Welcome!
Below, you will find a brief introduction to the use of the Tarot of the Orishas, a deck of cards specifically designed to promote self-awareness and individual spiritual practice.
You will discover that this is not just any tarot deck, and its use is not tied to divination. Nevertheless, if you feel you have the necessary skills to use it like a traditional deck, you are free to experiment with the archetypes represented by each card. However, in this guide, you will not find instructions on how to read the cards for others or how to predict future events. Instead, you will find a powerful tool for better self-awareness and for a healthy practice of psychomagic.
The Tarot of the Orishas
As you may know, the origin of tarot cards is unknown, with some tracing it back to the Egyptian civilization and others to the Sumerians. What is certain is that the first decks to feature the images of the Major Arcana known to us, such as The Fool, Death, The Tower... first appeared in an Italian deck from the 15th century, the famous Visconti-Sforza, and were initially used mainly as playing cards.
The first person in Europe to publicly use tarot as a tool, no longer for games but for divination, was the 17th-century French esotericist and occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette, better known by his pseudonym Etteilla. From that moment onward, tarot would remain inseparably linked to the ability to predict the future.
It wasn’t until the arrival of prominent figures like Carl Gustav Jung, the famous Swiss psychoanalyst, that we witnessed the revolution that transformed tarot into a symbolic code for reading the deep psyche.
The Tarot of the Orishas was conceived in line with this vision.
That said, everyone is free to use the deck in whatever way they see fit or in the manner they find most effective. However, in the intention of its author, who is writing to you now, the deck serves to communicate with our subconscious, with our unconscious, and perhaps, for some particularly sensitive individuals, with the collective unconscious.
All of this is made possible through the power of symbols, as icons capable of executing programs that are not rationally accessible.
The Oracle of the Orishas is nothing more than a doorway that opens to your deep mind and, by taking advantage of a temporary suspension of the rational approach, allows the knowledge and insights we already have within us to surface. Do not use it as if it were Google. It cannot give you answers you don't already know. However, within us lie millions of fragments of stored knowledge—considered insignificant or useless, or subliminally inherited, as Jung would say. This practice can reactivate them, enabling you to find your own answers.
By harnessing the evocative power of the icons and trusting the intuition of the unconscious, it can help you unlock thoughts that are blocked or overlooked from within. The stronger your sensitivity, the deeper you can go into the levels of interpretation, understanding the key phrases in different ways.
Subconscious:
The things in your life that you know that you know, but cannot admit or recall. Example: information acquired through study many years ago. We don’t consciously remember it, but we remember having studied it. This information influences our life because it is present in our psyche and can lead us to believe certain things are true and not others. Even though they are buried in the subconscious, they affect our present life. The cards can bring them back to memory.
Unconscious:
The things in your life that you don't know you know. Example: the information contained in the closing credits of a movie you just finished watching. Names and professions of unknown people that your brain records unconsciously, storing them in the unconscious as "unimportant information." The cards can bring them back to memory.
Collective Unconscious:
The things that belong to your knowledge as a human being. Ancestral memories connected to our species as humans. Example: the memory of a natural disaster that occurred thousands of years ago, which did not affect us as individuals but has remained stored in our collective memory as a species. The cards can bring it back to memory.
ADVICE FROM CHAOS
You can use the Orishas Tarot deck however you like, for divination, for reading or use the icon cards for psychomagic practice. The method proposed on this site is the "oracular" one. Basically it involves shuffling the cards and picking up one at random. But let's see in detail:
ADVICE FROM CHAOS
The Advice from Chaos practice should be performed mainly (but not necessarily) in the morning and should only be done once a day. You shuffle the cards, trying to keep your mind blank. Mental silence is not easy to achieve, you can help yourself by observing the things around you, the landscape outside the window or by concentrating on an image that helps you obtain mental peace, such as a mandala. Now, when you no longer hear your voice in your head, pick up a card at random. A blank card is positive. A black card can also be positive, but usually indicates a point we need to pay attention to.
At this point, you become the interpreters of the game. Based on the keywords of each card, you will have to try to understand what indication Chaos is sending you, to help you throughout the day. You can also give a personal interpretation of the card, following the key characteristic of each Orisha as it is described in the card explanation.
ORACLE OF IFÁ
The Ifá oracle is a divination system used by the priests of the African and African-American religions (Babalawos) which is based in the Yoruba tradition of the Orishas. It is a very complex system, in which the priest, throwing shells or seeds on a table, interprets the answers of the Orishas, on behalf of the consultant.
We won't do any of this, but we will use the deck as an oracular tool.
We shuffle the cards long enough to process a specific question. Once we have the question, we must pronounce it correctly and loudly. At this point we can randomly extract a card and proceed with its interpretation, following the instructions on the card once again. It is a very similar process to that of the Advice from Chaos , but with two differences:
1. Our mind, while we shuffle the cards, must not be silent but must focus carefully on a specific question.
2. Any time of day is fine, and we can repeat the consultation up to 3 times a day (indications are based on personal practice, and you must not necessarily follow them).
Attention:
It's better not to ask questions about others: (Does he love me?)
The deck responds to what we believe to be true. It will never provide an answer that lies in another person's subconscious, but always and only what is in our own, whether it is true or false.
It's better not to ask two or more option questions: (Should I go right or left?)
Two options are a limitation; it is possible that your subconscious might show you a third way you hadn't consciously considered.
It's better not to ask questions about scenarios that don't involve you: (What will the world be like in 2340?)
Predicting the future is not something simple or within everyone's reach. It's better to avoid false illusions.
The Oracle of the Orishas is nothing more than a door that opens up onto your deep mind and that, taking advantage of a temporary suspension of the rational approach, lets knowledge and intuitions that we already have inside emerge. Don't use it like if it was Google. It cannot give you answers that you don't already know (unless you are a psychic or a seer). Inside us, however, there are millions of pieces of knowledge, put there because they are considered unimportant or not very useful, or because they are inherited in a subliminal way, as Jung said. This practice can reactivate them, allowing you to find your answers.
"Every aspect of human life is governed by an Orisha.
Orishas are called gods in the religious tradition, but they are referred to as archetypes in the psychoanalytic interpretation.
Ritual Practice
As mentioned previously, there are some practices that can reactivate the strength of universal archetypes in us. One of these (the one that I practice and therefore propose to you) is psychomagic practice. But what is psychomagic? In reality, it is an ancestral and globally shared practice that has its roots in popular magic and shamanism and has come to involve, over time, psychoanalysis, alchemy, astrology, and tarot. When this set of knowledge is combined with art, what we get is psychomagic. This practice aims to establish a dialogue with the subconscious, to eliminate its blocks, awaken its potential or heal its traumas. To obtain this effect, the practitioners stage theatrical actions with high symbolic value. The father of this healing artistic technique is Alejandro Jodorowsky:
“…psychomagic proposes a reverse path to that of psychoanalysis. Instead of teaching the subconscious to speak the language of rationality, it teaches rationality to speak the language of the subconscious. The subconscious is made of sounds, smells, sensations, images, and tactile experiences…”
Therefore, from this consideration arises the need to stage a symbolic ritual every time we want to communicate with an Orisha, being the Orishas nothing more than a subconscious archetypal world waiting to be reactivated.
We will adopt some principles expressed by Jodorowsky in order to use the Orishas Tarot in our ritual practice. Here are some of the principles that we need to know in this context:
— There is only one language that can increase our level of consciousness, and it is the language of art and poetry.
— The unconscious understands the language of dreams better than rational language.
— An instruction does not become truly operational, and cannot acquire its full transformative potential, unless it is applied. If an awareness is not followed by an action, it remains totally sterile. That is: an action is worth a thousand words.
This means that those who want to use the Orishas Tarot deck also for ritual practice will find in the data sheet of each Orisha some useful indications to organize their own altar and staging psychomagic representations. In the instructions, you will not find dogmas or rules. This world has nothing to do with religion. Instead, you will find advice that comes from my personal experience. You are free to follow it or not.
From these considerations arises the need to stage a symbolic ritual every time we want to communicate with an Orisha, since the Orishas are nothing more than a world full of instructions waiting to be activated.
So:
WE MUST DO THEATER!
A theater that, instead of being for public entertainment, it serves our private spirituality.
On the site you will find a psychomagic ritual for each Orisha. These are indications based on personal experience, you are free to follow or ignore them.
To read the meaning of the cards, you need to register on the site. I know that many don't like this, but unfortunately, it is necessary to prevent the free circulation of artistic images on the web. There is an illegal market that sells counterfeit decks of cards, even on major platforms such as Amazon. This is great damage for us, the artists, both in terms of image (counterfeit decks never have the same quality as the originals) and economic (the real authors of the deck do not receive any compensation). To register, you only need an email address and a password. I do not ask you for any other personal data. Your emails will not be used for commercial purposes.
The Archetypes
In life, we often have the feeling we are observing repetitive patterns, be they behavioral models or natural forms. These models are defined as archetypes, and in analytical psychology, they are considered responsible for why the world is made the way it is and why man thinks the way he does. The famous Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, who devoted his entire life to the study of these “molds”, came to the conclusion that archetypes are the archaic forms of an innate human knowledge. We pass them on in a hereditary, almost biological way. A true ancestral psychic heritage.
Jung was much criticized because he was the first to create an interdisciplinary correlation between those branches of knowledge that “should” remain separate. On the one hand, sciences (such as psychology and psychiatry) on the other hand, pseudosciences (such as alchemy, astrology, numerology, and esotericism). The “Great Old Man” (as many call him) Jung, sewed all this knowledge together, using the golden thread, the Ariadne's thread, which helps us not to get lost in the labyrinths of the mind. Doing so, unifying all these disciplines, he managed to generate the comprehensive theory of Universal archetypes and collective subconscious.
His contribution was so important that it ended up changing the perception that man had always had towards some disciplines, such as astrology, which went from being a tool to predict the future to a tool to read the present. This revolution, again thanks to C.G. Jung also ended up changing the way Tarot is read today. Some of the tools Jung used to develop the study of the unconscious were: esoteric astrology and tarot cards. He established a transitory relationship between the individual psyche and a presumed transpersonal symbolic system: the archetypes. From this fusion derives, as a logical consequence, a “mysticization” of psychology and a psychologization of mysticism. This revolution blurred the boundary between the orthodox sciences and the unknown suburbs of knowledge that today we call pseudosciences. The archetypes of the Father, the Mother, the Young Man, the Old Man, the Hero… They are all personalities that belong to the collective psyche, since they are in our mythical and mystical narratives. Same thing with the archetypal situations, such as Death, Birth, the Journey, the Initiation… These episodes, composed of typical characters and situations, are the episodes of human experience.
In the words of Jung, “a primordial image or archetype is a figure, be it a deity, a human being, or a process, that is constantly repeated throughout history, appearing wherever the creative imagination finds a place to express itself freely. In each of these characters lies a part of human destiny.”
Although the archetypes live in our daily lives, buried under a cloak of rational awareness, they can, through some practices, be recognized and reactivated, to allow us to find and express our true "I". But why we should do it? It's very simple: to build better relationships, to better understand our needs, develop self-awareness and improve as people. In short, to be happy.
Jung, unlike Freud, did not believe that human beings were born empty and then sculpted their psyche exclusively on the basis of experience accumulated over the course of life. Jung believed that every individual is born with a pre-installed symbolic inheritance, inherited just like we inherit our genes. He also thought that part of this heritage did not belong to society only, or to the individual's family lineage; he thought it was a collective heritage that we could define as “the mental genes of humanity”. These genes, just like the biological genes, regardless of being few, by recombining billions of times, they create the infinite nuances of the human psyche. They generate those characteristics that make my face different from yours, but that also create ethnic groups, lookalikes and identical twins. In this sense, we could consider the Orishas as ethnic groups of archetypal identity.
Therefore, in the archetypal theme of a person, there are multiple coexisting Orishas. They can be very different, and we can cannot immediately recognize them as ours. The same thing that happen when we ask for a DNA test, and we realize what our true genetic heritage is.
Creating your own archetypal theme would, in a certain sense, be equivalent to doing a mental DNA test and perhaps discovering some ethnical belongings that you would never have suspected. Always remembering that we move in border territories, and this always requires a good dose of caution.
Archetypes in History
Science, philosophy and religion have been shaped by archetypes. They determine the form we use to decode the external world through the senses, but at the same time, they are the tool we use to project our internal images out. The Mona Lisa, for example. A mysterious woman, who looks at us and smiles at us, wrapped in the depths of dark earth tones. Stable. Triangular. Protagonist on a natural background that allows us to see rocks and water. This is not just a portrait. It is the archetypal evocation of the Great Mother. Of nature itself.
Beethoven's fifth symphony. The musical movement that is so universally famous and that, at the beginning, repeats itself three times before starting the evolution of the theme. Isn't it a universally shared rhythmic archetype that makes us start after three? One, two, three, go! Or the opposite.
Michelangelo's David. A gorgeous young, huge man looking to the left. Isn't the left, (giving our back to the hypothetical line of time) the place where the future resides? It is no coincidence that this statue has become the symbol of a historical period that aimed to abandon a dark past to reborn into a new future: the Renaissance.
Every work filled with universal archetypes is destined to strike us deeply. It resonates with what we already have inside. This encounter is normally expressed with a single simple phrase: “I like it”.
Whoever, in life, will best interpret his own archetype, or who will be able to create archetypal works, will be destined to rise from the crowd. He will be recognizable and therefore recognized. The marriage with our true self is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.
Conclusion
Jung believed that archetypes represent personalities and basic life circumstances. The Orishas tarot focuses primarily on personalities. Yemayá, Obbatalá, Oshumaré and the others, are images of archetypal prototypes, whose purpose is to help the “player” to identify himself in order to promote a better knowledge of oneself and of others, with all the advantages that this implies.
Understanding that our boss is a Shangó shadow, our mother is an Oyá light, and the person we have entrusted the care of our mind is an Obbatalá shadow, can help us to predict future problems, or to understand the reasons for certain behaviors that seem unusual to us. Understanding which is our dominant Orisha and which other Orishas populate our psyche activates a process of identification, that will make it easier to understand what we want in life. And then, after our personal identification, we can complete the process with psychomagic ritual actions, that will provide an “extra” help on the path to self-realization.
Even if a person is permeated by multiple archetypes, Jung noted that one tends to be predominant.
That will be our main Orisha, the one to whom we will dedicate a permanent altar.
States of consciousness and main archetypes identified by Jung
PERSON
EGO
PERSONAL UNCONSCIOUS
COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
My Orisha
My Orishas
The Orishas
The Iceberg of the person. Submerged and emerged parts
PERSON
BEING
SHADOW
SOUL
THE PERSON according to Jung
The way we want others to see us. The social mask. The word persona derives from the Latin “persona” which in turn derives from the Etruscan “Phersu” and refers to the theatrical mask. According to Jung, the person serves to protect the Ego from what is negative. We are all good and bad. We all do things that we consider socially inappropriate or even repulsive, and this is why we never allow these aspects to emerge. Not only that, but we don't want others to notice. We hide all this baggage of censored desires and experiences in the shadows and delegate to the Person the task of going around the world to represent us and interact with others.
THE SHADOW according to Jung
In the shadow there are repressed ideas, unpleasant issues, weaknesses, flaws, instincts, desires, and traumatic experiences. In the shadows are all the things that we consider unacceptable, both for society and for ourselves: envy, hatred, etc. In every individual there is a shadow. Denying its presence only reinforces it, and in some cases, it can lead to the development of psychotic pathologies. In the Orishas Tarot Deck, each Orisha comes accompanied by its shadow twin, and it is necessary for the “player” to learn to recognize in which shadow his/her problems are hidden. Not recognizing ourselves in any shadow aspect of any character is a clear symptom of superficial self-analysis or a process of denial. Obviously, the shadow characters presented in the deck, represent the worst possible evolution of the shadow aspects. Our shadow can be milder than the one described, but sure we have one, and it's been given to us by some Orishas of our archetypal theme, not necessarily the one we have chosen as principal.
ANIMA o ANIMUS (SOUL) according to Jung
According to Jung, the anima was the feminine aspect of the male, while the animus was the masculine aspect of the female. The soul is what has the task of bringing us to the center of our being. Harmonizing these two aspects and listening to our heart is the path to being.
BEING according to Jung
Being is unification. Consciousness. The point at the center of being is the ego. The circle is consciousness. The process of individuation, it's about transforming our ego into a brilliant nucleus. An ego aware of what it is. A person who has found his identity and, thanks to this, could expand his awareness, ending up living a life bigger than his ego. Identification makes us great people, people capable of extending their sphere of action beyond the borders of our everyday lives, our problems, and our miseries. We become useful to others and aware of the world we live in. Our presence is recognized by the world exactly as we recognize the world's presence.
Jung recognized 12 main archetypes.
Numerology recognizes 9 main archetypes plus a few extras
The tarot of the Orishas recognizes 19 main archetypes.
