are. Because we do not see the objects as they are, but rather merely as we are able or willing to see them, each act of seeing can only ever be the perspective of our own imagination. But the roots of this concept are our hopes and fears. Our feelings are what make us “recognize” everything that we observe through the subjective lens of our inner state of mind. Nevertheless, we give the name of reality to what we ultimately see.
Consequently, we are only able to see the cards in relation to our hopes and fears. So there is no view of the cards that would not change as soon as our hopes and fears changed. The individual imagination consists of unconscious yearnings and anxieties that are attracted precisely to those events (cards) in the world that confirm them. It is therefore clear that tarot does not in any way question the law of cause and effect; on the contrary, it simply provides a broader perspective within this law. If we shuffle and lay the cards, we are creating a reflection of our own small portion in the overall situation. In the process, we suppose that even so-called “coincidence” is essentially determined. That is to say, it is decided by the force field of the will that arises from the center of feeling and in turn is bound to the contents that present themselves to the will in the form of destiny. Through the filter of the imagination, the eternal now becomes commonplace. And this eternal quality, which is integrated into everyday life, always imparts a sense of yearning: a yearning for God.
This is particularly apparent in the tarot. When laying the cards, experts try to find certain forms and structures so that they can recognize the spirit of the eternal beyond everyday meaning. This is because they instinctively know that their yearnings are only the shadow of the spirit that sits enthroned beyond the perceivable.
Synchronicity of the Internal and External
It is therefore in no way true that the cards “predict” destiny. Rather, we transfer our present state of mind onto the cards and then, by transferring it back, read the unconscious expectations that we initially projected onto them. The use of tarot cards makes it possible for us to observe the world in the mirror of our inner expectations, and to understand these as a true illustration of the ideas and convictions surrounding our inner meaning. The cards alone can never be destiny; they merely indicate how our inner sense approaches the world. We could say that they try to draw attention to those symbols that are the mirror of our internal and external processes in a synchronic form. When external events occur, they must first take place on the level of the soul before they can actually be translated into the material level. The explanation offered by the cards is one of the many possible ways of feeling these inner currents and recognizing them as the original source of all action, as the plans whose materialization is what we subsequently call experienced reality.
The Internal Reality!
In other words, the world as it portrays itself to us always corresponds to the sum of our experiences that we are consciously able to comprehend. We create our levels of reality through the effects of our actions; these effects of our actions simultaneously create the identity of our ego. Each of us creates our destiny through our unconscious traits, and our destiny is then separated from these traits and perceived as an external event. In this way, we can avoid recognizing that our human strivings are directed not towards knowing the world, but rather at constantly affirming ourselves in our inner patterns of destiny. Each moment in time therefore represents only a part of our time/space continuum, while our present attracts the patterns of experience that we are still lacking in order to integrate them into our consciousness. Consequently, each of us creates a quality to life that we realize through our unconscious inner intentions and then call it “destiny.” We would like to recognize these “higher” workings, which form both the basis and the goal of our path through life. But we are playing with fire when we do this because as soon as we think about how we feel inside, we surrender either to limitations in our own patterns of thinking or to the dangerous world of philosophical models.
The External Path
Only when we understand that we can never know purely from within ourselves can we put our faith in religious or esoteric models without being consumed by them. This is because the collective creative spirit has established altars in the world upon which we offer our concepts of the images or our own imprinted image patterns (to the spirit that has drummed into us how we must perceive the world if it is to be our world). Only when we know that all answers are in us alone and not in the models, and that these answers cannot be found through external descriptions but only triggered by them, can we discover that these models do not hold any truth: On the contrary, they are a structured form of searching that has been elevated to a quest for the Holy Grail in the minds of the seekers. We must first ask ourselves what inner yearning compels us to select a few similarities out of something that is actually an endless chaos. Why do we give these a structure and an interdependence, conjuring up clusters of notions of the world? Then we can see that only thinking itself is perceived in thought and we can simultaneously regard symbols as tools for expressing our creativity. We could say that the symbols are mirrors of what we project from the unconscious onto the conscious plane. The next chapter outlines various techniques and ways of laying the cards that can bring us one small step closer to the unknown that hides from itself within us because of our incessant thinking.
THE SPREAD SYSTEMS
Our symbol is the pentagram. It is also known as the witch’s foot, because it could either repel witches and Druids – or attract them (if reversed). It is still used today in rural areas to keep evil away from cattle stalls, thresholds, beds, and so forth. Whenever this is done, the purpose is to activate the collective spiritual structures, which symbolize protection against evil (the good banishes the repressed part of itself into evil to legitimize the struggle of the good against evil and remain unrecognized as it lives out the repressed part within evil). Consequently, a conscious confrontation with deliberately produced pentagram visions represents a possible form of therapy in the future. This suggests not only the defense of the shadow, but also the defense of defense, the questioning of the defense, and dealing with the inner fears that have only been produced by this defensive behavior in the first place.
We use two interwoven pentagrams to consult the oracle. The white pentagram, with the head and limbs of the white goddess, symbolizes white magic or the victory of the spirit over the material world. On the other hand, the black pentagram, which points upwards with its two tips and leads to the Devil’s goatee, represents black magic or the victory of the material world over the spirit. Here we have a tool in our hands or before our eyes that polarizes all of the values: There are no questions outside of the polarized values; depending on the type of question, we can decide which psychological explanatory model we want to transfer to the pentagram.
| Group 1 | Personality Questions |
| IBaphomet | Who am I? (The secret of the ego) |
| IIThe Green Angel | Who is he? (The secret of the shadow) |
| IIIThe Mirror of the Soul | What is the self? (The secret of the soul) |
| Group 2 | Interpretation or Development Questions |
| IVThe Big Bang | How is the matter developing?(What does it mean?) |
| VMephisto’s Hammer | What hinders the matter?(What does the crisis mean?) |
| VIThe Norns’ Wheel | What drives the matter?(What is the sense of the meaning?) |
| Group 3 | Decision-Making Questions or Questions Concerning Trends |
| VIIFive-Ray Spread | How should I decide?(Way of deciding) |
| VIIINine-Ray Spread | How do I relate to another person or how does he relate to me?(Relationship Game) |
| IXTen-Ray Spread | What is the trend?(The joker among the spreads: appropriate for all questions) |
In order to understand how the two first spread groups (spread systems I–VI) function, we must understand that they show us no external reflection of life.
