toni Gilbert’s ideas about why it is that we draw the cards that we do when we work with the tarot.
She suggests that our energetic body has an awareness of who and where we are at the moment of shuffling, which affects the cards and causes the ones that fit with this to be drawn for the reading. In other words, the cards we get are an archetypal match, and an accurate mirror of our “psychological state” or “inner worldview.”
Which brings me to the point of this article:
What do you think is happening when we get the cards that we do in a tarot reading?
I’d like to offer up the rest of this discussion for your theories, musings and questions. I have my own ideas, of course, which I’d describe as fluid, simply because I cannot know for sure one way or the other. But this space is primarily yours, and I’ll be reading with great interest, adding my own thoughts where I feel I can make a contribution.
To get things rolling, here are some statements that I thought I’d put forward for your perusal.
- Cards are selected through the process of synchronicity that Toni Gilbert refers to above; there is a point where we and the cards converge meaningfully.
- The cards we get are based on coincidence: there is no underlying connecting principle; it is simply the co-occurrence of two separate events.
- The cards seem meaningful because of our projection on to them. Seen this way, any card will have meaning — because it is the meaning that we give to it.
- We give tarot cards meaning because of the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance: because we need to believe that there is something greater at work, we confer meaning to justify that belief.
- Tarot is meaningless: it simply doesn’t work.
Catch you on the discussion board!
— Sarah
this little ‘diagram’ is too friggin’ CUTE!!
ha!!
random.
-rrrrrright.
……*…….
MMejeMM
….\’O’/ ~mmmmm
……V
..It’s “minding the bell”. (Something of which I need to get my ass together on! 😉 )
..Just thought I’d throw out some random, for fun.
🙂
Jere
Happy Sunday Charles,
Well, I beg to differ with your concept of failure here. This spread is very interesting to me and here is why. First, I need to describe my process and it’s a bit woo woo, but bear with me. I will interpret this from a perspective of energy, it’s masculine (horizontal) and feminine (vertical) properties as they display themselves within the human body, the elements and kundalini movement.
5S- air in fire…..the question. It anchors in the horizontal position as “root” or first chakra position. This is good, you can’t go up without a solid foundation or you topple.
7C…. enter flow as water, a merge with female, neutral but signifies entrance into 2nd chakra, creativity and movement to a space of infinite potential.
10C….water and water….you are the full maculine feminine flow to the solar plexis,
21 World…..bringing the question into the physical and creating another masculine/horizontal base to move vertically into the metaphysical
for a higher potential
I pulled a card just now to assist me in completing this explanation and I got 4 of Swords. To me, this is movement to the 4th chakra…the heart and swords to cut the crap. Beautiful.
xxzoey
Re: Riddle
I say keep digging, straight down. Eventually you’ll make it up on the other side. It may get murky and torturously hot, but there’s some damn fine jewels to look at along the way. And, you get to traverse territory relatively few other humans dare to tread. It’s like a vacation in hell. Who wouldn’t want that, just for the experience? 🙂
..I did it my way..
Jere
“Bonus riddle: You’ve dug yourself into a hole, it’s 20 feet deep, you’re 6 feet tall and your shovel is 6 feet long, so you can’t climb it and get out. How do you get out of the hole?”
Of course the other question is: How did you get *into* a 20-ft hole — somehow 8 feet below the level of your combined body and shovel? Unless you are a volcanic digger with a really stiff gale (th’owing that dirt straight up at the very moment the wind can knock it sideways about 5 feet), the likelihood is that the dirt is still down there, with you.
Otherwise, you can just wait for a nice little rainstorm and float out.
It’s good riddle. Thanks Charles.
Nope, sorry, that WAS a failure. There was so much more there, and I did not read it. When you begin a reading with a specific question, you often get an answer to some entirely different question. This was a good example. This is why I don’t usually work with questions from clients when doing readings, it’s pointless, you won’t get the answer you seek. That was the message of the 5S, even your question is futile.
Well perhaps I can redeem myself by trying to read the elemental bases and pairs. That’s where all the action is in this spread. Or perhaps I will just belabor the point, and dig myself into a deeper hole. So here goes. The bases:
5S Air, in Fire position. (friendly, active) Like a hot, dry, scorching wind. It all starts with a troubled, difficult thought. But that is a good thing, it drove us to seek higher wisdom, to resolve it.
7C Water, in Air position (strengthen, neutral). A large, powerful cloud with a vague hint of a storm coming (or perhaps going) but it is not actually storming, the energy is neutral. A cloud is thousands of tons of water suspended in the air, how magical. The invisible and intangible can give flight to the tangible, and take on some of those intangible properties.
10C Water in Water position (activates). Water water everywhere. Does a fish know water? Feelings are everything here, we’re drawing from an infinite supply of it, like an ocean. It fills us. Even our bodies are 98% water (but let’s not skip ahead to the concrete reality of Earth). One essential quality of water is that it is a liquid, it transforms itself into the shape of the container it is in. Our emotions take the shape of the container we carry them in, it is a perfect match. Fill ‘er up.
21World Earth in Earth position. (activates). The World is made from solid matter. It exists in physical form as a microcosm of all the intangible forces of the macrocosm, which brought it into being. But we are strictly on the physical plane, unable to sense anything intangible, unless it is expressed in solid matter.
Hmm.. I’m not sure this is going anywhere. Shall I stop? No, I’ll keep digging myself into a deeper hole. Now the elemental pairs.
5S-7C Air-Water (strengthen, neutral) over Fire and Air. Damn it’s hot and humid. Maybe it’s a stultifying humid summer day when the humidity is 99% and the air just does not move, and your throat burns with the heat. The 5 and 7 are odd so we’re seeing “angular forces” that are unresolved and dissonant, we’re in the gap between two tough situations, between thoughts and emotions, and a lot of energy is present with no place to go.
7C-10C Water-Water (activates) over Air and Water. Weepy woo woo water. A slight wisp of a breeze, and a light mist of water vapor rises from a pond, only to fall back slowly and rejoin the pool. The 10C is “perfecting” the odd 7C, which was blocked up. And check out that 10C, it’s a rainbow. The rainbow is the result of light being refracted through water vapor. We do not see the vapor, only its effects. Perhaps we aren’t seeing our emotional nature, but we do get the results of it, as refracted through our feelings. And it’s perfect. The misty visions of the 7C become bright, clear colors.
10C-21World Water-Earth pair (friendly, passive) over Water and Earth. Here’s where it all culminates, Water over Water meets Earth over Earth. Everybody head for the hills, it’s a flood! Water may flood the land and cover it deeply, but the land is not washed away. This is very complex as well as being very simple, with the only Major Arcana here meeting a perfected 10. Our feelings cannot change what IS, especially when what IS is such a powerful construction, beyond any mortal’s ability to affect it. What is, is. What we feel about it won’t change what it is, our feelings can only cover what it is.
Well darn it, I have failed to redeem myself. I have only dug a deeper hole. But that was probably the best I could do. By asking the cards to explain themselves, I am expecting the impossible.
Bonus riddle: You’ve dug yourself into a hole, it’s 20 feet deep, you’re 6 feet tall and your shovel is 6 feet long, so you can’t climb it and get out. How do you get out of the hole? Answer: dig sideways. Pull down dirt from the sides of the hole, widen it, and put the dirt into the bottom under your feet. Soon the hole will be only 6 feet deep, and you can climb right out.
And oh my goodness Charles – failure? No such thing… 🙂
Thank you, Charles. I don’t think you failed in the slightest.
Charles: Lovely. Just Lovely. Thank you.
Although, having called it “non-magical”, I have to confess, it’s all “magic” to me – the planet, the universe, life, death – everything in creation, really, it’s all magical… I mean, explain a leaf… explain an ant…. We can’t explain it – we can describe it and explain its functions and put it into context (as limited as that is), but we can’t really explain it… And I suppose that’s what I mean by “accepting” the Mysteries and chaos, and going with that almighty flow…and so it probably follows – them that flow are “synchronously” doing so…
😉
Heya’ll – I’m going to offer a “non-magical” explanation… I think, the cards being what they are (assigned a general direction, if not specific “meaning”), help us focus on that part of our lives the drawn cards pertain to. At any given time, we have choices, or ar at a crossroads, or burdened with something or other, or have something unresolved in our lives. I think the cards just draw attention to that. People usually turn to something like tarot when there is a problem they find difficult to resolve without some sort of assistance, and whatever the cards are designed to “mean” is the thing we focus on.
I’m quite happy for that to be enough – that’s what I get out of tarot. (Astrology’s a bit more complex, and there I tend to focus on the “big” movements and keep a look out for the conjunctions and various happs), but tarot is just such a personal little thing… But back to synchronicity – I find that happens with people – Sarah and I tend to “flow” together a lot – and so do certain people I have dealings with. I tend to agree with Sarah’s sister in a way – I find the people who “flow together” are very instinctive, and therefore tend to pick up on the rhythm and flow of “The Universe”, which, once you come to accept and be comfortable with the notion of “The Mysteries” and “chaos” (ie, there will be things you can never “rationally” know, whereas instinctively you understand them), you start to flow. And since nothing on the planet is truly “unique” – we’re all based on a finite set of building blocks (hence, massive points of commonality and shared experience), those who accept the overall sitch tend to flow…
So, dat be my two cents worth… 🙂
Charles! how is this reading *anything* but perfect?
Oh, I know, you’re tired. Things tend to seem disfigured when we’re out of energy. But your draw and reading is quite nicely figured, thank you!
M
P.P.S. Double oops, I made a typo. Just to clarify, the layout was: 5S-7C-10C-21World. Darn it, I even wrote that post in a word processor, just to avoid this sort of sloppy mistake. My apologies for the inconvenience.
P.S. Oops, the moment I posted that, I realized I forgot to do the pairs. Oh well, I am exhausted for the moment, no wonder I forgot. Perhaps later.
I pondered this question for a while, it’s a great question. I always like these questions, which essentially boil down to “what are we doing when we do Tarot?” I pondered it for a long time, considering various cosmological and magical theories. That wasn’t coming to any conclusion, so I thought I’d do the most obvious thing that nobody ever thinks of: ask the cards. So I’ll draw a little 4 card spread right now. I don’t usually do this sort of thing, asking a question and expecting an answer in the cards. I usually try to find the question AND the answer in the cards. But this should be interesting, no matter what. I’ll use the good old RWS deck. Here are the cards, they are usually read nonpositionally, but are produced by cutting the deck right to left, so the positions have an “elemental base” of Fire-Air-Water-Earth, in that order R to L. Oddly enough, all these cards came up reversed, but in this 4 card method, reversals are ignored. Let’s just call the straight reversals a message to pay attention to what the cards are saying, a “shot over the bow.” Here they are:
7S-7C-10C-21World.
I’ll do the elemental bases (each card’s element on the base position) and then the pairs of cards noted between them.
5S Air, in Fire position. (friendly, active)
Air-Water pair (strengthen, neutral)
7C Water, in Air position (strengthen, neutral)
Water-Water pair, (activates)
10C Water in Water position (activates)
Water-Earth pair (friendly, passive)
21World Earth in Earth position. (activates)
Wow. I wasn’t really prepared for this, I should take these 4 stacks and do a full “Opening of the Key” card count and pairing for each stack, which would take hours. I don’t have the time to do this right. But let me admit failure and proceed anyway with just the 4 card spread.
The amazing thing about this layout is that every single car’s element is friendly or positive to each other, both on their bases, and as pairs. That hardly ever happens. I cannot adequately express the beauty and complexity of this elemental configuration. The message here is being delivered clearly and powerfully, but in a whisper. Only those who can hear, will hear it.
I also notice the lack of fire in this layout. Very interesting. This isn’t about how we start reading Tarot, or why we do Tarot. It’s about how we think and feel about the cards, and concrete results of a reading. BTW, this is going to be a bit tricky to verbalize, reading about reading.
5S: “Defeat.” We did not have the power to find the answers on our own, we are defeated. We are seeking an answer outside of our Selves. We come to the reading wondering if any of this is worth the effort, because everything we tried in our search for answers was useless.
7C: I don’t like the G.’.D.’. “Debauch” interpretation here. We are being offered mystical visions and illusions. This card implies questions. How far can we go, before we go from vision, to illusion? Where is the boundary between a clear message and our illusions about the cards? Are we choosing an imaginary meaning of the cards, or does a true meaning present itself to us, if only we are able to pick it out? In either case, these meanings we find (or that find us) are like clouds, intangible.
10C: “Saiety,” or “Perfected Success.” It doesn’t matter whether the meanings are visions or illusions, they are perfect, and give us satisfaction.. as long as we believe in them. The readings give us reassurance and eases our hearts.
21 World. Wow, this is an Earth card with the Tetragrammaton symbolized in the corners, the physical embodiment of our Fire-Air-Water-Earth pattern. The cards are physical representations of these elements and archetypal symbols. The cards are the Universe’s physical mechanism to analyze and understand itself, a perfected microcosm. All things can be known, or at least, analyzed with the cards (to whatever extent these spiritual energies can be brought into our physical plane). Some people say that reading cards is a magical act, the very laying out of the cards invokes spiritual forces that transforms us. We see this here, the cards help us physically manifest those intangible spiritual energies, to embody them in our lives.
Well that’s all I have. I have failed, I was unable to rise to the occasion. Someday I will have to ask this question and give it the full treatment it deserves.
“a synchronicity is not a sign, it’s a signature.”
Oh that’s good. That’s a keeper for sure. Thanks, Sarah – and to your sister!
“We are motivated by things that we don’t even know are driving us, and the only way that I know of uncovering them is through a slow and often painful process of going within. I don’t think the process has an end … until it does. 🙂 So when we can’t ‘manifest all that we desire’, then we run the risk of putting ourselves into a state of being wrong, of not being good enough at it to get it right.”
bingo, sarah.
this is something i’ve been struggling with just in the simple act of reading the daily quotes from abraham-hicks. it is *so* easy, if i am having a rough day struggling to get out of negative thought loops, etc, to then get down on myself even more for apparently “asking” for more of what i *don’t* want in spite of myself — by getting down on myself about it. and then of course noticing this has the potential to make me feel worse again about it all. it can be a dangerous spiral. yikes.
adding in the piece about the slow, painful process of uncovering what unconscious things are driving us sounds like a crucial piece of the puzzle to me. without it, all the surface-level happy thoughts, while helpful in their own way, seem to only get me so far. they work well enough, until they come up against something more deeply entrenched in my psyche.
that state of “being wrong, of not being good enough at it to get it right” is a painfully familiar one to me, and has come up in various situations (esp in several aspects of a particular relationship) a lot over the last couple years. going within is the obvious action being called for, yet it can still be surprisingly challenging to dig in, to see the spots that need digging for what they are and allow myself to follow them in far enough.
that said, i had a surprising moment the other night of “being open to letting go” even though i’m not sure i was fully letting go of something i wanted but did not get. and i found the more i allowed the sense of *potential* that had attended this experience of ‘almost-getting’ to be the dominant thought-feeling in me, instead of feeling deprived or like i’d screwed up my chance, two things happened. one, i simply felt better about myself and the situation. two, i allowed a second chance to manifest.
As my sister is always keen to point out, a synchronicity is not a sign, it’s a signature.
It’s not the universe guiding you; it is you working with the universe. It’s not ‘out there’; it’s ‘in here’. It isn’t about sitting back; it is about taking full responsibility for every part of your experience. It isn’t a reward for a job well done; it is the result of the job well done. There is no parent out there; you are the parent.
You get my drift … 🙂
I find it difficult to argue the cognitive dissonance case, simply because I don’t think it’s relevant. But if, let’s hypothesise, that tarot did *not* work, then cognitive dissonance might come into play for some people who need to shore up their belief in it, and perhaps in other things that are an extension of that. All hypothetical. Cognitive dissonance only really comes into its own, imo, when the conflicting beliefs are known and understood.
I subscribe to the synchronicity paradigm (if you hadn’t already guessed!), and both of your comments, Len and Doug, make sense to me. And thank you, Doug – I’m going to track down a copy of that forward. I also agree that you don’t have to handle the cards. In fact, I would venture that *all* ritual around tarot and other forms of divination is not to appease something out there so that it works for you, because it always will; it is simply to get into the flow of receiving it, not because you *need* to, but because you *believe* you need to. That, for me, comes down to unworthiness, which then comes down to fear. But whatever works …
Zoey – “A few years ago, the concept of living in the present moment shifted from following cues as they presented in the environment to having to sense my timing and movement from inside my body. It was a bit tough, caused some anxiety but ultimately led me to feeling more in tune with my own divinity. I truthfully can’t place my trust in much that comes through the matrix, as I think that the Secret doesn’t happen for those who oppose the system.”
You’ve nailed it for me. In the alchemical language that I’m most recently learning to use, The Matrix is the astral plane, while sensing timing and movement from within is ascending the vertical. So excuse me while I digress from the topic of synchronicity somewhat when I say that I have a big problem with The Secret and its ilk. Big. Primarily because of the presence of the unconscious. We are motivated by things that we don’t even know are driving us, and the only way that I know of uncovering them is through a slow and often painful process of going within. I don’t think the process has an end … until it does. 🙂 So when we can’t ‘manifest all that we desire’, then we run the risk of putting ourselves into a state of being wrong, of not being good enough at it to get it right.
Through my own process, I have realised that I cannot make certain things happen, no matter how hard I try. The “why” of that is still in great part a mystery; but what I do know is that when I let go – or, if I can’t, then I am open to the idea of letting go – and work with the process of excavation, of going within fearlessly, then things happen, and not necessarily in the direction in which I have been looking. Letting go, acceptance, trust.
Thank you, all!
Hi Everyone,
Synchronicity is a great topic. I see it all the time as confirmation of my process.
A few years ago, the concept of living in the present moment shifted from following cues as they presented in the environment to having to sense my timing and movement from inside my body. It was a bit tough, caused some anxiety but ultimately led me to feeling more in tune with my own divinity. I truthfully can’t place my trust in much that comes through the matrix, as I think that the Secret doesn’t happen for those who oppose the system.
Whether it is a Tarot deck or a friendly game of dominoes, physics is my friend and sends me information The observer role is all it takes to make it appear.
Here is a recent note on magic from my friend and mentor.
Magic is a function of nature’s field or
“unconscious process” being conscious
as pure awareness without thought or thinking.
IT occurs when you are in “right identification” of
your reality system which is a reality field of totality =
everything and everybody…
all things, all thingess recognized as you
all bodies, everybody recognized as your self.
all intelligence, all intelligences recognised
as PUrposeful Function within its own reality field.
When I was 19, I took a 6 week class on Tarot. It was at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland ……taught by his daughter. I didn’t even know such a thing existed and didn’t have the sophistication to retain their beauty. Do I regret this……no, because those cards studied me.! LOL
xxzoey
This topic brings to mind the question of what happens in any form of “divination” and for me, the recall of Carl Jung’s forward in the now classic I Ching interpretation published in 1950 by Princeton University Press. For those who have not read it, Jung asks the oracle to introduce itself to the world and the resulting hexagrams cast and interpreted by Jung do a wondrous job of just that. In one of the hexagrams, the I Ching presents the hexagram of the well. Indicating that the oracle is like a water well, that can be drawn on for a source of “nourishment” for all who come to it. There is much more of course and I highly recommend anyone who has not read the introduction to do so. Jung concludes that the answers given seem, to him, as a psychologist, as rational as anything he could expect from a person.
This same process must be happening in all forms of questioning, including but not limited to runes, yarrow sticks (I Ching), on and on. I have a software implementation of Tarot cards that also works (or at least gives me meaningful answers) and when consulting that, so I don’t think you need to “handle” what you seek answers from. And while many talk of random events in the universe, others say that there is nothing random in the universe whatsoever. If not random, then there must be some type of control or selection at some level that seems random at some levels or occasions, yet appropriate at others such as in divination or other events. Is it our “higher selves, spirit guides, other connections and synchronicities through other dimensions? There are lots of possibilities, limited only by our knowledge and imagination.
I’ll go with point 1, synchronicity but with an expanded idea on just how that happens and I feel strongly that it is more than just the “human field” that is affecting the outcome. I’m willing to bet there is more going on in other realms of life seen and unseen (in flesh and spirit) than most of us imagine. So, one has to wonder, just exactly how does it function and what is driving synchronicity anyway?
Doug.
Amanda,
Thank you. Really like how your mind works. No need for you to be set straight. Seems that we are actually very close in what we are saying. You, as always, are being clear and precise and correct. i, on the other hand am taking a bit of license and using that algorithm to turn down the sharp and turn up the fuzz in an attempt to turn “example” into a verb. Nails on a chalk board? Sorry!
hey len —
great points, though i take issue a bit with your use of the term “cognitive dissonance.” i’m not sure it’s quite accurate to say algorithms in a digital camera would have once been considered “cognitive dissonance,” because what you’re saying is that we would have once considered them to be nonsense or unintelligible.
whereas my understanding of “cognitive dissonance” is that it is a feeling of unease/tension created by holding two conflicting beliefs — to borrow an example read elsewhere, such as when someone who considers herself to be intelligent and educated and makes good choices for herself smokes even though she also holds the belief that smoking is bad for her health and may cause her cancer. then she may feel cognitive dissonance.
which is not to say that we cannot feel some sort of cognitive dissonance if beliefs we hold are challenged by inventions that demonstrate conflicting beliefs, but i don’t think it’s quite accurate to say the items themselves are cognitive dissonance, more that they may engender that feeling.
feel free to set me straight if i’m off…
🙂
Sarah, thank you for this important article and topic.
Len, thank you for clear expression from your heart (re: magic/synchronicity or system) what was a jumbled response in my head. Your words are always poetry.
luckydriver — we’re working on that link. thanks for the heads up!
These Xultun cards are really appealing!
FYI – in the editor’s note, the link to the article that describes how to work with a tarot spread does not seem to be working….
Sarah,
Thank you. Gee whiz, was writing my response and lost the internet connection, so if that first response shows up, please forgive the repeat.
To start with, i come down on the side of synchronicity. Unlike Toni Gilbert, however, i would not use words like “affects” and “magically” because they have nothing to do with synchronicity and confuse the issue. All systems are closed systems, even mathematics. Yet there is abundant evidence that all systems are synchronized. It is not magic. It is not cause and effect. It is inter-systemic. It is simple as the term “synchronize your watches” except we are not acquainted with the watches at this point.
Also, please do not give short shrift to what we think we are saying when we use what has become the disparaging term cognitive dissonance. The universe is expanding. Our individual and collective consciousness is expanding with it. Our methods of observation and expression don’t always keep up. The parables used by great teachers can be easily dismissed as cognitive dissonance when in fact they were and are an attempt to make the language keep up with the awareness. That’s how poetry is so important to the human race. That’s how the close-minded get confronted by poetry and put it down as nonsense. Heck, there was a time when the algorithms in your digital camera would have bee dismissed as cognitive dissonance.
To paraphrase Arthur C. Clark, a sufficiently advanced alien technology would be to us indistinguishable from magic. By the same token, today’s cognitive dissonance may be tomorrow’s common sense or household item.
Oracles are oracles because they have access to information beyond the boundaries of the empirical and objective. In the final analysis, the most important thing is the integrity of the practice. We are fortunate to have an astrologer (and journalist) of the highest integrity in Eric. The same (not faint) praise goes for you. Thank you.