Tarot is an ancient esoteric system, popular mainly with its prophetic aspect. However, one of its basic values is that it gives us the opportunity to gain knowledge about the world around us, to perceive its inner workings and, above all, to get to know ourselves. Tarot helps us see, realize and understand the connection between everyone and everything; the laws that create us and that we ourselves create. Its significance lies not only in the insight it gives us when looking back (the past) and forward (the future), but also when searching in depth, for the essence of the problem. Tarot is like a mirror which reflects our true nature – if we have the honesty and bravery to see it, we can perceive the invisible behind our ordinary daily view; our positive and negative sides, which very often remain hidden for us and which we project onto the others, thus making them responsible for our success and failure.
Tarot builds a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, casts light upon the unconscious processes; reveals hidden forces and interconnections, points towards unexpected directions, which can be exits in difficult life situations; lends a helping hand in periods of crisis. Turning to Tarot for a piece of advice doesn’t deprive us of choice, as it is often fatalistically thought, but just the opposite – it multiplies our opportunities to choose, showing us the complete, concrete and detailed picture of a given problem or a situation. Tarot gives us information and this information helps to heal our soul when it is confused and deprived of faith because it has lost sense and direction. Tarot gives us the opportunity to make sense of the world outside and inside us, to turn the chaos into harmony – first inside ourselves, and then in the world around us. Each event and human being in our lives has its own meaning and significance, its specific place in the whole puzzle of our existence. So a system like Tarot (or astrology, numerology, I Ching) – philosophical, analytical, and prophetic – gives us the chance to peek behind the visible side of things, to see the hidden contents behind the form, the divine meaning behind the coincidences.
Tarot is not a heal-all, it is not a way to transfer our responsibility to somebody or something else – nobody and nothing can solve our problem instead of us. Like any other esoteric system, Tarot is not an end in itself and cannot be turned into such. It is a way to discover a kind of roadmap with signs on it. Tarot is one of the ways to perceive new opportunities, new viewpoints, new understanding for the essence of things, causes and consequences, which we have not even suspected, which we have neglected or not dared to admit even to ourselves.
Communicating with Tarot gives us the answers which lie in ourselves, shows us the roads, which only we can and should travel. Tarot is an esoteric system that protects those who use it, revealing only the information which they can understand and perceive. Working with Tarot helps us understand the causes and effects; it connects the past, the present and the future in an integrated whole, helping us realize our role, our responsibility and our great opportunities. Thus we can see “today” as an echo from “yesterday” and “tomorrow” as an echo of ”today”. Tarot offers us help, which we can take advantage of, without becoming dependent on it.
This book offers the reader the opportunity with the help of Tarot to seek, to find and to use internal, supreme points of support, illuminated points of orientation in one's life journey. The aim is not the mechanical or selfish prediction of the future, but a healing journey into oneself, where we choose to be an active participant in one’s own life and to serve higher and virtuous aims.