The Mystic's Tarot & Oracle Cards™
Online Book
Introduction
How the Cards Came About
First of all, thank you so much for your purchase of the Mystic's Tarot & Oracle Cards. I think of you as part of the MTOC family, so, welcome, beloved friend!
The Mystic's Tarot & Oracle Cards (MTOC) make up a truly diverse 38-card deck honoring all of life as sentient and soulful.
I felt divinely guided during the three years in which I worked on them solidly. I first realized I needed to make a deck in 2015 when I couldn't find diverse enough a deck. I played with ideas till September of 2019. From then on, I worked solidly all through the pandemic until last month, November 2023, when they were finally ready to make their journey into print.
I felt guided for the deck to represent and honor all aspects of nature: land and sea, animals, plant beings, and humans of various ages, body shapes, genders, cultures, ethnicities, races, and abilities, and including this entire gorgeous and magical cosmos.
Each card pays special homage to the greenness of our beautiful earth, and the blueness we see from space, so we may be reminded that we belong to Mama Gaia and they belong to us. For example, through the green foliage of the Governance card.
The MTOC celebrate the earthiness of physical reality along with divine, meta reality, and the gorgeous more-than-human world, commonly referred to as "nature." They advances the viewpoint that all life is self-aware and participates in loving connection with each other.
It has the mystic's viewpoint that nothing and no one is lesser and all of life is family.
What makes The Mystic's Tarot & Oracle Cards and online guidebook so extraordinary is that they were conceived as living, reciprocal entities that are at liberty to continue to evolve as life engages with them.
New Editions & More Oracle Cards
As the deck grows and expands, I will introduce new editions and the possibility exists that I will create new Oracle cards if the divine guides me there.
I hope these cards will bring you many joys and blessings in your collaborations with each other.
Blessings and expect miracles ~ Henry
How The Mystic's Tarot & Oracle Cards Are Different
Three things in The Mystic's Tarot & Oracle Cards are different from a standard set of Trumps.
How they can connect is shown card by card in this online book.
- The deck consists of two sections: Trumps and what I call Oracle cards, but I see as additional Trumps.
- They are woven together through the Eight Sacred Families and
- Interlacements, somewhat similar to arithmancy
How they can connect is shown card by card in this online book.
This is how I see the cards speaking to each other expressed through the Families & Interlacing.
The Eight Sacred Families are similar to the suits of the Minor Arcana in that they speak to mind and emotion.
As you study these groupings and connections, I encourage you to let yourself be guided by your own inner wisdom. Feel out your own interpretations of the connections and relationships. Doing so will set the stage for you to guide your client to find their own interpretations of the cards in their personal readings.
The Eight Sacred Families are similar to the suits of the Minor Arcana in that they speak to mind and emotion.
As you study these groupings and connections, I encourage you to let yourself be guided by your own inner wisdom. Feel out your own interpretations of the connections and relationships. Doing so will set the stage for you to guide your client to find their own interpretations of the cards in their personal readings.
Example: The Kin Cards of the The Family of Love
In the Family of Love, 6~Connection, 24~Enchantment. 29~Kinship, 30~Divine Love, and 32~Agape, to me, signify that Mama Gaia and all the life existing within them is connected. I encourage you to find your own interpretations of those relationships.
What is Interlacing
Interlacements are similar to arithmancy (divination by the use of numbers). I designed the Oracle cards with Interlacing in mind. Interlacing is about the relationships of the cards to each other, based on their numbers. I don't think of the numbers, themselves, I think about the cards and which cards are connected with which other cards. These groupings, like the Families, weave the cards together.
While I studied the Tarot with my teacher, I began to get a sense that the cards were connected through their numbers. For example, I sensed that the Aces had characteristics of the Magician. The fifth card in every suite seemed to connect with the shadow side of the Hierophant. So when I designed an Oracle card, I felt into which Trumps it connected to and gave it the appropriate number.
See the Interlacement chart here.
How Interlacements Works
Interlacement is adding two numbers on the face of a card together. For example No.18-Moonlight is 1 + 8 = 9
All the cards that add up to 9 are connected through their Interlacement: 9~Repose, 18~Moonlight, 27~Imaginalis, and 36~Divine Presence. What they share in common, to me, is the metaphysical or otherworldly aspect of life. That said, I encourage you to find your own interpretations of those relationships.
Reading the Cards
I'm passing this approach on to you from how my teacher, Gaia, taught me.
She suggested that I not read up on the Tarot until I'd developed my own unique relationships with the cards. Of course, this is mute if you already are a Tarotist :).
As I engaged with the cards, she was convinced, they would facilitate my own inner wisdom. From that inner divine wisdom, she wanted me to develop my own unique lexicon of meanings.
We worked with the Radiant Rider deck. At first, I saw nothing but somewhat strange pictures, but then, in a sudden burst, the stories revealed themselves to me.
This kind of revelation is available to you with The Mystic's Tarot & Oracle Cards.
I work with my clients in the same way. I do have a sense of what the spread conveys, but I work with my clients in collaboration. To start, I describe a few details on a given card, just as I’m doing in this online book. Then I turn over the reins.
Here, in this guidebook, I'll describe some of what it means to me, then I'm turning the reins over to you.
I’m always there to guide you if you get stuck. Most of the time, though, the space of love and confidence the cards set, helps you tap into a larger circle of divine awareness.
I trust that your inner wisdom will guide you in developing your own lexicon.
Now you may already be an established Tarotist. Only if you want, approach the MTOC with 'Child's Mind,' rather than transferring your existing knowledge and ideas. I mean, you always will to some extent. And that's perfect. But I hope you'll also come to the MTOC with something of a fresh slate.
Because, even though you are here, visiting the online book, it is my hope that you develop your own lexicon of meanings.
The way I was taught by my teacher, all the wisdom is already within you and the cards are there to facilitate your connection with that wisdom.
The way I was taught by my teacher, all the wisdom is already within you and the cards are there to facilitate your connection with that wisdom.
I designed the cards with this realization in mind. At no point did I determine that a card had to have a certain meaning. I did not base it on the standard model/Tarot canon. In some instances, there is overlap but this always happened organically.
If you want to learn about how I see the cards, you're welcome to peruse the book. But I truly invite you to develop your own unique relationship.
In this relationship, the cards are a portal to your higher truth, and to your personal relationship with divine reality.
Blessings, Henry ♥
