THE
NEURO-TAROT
on designing your own cards
© 1987 - 2006 Antero Alli
Historically
and hysterically, the overlap between passing centuries
has usually been rife with chaos and anxiety. During
these transition times one can witness the soothsayers,
diviners, psychics and visionaries stepping forth
to hawk their various doomsday scenarios and utopian
futures. Amidst the growing uncertainty of the current
millennium overlap, a veritable flood of psychological
maps and metaphysical models (books, teachers, oracles)
riddle a collective consciousness on the brink of
a nervous breakdown, while offering a cornucopia of
spiritual guidance for restabilizing our world view(s).
As more people pass through these exotic belief systems
and esoteric mystical codes, some of us discover how
certain externally imposed maps and models have the
effect of buffering us from the very guidance we seek
in the first place.
Of these buffers, many come disguised as still another
form of disembodied spirituality, suggesting that
the source of spiritual authority exists outside ourselves
... out of body ... in a host of channeled entities,
crystals, angels, cults, organized and disorganized
religions, UFOs, moms & dads, governments, IBM,
CBS, FBI, LSD, and ten thousand other things. This
tendency to project the spiritual outside of ourselves
is not our fault but a deeply ingrained socio-religious
conditioning inherited from ages past. There is no
point in feeling guilty about it or judging others
too harshly for their ignorance. Yet, if we are to
adjust and change this habit we must become completely
responsible for recognizing the way it negates our
capacity for validating our present-time realities
and the personal registration of those states.
How
often have you heard yourself, or someone else, exclaim
during an incredulous yet very real moment: "I
can't believe this is happening to me?" Why is
the most difficult thing for people to believe, the
very thing that is happening to them? Because it exists
and existence does not require our belief or understanding
to happen; it just is. We don't usually register the
state or condition we are in; that habit must be learned.
This turns the prospect of spiritual autonomy into
an uphill battle yet, the struggle itself is essential
for self-realization and, not mere understanding.
We are truly giants who have been raised as dwarves;
its time to reclaim our innate spiritual authority.
On Redefining the Facts of Your Life
Once
these conditioned responses are recognized, the task
at hand is fairly simple yet requires your total integrity
to work. First, you must be ready to defuse those
archaic, obsolete cultural ideations wrapped around
the facts of your life, so you can experience these
facts more directly and come to your own conclusions
about what they mean. The spiritual facts of your
life might include intelligence, love, security, language,
creativity, work, transformation, friendships and
whatever issues need redefining before they can align
with your direct experience rather than consensus
reality hand-me-downs. Its in this iconoclastic spirit
that the following ideas, principles and techniques
for designing your own oracle are presented.
Images are just images until you change one that is attached to an important area of your psyche. The entire course of your life can change with it and that is how magic works. Many people would never dream of designing a tarot deck or an oracle, yet how truly magical it might be to divine the unknown with cards custom-designed to your own personal vision and the symbology that is its voice. For simplicity's sake, let "oracle" cards differ from a "tarot" by its lack of externally imposed ordering principles such as major & minor arcana, four suits and numerology.
You do not need Tarot experience to design a deck of oracle cards, in other words. If you know the Tarot, then you might be in the position to rethink those archetypes in terms more personally relevant to the life you are now living; you could design a new Tarot. Neuro comes from the Greek "nerve," referring to the most basic unit of biological intelligence: the neuron. The trinary function of the neuron is to absorb, store and transmit information and/or energy.
This might be as innate a definition for intelligence
as we can know. Well use it to test your own definitions.
Real, live intelligence finds expression through our
talents for intuitive osmosis (absorption), personal interpretation (storage) and the communication
skills (transmission) connecting us to the
world. Nobody can ever know how intelligent you actually
are until you can communicate what you've absorbed
and interpreted for yourself. One way of dramatizing
this process is through designing a deck of cards
expressing how you absorb, interpret and transmit
the spiritual facts of your life, according to your
own Central Neural (the word "nervous" gets
on my nerves) System.
The
Workbench and the Research
A Neuro-Tarot is a symbolic device for tracking images
in the psyche and the world around us, for finding
and creating more imaginative connections between
vertical (heavens above, soul within, earth below)
and horizontal (the world around us) realms. I've
discovered three basic methods for constructing a
Neuro-Tarot: 1) cut-and-paste collage 2) artistic
illustration, and 3) combined collage-illustration.
Each approach works well enough depending on the
degree of available energy, artistic talent, and time.
To convey the fundamentals, this article will only
explore the first cut-and-paste collage method of
designing a Neuro-Tarot; perhaps the illustrators
will catch on soon enough and start drawing their
own cards.
Preliminary research for this project involves locating
and obtaining the following raw materials: numerous
copies of your favorite magazines, especially those
with the greatest variety of font sizes and styles
alongside the most gorgeous illustrations and photos.
In the service of Art, you will mutilate and destroy
these magazines by cutting out choice words and images
to form the basis of your deck of cards. (Note: collage
art bypasses copyright law when the combination of
separate images creates an entirely new work of visual
art: yours.) To complete your oracle kit, you'll need
a hundred or so blank index cards, glue sticks, scissors,
felt-tip pen, and plenty of scratch paper.
What makes an oracle deck work? An effective Neuro-Tarot
depends on the integrity of your self-knowledge ...
your willingness to completely expose yourself to
yourself. Self-honesty ranks a lot higher than artistic
talent when you're creating a divination device. When
is the best time to design a deck of oracle cards
? Whenever your Central Neural System is active; when
you're not too sure about who you are or what everything
means. This happens often enough in a state of openness
and uncertainty, and more so when you're slightly
unstable or in trouble ...hot water - emotional catastrophe
- psychological disaster - personal shambles ... when
your life literally feels like its " in pieces"
a nd when you'd do anything to feel whole again. I
think its only fair to say that you don't have to
be in a desperate situation to design a deck of oracle
cards; you can just as well create one based on your
wonderfully calm and untroubled life.
When the Personal Becomes
Universal
When you decide to begin, start naming the most meaningful
pieces of your life. Whether its the shards of shattered
dreams or a list of your top twenty reasons for getting
out of bed in the morning, name your facts. If they
connect with people you have feelings for: name the
feelings. Define those fragments that are strictly
personal to you. Start imagining cards that act like
windows to new experiences. Look at this process as
a kind of hands-on, primitive film editing project
in which you are director, producer and cast. Define
all your various experiences in your own words. The
" right" word is the one that means something
to you and/or refers to the specific states that mean
something to you. Now, get those scissors and magazines.
Start cutting out pictures that jump out at you. Then,
cut those words out that mean something to you. Choose
some neutral words, as well. Cut out hundreds of words
and create a word pool.
There's a power to naming. It assists the formation
of a private language while serving as a mouthpiece
for more universal archetypes. The term “archetype”,
as used here, refers to invisible forces of nature
illuminating deep memory patterns of the species past,
present and future mythos. Tarot cards can act like
symbolic mirrors for reflecting the development of
collective mythologies: the universal stories living
through our individual lives that express our connections
with changing cultural zeitgeists, as well as more
far-reaching interspecies transmutations.
The key, I think, is to keep your work personal. If
you try to focus on too grand a scale, you run the
risk of losing power and going bland. Designing these
cards requires total integrity. By committing to what
is most personally meaningful to you and your life
right now, you have a much better chance at breaking
through to more universal ground. Have faith; with
faith and patience, anyone can persist and succeed.
If you have doubt, make a “doubt” card.
Its your life, remember? Make cards that express darker,
frightening elements within your psyche alongside
the brighter, more cheerful aspects of your totality.
By combining strong positives and negatives, your
deck will tend to ring with more truth and authenticity.
The more personal you get with your deck when you're
designing it, the more personal your deck will get
with you when you play with it later.
Images + Words x Imagination
= Archetypes
Back to the workbench. Scissors in hand, hunt down those magazine images and photos triggering an instant resonance in you, positive or negative. You don't have to know why these images touch and move you, as long as they do. Trust your absorbing, intuitive intelligence on this one. Next, look for those pictures that somehow remind you of your past, your present, and your desired and potential futures. These images will help instill a sense of chronological and emotional time throughout your deck, an important attribute for the divination of timing and maybe, prediction. Look for colors and designs that encourage visual contrast and variety. Create a deck full of surprises and its cards will continue to alter the expected for you.
Another
visual technique is “background/foreground "
Find images that make perfect backdrops for ideas
you wish to highlight up front. This method brings
a dramatic element into play. Try experimenting with
the collage technique of juxtaposing dissonant images
in one card to form new visions, new ways of seeing
things.
How many pictures are enough? Too many are usually
enough. Create an image pool in front of you opposite
the word pool (I find it most convenient to work on
the floor). Now: get a sense of whether the images
should be on the left or the right side in front of
you; this decision will help fine-tune your intuition
for the experimental task ahead. This idea stems from
the left brain/right brain theory which suggests that
the right (more intuitive) hemisphere of the brain
"quot;thinks"quot; in pictures, and the
left (more analytical) in words; once again, trust
your own intuition as to where you put the image pool.
Now you've got all the raw materials you'll need right
in front of you: words and images. To create your
own archetypes, begin applying your imagination to
the process of combining words and images in ways
that communicate personal visions that have the most
meaning for you. The faculty of imagination cannot
be underestimated in bringing your cards to life and
infusing it with the magic of dreams. Create worlds
your soul would inhabit. Arrange words and images
together in ways that express the way you see the
world. By staying committed to the personal, you will
eventually break through to universal conditions almost
anyone can relate to. Since this may not happen right
away, expect certain cards to remain more subjective
and esoteric, while others become more immediately
accessible to minds outside your own.
More Tools for the
Oracle's Toolbox
Become more specific about your creative responses
to inevitable issues like sex, death and taxes. You
may pass through a kind of initiation wherein doors
open to the gallery of your multidimensional psyche.
Inside, you'll find all the great masterpieces to
inspire you: Mom and Dad, Passion, Power, Love, Art,
Friendship, Revelation, Failure, Faith, Death, Morality,
Fear, Recognition, Imprisonment, Commitment, Freedom,
Family, Education, Money, Magic, the Earth and "
the ten thousand things" . . . all of which are
potential Tarot cards disguised as everyday experiences.
By crystallizing each of these in your cards, you
engage an exercise in values; you risk taking a stand
on important issues. By putting yourself on the line,
you can uncover greater portions of your psyche and
also clean out what you are unwilling to claim.
Trim the pictures so they fit on the index cards;
then, glue them down. Watch your story unfold as each
card comes to life. After cutting and pasting, frame
each card with a dark felt-tip pen. Glue the word
onto the card, wherever appropriate, to communicate
your insight. If a card speaks for itself without
a word, leave it off for now; maybe it won't need
a word. Naming and/or numbering cards is a traditional
device for ordering random, mixed-up cards. You decide
how much "order" you want to impose. Numbering
each card instills an ordering principle; it "arranges"
your chaos. To produce your own creation myth, delineate
stages of evolution as you see it by assigning a number
to each phase (each card) of your transformative process.
(The traditional Tarot does this with much success.)
As you continue combining terms and pictures, watch
for configurations that surprise you by offering a
new insight into an old memory or a bird's-eye view
on a previously banal issue. Watch how visual composition
can act on your point of view. Above all, look for
moments: condensed visual feasts for the inner and
outer eye. Moments ... snapshots of eternity, close-ups
of your inner life. To fortify the resilience of each
card, you may want to paste two index cards together;
a colored card makes a nice reverse side. To extend
the lifespan of your completed deck, contact a printer
that offers lamination services (the plastic cover
enveloping restaurant menus) and laminate your cards.
This will also make them easier to deal.
On
Testing the Oracle
The simplest and (sometimes) most effective form of
self-divination is to hold the deck of cards in your
hands while concentrating on a quandary; after focusing
on it, pick a card. Notice your immediate response
before you get to thinking about it. A quandary, by
the way, is not a simple " yes" or "
no" question; it may be an unresolvable issue.
Then, why ask ? Answers aren't everything. The cards
you pick may shift your perspective around, allowing
you to think differently about the initial concern.
Greg Hill (author of Principia Discordia, Loompanics
Press), shared the following “Discordian spread”
with me after seeing my first Neuro-Tarot. Deal five
cards, face down. Pick a card to represent 1) the
present time 2) your aspiration and 3) your personal
struggle. Now, select two cards (4 & 5) representing
a pair of opposites that serve to unify the whole
and to expose two contrary elements of the number-1
card. (There is no center to this spread.) Another
use I developed is a form of cosmic poker I call five-card
catma (for the uninformed, catma is the opposite of
dogma). This game needs at least two players to work.
The object of Five-card Catma is to display the most
imaginative creation myth in the room, using only
five cards to tell your story of how the universe
came into being. As with poker, someone deals five
cards to each player. After receiving their initial
five cards, each player can discard as many as three
cards to risk obtaining a better hand. When all hands
are fixed and it is time to show, each player narrates
his/her creation myth utilizing their cards to animate
the story. Players can also fold and forfeit the game
to watch. Those who play it out do so until one creation
myth stands out as "the best." This could
be a funny, somber, erotic, oppressive or totally
banal story; the nature of the myth seems incidental
to its truth factor. As strange as this may sound,
there's never been any question about which story
has ever won as long as I've played this game. I don't
claim to understand how this works; I attribute it,
in part, to the mystery of the cards and maybe, the
game itself.
PART TWO: On Revisioning the Major Arcana
excerpted from "Angel Tech"
About the author
In
astrological
practice since 1980, Antero is the author of
ASTROLOGIK, ANGEL
TECH, THE
AKASHIC RECORD PLAYER, LETTERS,
ESSAYS & PREMONITIONS, THE
VERTICAL ORACLE (with Sylvi Pickering), and TOWARDS
AN ARCHEOLOGY OF THE SOUL. Antero has also written
numerous astrological
essays for THE MOUNTAIN ASTROLOGER and PLANET
EARTH Astrology Journal. Beyond his metaphysical writings,
Antero writes and directs original works for stage
and/or
screen.