What is there to know from the Tarot?

I started learning and reading the Tarot when I was in my 20's, now 30 years ago.  When did the time slip away!  I remember the first time I picked up a deck, shuffled the cards and felt the potential within to contain the answers I was seeking. The deck was the Aquarian Tarot, which was so very appropriate for my future understanding of wide angle and yet zoomed in perspective. 

Exploring this tool and the mysteries it seemed to hold were the first steps in a long journey of understanding myself, my experiences and more than these an even deeper desire to understand others. In the beginning it was an ignominious and confounding process where I felt that I was accessing something way beyond my humble humanness, connecting to something greater and more wise than myself.  The cards meanings were veiled and my understanding of what was being conveyed a mystery. The idea that something outside of us being more wise or having all the answers is the ironic falsehood. That we look at a tool or a belief and give it the power to decide what is true and what is not for us is just part of the experience of the matrix, the illusory web of the fourth density or third dimension.

It was many years later that I understood that the truth was that I was accessing information that was held within the many different versions of myself and that these versions were the voices from the other side!  IS there another side or is it all one I asked myself? I now know that everything is and always will be together in a unified field and therefore never separate. But how we experience this physical and visceral life version of ourselves must be convincing enough to override our higher selves and therefore the knowledge that we are all part of a unified energy field, a quantum realm. We need to feel limited, separate and small, to engage truthfully in the experiences here that are so contrasting so we come into physicality to contain the energy that is our unique signature of Source. Then the light and dark, evil and good, well and ill are felt through the physical being created for us to inhabit.  Then duality that is present here within the illusion/matrix of this place, dimension, density is felt acutely through this experience of aliveness in a human body.

Everything is a cycle here, the seasons are such a beautiful way to illustrate what is true about this dimension. The Summer gives way to Fall which slips into Winter then is woken up in Spring for a new experience. Much like a new breath, when we focus on taking in oxygen slowly and exhale out, this is a new moment, a new season, a new version of ourselves. 

The body is the timeline, it dictates when we need sleep and therefore a reset of the experience, it needs food so we again are immersed in an experience of sensation of taste and texture.  Then we feel the wind in our hair and smell the ocean breeze while birds fly overhead.  We are part of this beautiful world!  The bodily senses are how we feel and understand the relationship between energy and physicality which allows us to discern the very truth that we are a part of everything and never separate from anything even each other.  If everyone truly could understand this we would see ourselves across the table in a different skin, speaking another language, feeling different feelings but understand this is also us. It is the concept of 'other' that creates feelings of dissonance, fear and hate ultimately creating the need to eradicate the 'other' to find relief and justification for our belief that is different from another. And for some it is the idea of having power which will keep them safe in the limited perspective that resources are finite and competition is the only way to ensure their safety. That money and strategic control over the experiences of the many will allow them more of everything that they are so afraid to lose or not have in this limited reality. Where as the truth is we are never limited. We have access to everything within the Universe, power to solve all of our problems and to have not only enough for everyone but more than enough!  We limit ourselves by our beliefs, giving over our sovereignty to an idea, a belief or a reality that seems plausible to our finite experiences in the physical. But when we access the quantumness of our being, the realm of the gods, the energetic center of our being we can bring this into the physical experience and therefore create a sense of heavenly paradise within which leads us truly on a path of ultimate alignment and seemingly outrageous fortune. 

The Tarot is one way to begin to understand this truth.  The way the cards are accessed are the journey towards our own truth within. And to say we are all one and yet not different or unique is to not fully understand the complexity of the Ultimate Creative Force that created this Universe. Although this Creative Force does not attach to emotions like we do in this dimension it is not unaware of the ebb and flow of them from peace to anger from desire to repulsion and from hate to empathy and back again.  These emotions are a way to track what we have experienced otherwise we would be just programmed computers and not complex organic, sentient beings. 
 
When we hear the truth or a version of it we say it resonates.  This to me feels like chills or sudden waves of relaxation, of ahhhh yes!  When I feel like I am not supposed to do something I get a feeling of tripping on my own inner feet, like a sudden push from an unknown source.  This is simply misalignment.  The energy or flow of energy within me suddenly gets stopped and the abruptness of the stop is enough to feel like I tripped internally.  But this awareness took years to acquire!  So many times not listening and moving ahead anyway resulted in an experience which was not anticipated or wanted. And this was simply because it was out of alignment with the truth.  
So how does the Tarot accomplish this truth telling in a way that we can understand? 

The original decks were simply beautifully hand painted cards used for a gambling game played by the elite in Italy around the 15th century. The Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti commissioned the renowned gothic painter Michelino da Besozzo on the instruction of his personal secretary, Marziano da Tortono, who was a humanist and an astrologer. The themes of the fifth suit, the trump suit, also referred to later as the Major Arcana, were from Roman mythology, such as Strength, Judgement, Magician and the Fool. The 15th century was a dangerous time to be an astrologer and a humanist which believed in the power of the human individual and through exploring the movement of the stars the energies that were released, not the power of the church and its beliefs in a central god that was seeking retribution through the vehicle of the Vaticans various inquisitions for any individual that had a unique thought. Many at this time in history were being horribly killed; beheaded, burnt at the stake, drawn and quartered, in the name of heresy which was determined by the Catholic Church and its power hungry and dare I say demonic servants or those seeking experiences of inharmony. So creating a fifth deck based on Roman Mythology was a dangerous prospect and yet created the pathway for future divination in the 17th century. 

The Tarot became a divination tool around the 17th century as a way for us to peer through the veil of contrast, the matrix, so we can know something true about ourselves and our higher consciousness.  I believe it tunes into our current vibration and beliefs which emanate through our physical energy.  Then course corrects the invalid illusion so we can for a moment know the simple truth that we can create a pathway using our god-self, Source spark within.  This spark of Universal Source is the way to create all we desire, and all we can envision for ourselves. And creating alignment within ourselves is a gift to the world of contrast, the breaking through the matrix itself. It is not necessary to convince others of what is true, only that we see this for ourselves. We can offer our unique pathway to others like offering binoculars to see far away, or continue to be a light within the darkness of illusion but this is really all we can do.  The contrast in the world is the experiences of the many versions of Source experiencing itself in a safe environment where truth is subjective steeped in contrast and based on individual perspective which excludes all other perspectives. It can be played out in ways that do not ruin or change our unique spirit selves or the original spark of Source that lies within each of us.  BUT when we realize that we are part of the whole complex web of the Universe and can create in unity with this we align with a power that creates everything! This is the power of our Higher Consciousness in full collaboration with our physical aliveness.
So the next time you need some guidance with a problem, circumstance or situation, consider a Tarot Reading and/or learning more about this amazing tool.  This is ultimately one of the ways I connect people to their true selves, their higher consciousness, in a way that transcends this limited reality of physicality. And when people experience this truth once, even if they forget and get immersed into the matrix again it becomes easier and easier to peal back the layers of illusion in the future. Be patient with yourself as you consider how to create a way forward that is in alignment with your true self and create the experiences you truly want to experience. 
Everything is possible when we are pulling on the beautiful scarf of heaven and revealing the light and balance in harmony.

Blessings,
Annapurna Devi