Your Keys to Freedom

by Marcus Katz

  TAROT LIFE

  BOOK 11

  Your Keys to Freedom

  Authors Note : This is Month 11 of our 12-booklet Tarot Life series; you will require the previous Months 1-10 booklets to follow the sequence over the year. Most of the exercises in each booklet may be carried out as stand-alone pieces of self-discovery or re-purposed for use in daily, personal or client readings.

  By Tali Goodwin & Marcus Katz

  Copyright © Tali Goodwin & Marcus Katz, 2013

  Published November 2013 by Forge Press, Keswick

  No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without written permission from the publisher.

  Tarosophy® is a registered trademark

  WHAT OUR STUDENTS SAY …

  I am extremely thankful for these exercises. I feel like I could spend years contemplating these results and still not get to the bottom of the insight I have gained.

  C.C.

  This exercise as well as the others have spoken volumes. Thank you for sharing this experience with us.

  R. G.

  Incredible knowledge so easily shared … This has been a journey in which I have learned a lot of new things and feel very satisfied.

  L. J.

  Very moving and effective. I cannot wait for the next gates!

  Y.

  I suddenly realized I have been dreaming like crazy since I started these exercises! Very intuitive stuff about my situation, and about my Tarot!

  L.

  We have used real-life examples and authentic feedback throughout this series, anonymously, from our students in Tarot-Town. We thank them for their engagement with these experiences over the years.

  About the Authors

  “Tarot Cards, a whole bunch of people who don’t know each other, and a road trip to an impossible place – what could possibly go wrong?”

  Katz to Goodwin, Typical Conversation.

  Tali Goodwin is the co-author of award-winning and #1 best-selling Tarot books, including Around the Tarot in 78 Days, Tarot Face to Face, and Learning Lenormand. She is also a leading Tarot researcher and is credited with the discovery of A. E. Waite’s second tarot deck, kept secret for a century, published as Abiding in the Sanctuary. She has also uncovered and published the Original Lenormand deck, and with co-author Derek Bain, the original Golden Dawn Tarot images in A New Dawn for Tarot. Her research into the life of Pamela Colman-Smith with new photographs will be published as The Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot by Llewellyn Worldwide in Spring 2014. She is co-Director of Tarosophy Tarot Associations (Worldwide) and organizes the international tarot conventions, TarotCon.

  Marcus Katz is author of the ground-breaking Tarot book and teaching system, Tarosophy, and is the co-founder of Tarosophy Tarot Associations (Worldwide). In addition to Tarot books with Tali Goodwin, he is the author of The Magister, an 11-volume opus on the Western Esoteric Initiatory System, The Magician’s Kabbalah, and the forthcoming Path of the Seasons. He teaches students privately in the Crucible Club, available by application.

  Contents

  WHATOUR STUDENTS SAY …

  About the Authors

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Key

  Chapter 1: MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT

  Chapter 2: The Ladder of Stars

  Chapter 3: The Tarot Keys to Freedom

  Chapter 4: Creating 78 Keys

  Conclusion

  Bibliography

  Websites & Resources

  Kindle Tarot Books & Series

  Introduction

  Keymaker: [Shows a key on a chain] It's a very special key meant only for The One. Will you bring it to him?

  Ghost: What does it unlock?

  Keymaker: The future.

  Enter the Matrix, 2003.

  We recommend that unless you have already worked through all the previous 10 books, you do NOT read through this booklet, in preview or by purchase, until you worked through the 10 month experience to date.

  We warn you there is a MASSIVE SPOILER ahead, and we would ask you that you do not share it on any Facebook or social media group until as many people as possible have concluded the first year’s run of Tarot Life between 2013-2014.

  Once the “cat is out of the bag” it won’t matter, as everyone will then know what this series of books leads to, and that will be made explicit in our marketing – however, in the meantime, let’s keep it between us, those who have actually lived the Tarot Life to now!

  In this series of Kickstart books of Tarosophy teaching, we take a break from our other tarot books, such as the reference work of Tarot Flip, the seventy-eight innovative Tarot methods in Tarot Twist, and the spiritual considerations of Tarot Inspire, to offer a unique practice of our work.

  You are about to change your life with Tarot, and whether you are a newcomer to tarot or experienced reader, you are about to do something totally new. In using what we call a Gated Spread – a linked sequence of tarot readings whose questions are determined by the results of real-world activities – you are going to fundamentally alter the way you experience your life.

  We have combined here the wisdom of the Tarot with years of practical testing and the latest research in psychology and the biology of willpower, belief, habit and other aspects of our being.

  This series is designed to be experienced a month at a time, and in the sequence given, although there are many methods you will learn that can be used simply by themselves, for yourself or others.

  You can start at any time, although New Year; your Birthday; or the Spring Equinox are all powerful starting times.

  This series is accompanied by a private Facebook group for discussion and questions about your experiences as you make this journey. We look forwards to your engagement of tarot with your life – it is about to become a truly Tarot Life.

  Before you begin, you may wish to join our Tarosophy Tarot Association Facebook group if you have any questions about Tarot, and you can also download our free keyword guide to all 78 tarot cards and 12 standard spreads from our site:

  www.mytarotcardmeanings.com

  The private Facebook group for Tarot Life students is given at the end of this booklet and at the conclusion of all booklets in the series.

  Marcus Katz, The Tarosophist &

  Tali Goodwin, TaliTarot

  The Key

  Trinity: Where are you going?

  The Keymaker: Another way. Always another way.

  The Matrix Reloaded, 2003.

  As we revealed in the previous booklet, a Tarot Life is a constructed narrative matched to recognized patterns, archetypes, events and situations – which, in its construction, turns our fate into destiny. So, over these ten books to date, we have become story-tellers of our own life, enriching our experience, deepening our understanding and developing our wisdom, through the Tarot. This is Tarosophy – the ‘triumph of living wisdom’ (Tarot + Sophia) expressed in tarot life.

  MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT

  We now come to the big reveal, the final twist of our process – and the one which depends most truly on all that you have done so far.

  However, we will not yet share this with you, as these first pages go on the Kindle ‘preview’ section and we do not want to spoil the twist for other readers! If you are reading this in preview, ahead of reaching this stage, we warn you that there are MASSIVE SPOILERS ahead.

  Furthermore, if we can ask readers to not mention the specific task of this present title, which will be made clear in the next chapter, that will add to the impact of this work to those following in our wake!

  We will first provide a
stand-alone method to use Tarot for the “Ladder of Set and Horus”, as this eleventh stage of twelve corresponds with the Star card (Aquarius) in the Tarot sequence. The Star equates with Sothis, a Star/Goddess in Ancient Egyptian mythology, and we visualize a “ladder” held up by the deities Set and Horus, to attain that Star. This image is then used as a spread by which we can formulate our vision.

  As we have reached the penultimate stage of Tarot Life, we should know that all life is a spiral, and that in fact, at this point, just before we complete our present work, we must take opportunity to visualize our next goal, our next ambition, our next project. This new “star” that we set before us (pun intended) is perhaps more clearly visible at this late stage, because we can contemplate all that we have learnt in the attainment of our present Tarot Life, all that we would change, correct, improve, do better, develop, etc.

  So we take a moment, if you will, to create a new vision.

  The Ladder of Stars

  At Gate 9 we located our Union card, and Gate 10 provided us our Cascade card. In this method, we return to Gate 1, carrying these two cards, where we charted our destiny path, but now we can create our vision ladder – a ladder to the Star of our own future. We can take our fate and turn it into our destiny.

  1. Take out the Star card from your deck - if this was your Union or Cascade card, take out instead the High Priestess or Hierophant as revealer cards in its places. Place it somewhere where you can see it, with a space below it to arrange at least 5-6 pairs of cards.

  2. Shuffle your deck considering your experience in Tarot Life to now, and how that has informed your knowledge of the “invisible knots that bind the universe”. In what way do you feel “guided” throughout life? When have you felt close to “being connected”? When has something happened that has revealed your part in a bigger cosmic story?

  3. Now turn the deck face-up and go through and carefully locate your Union Card and your Cascade Card. Take the card directly underneath each one, laying them side by side, the card underneath your Union card to the left, and the card underneath your Cascade card to the right.

  If either of the cards underneath are actually your Union or Cascade card (i.e. they are together in the deck, next to each other) then this signifies an immediate conclusion to the method, and you should leave at least one lunar month before repeating it.

  4. Lay this pair of cards out a few spaces below your Star card. They represent the first rung of a ladder, leading up to that Star. There will be about 5-6 rungs to your ladder in this method, so leave a gap for further pairs between this first pair and the Star above.

  5. Consider the two cards as paired together to direct you on an activity that must be taken to align yourself with your destiny. Here we are building our own destiny, rather than simply charting it as we did in the first gate – we have come a long way! All the experiences mapping tarot to life you have practiced over the last ten months should now be turned on its head, so you should be able to easily see what actions these two cards suggest to you.

  This will also now be showing you how much this experience over the whole of Tarot Life will apply to your tarot card readings for other people. You have condensed a lifetime of readings and feedback into a year of your own life!

  6. When you have carried out the action(s) signified by these first two cards, repeat the process (do not return the cards to the deck) and create another rung. You can aim to complete 5-6 rungs across a lunar month (28 days) by which time you should feel as if you are connecting to a powerful current sweeping you, with your own co-creation, towards your destiny.

  The creative process given in this Tarot Life book may also be undertaken at the same time for maximum effect. Often, people who engage in the “process” we are about to reveal, find strange things happening in their life anyway, as they come to implicitly live a “tarot life”. We have simply reverse engineered the process to present it to you over a year, and now you are going to see why …

  The Tarot Keys

  The Tarot Keys to Freedom

  The Keymaker: I've been waiting for you.

  Matrix Reloaded, 2003

  Tarot cards are often called Arcana, ‘secrets’, or ‘Keys’, such as in the Golden Dawn tarot reading technique called “Opening the Key”. We might wonder at this gate what the “keys” are for – which doors, puzzles, locks, gates do they open? We answer that the keys open our soul – our divine relationship to the universe, which emerges in what we call “everyday life”. In the turning of a card, in the turning of a key in a car engine, in the turning of the vast wheels of the galaxies beyond imagination, the divine relationship is being expressed, in a never-ending creation.

  So in this penultimate gate, we give a massive twist to your work, and show where our gates have brought us – you are going to create our own Tarot Deck; your own Keys to Freedom. All the experiences you have been led through over the previous eleven months have been not only to encounter various aspects of your relationship to the divine, but also to create a living journal, a notebook, a sketch pad, of a complete tarot deck – YOUR tarot deck.

  Do not be concerned if you feel you have no creative or artistic ability; the aim here is to create a set of Keys, not a fully publishable tarot deck! You will learn with us now how to create your deck, and who knows, in the future you may meet an artist who can realize the designs for you, or you may find a way of self-publishing your own work and sharing it with others.

  In the following sections, we will take you through the process of creating your deck from all the previous gates. If you cannot recall your previous experiences in detail, simply get creative, and fill in the blanks. If you come up with a better idea than we suggest, particularly one from your personal work during these last ten months, then always go with YOUR idea.

  We will give suggestions, but your gates will lead to your keys, and your keys alone. We cannot now be prescriptive, as it is your experience that will make for a unique and individual “deck”.

  In the final book 12, we will then show you several ways in which you may use these keys to provide deep readings for your spiritual life; and of course, you may choose to use your own newly-created deck to repeat the entire TAROT LIFE series, refining your deck in a second version.

  Finally, even if you do not produce a set of all 78 cards, you should work with whatever aspects of this exercise you can, to get the most out the final gate; as ever, it is the process which is important, the results may not be obvious.

  The Key-Maker

  Creating 78 Keys

  The Keymaker: Only the One can open the door. And only during that window can that door be opened.

  Niobe: How do *you* know all this?

  The Keymaker: I know because I *must* know. It is my purpose. It is the reason I am here. The same reason we are *all* here.

  The Matrix Reloaded, 2003.

  In the following fourteen stages, we will take you through the process of creating your own draft tarot deck from your experience of Tarot Life these last ten months.

  The stages are provided in a suggested order of completion, but consider them cyclic and generic; you may find yourself returning to some stages several times in the overall process. The rule is to trust your own experience above any suggestions at this point of the overall Tarot Life process.

  We would recommend that you find a notebook with 78 blank pages – with perhaps other pages for general notes and sketches. Then take 78 blank pieces of paper, separately, or cardboard, card-sized (or buy several blank card decks available online) on which you can write (or sketch) the “draft cards”. You may replace these often as you go through and refine the deck, so make sure you have spares.

  It is these 78 pieces, whether they end up as simple text descriptions, cartoons, stick-figure sketches, collages, or a mixture, that will become your final working deck for the last stage of Tarot Life, book 12: Depths of Divinity.

  If you do not complete your draft deck, or wish to skip this stage entirely
(in terms of completing a deck, you should at the very least work through the design process in your imagination) then you can use any other deck for Book 12.

  The important thing is to engage with the process in some way, which will consolidate your experience of the last ten months, even if it does not produce a draft deck.

  Step 1: THEME

  In the first Gate, we discovered our Destiny Card; a card corresponding to the astrological Decan in which we were born during the year. As this card provides a symbol of life’s challenges, solutions and our ultimate realization, we use it to shape the “theme” of our deck.

  Whilst not every deck will have a clear theme; the Waite-Smith deck for example has an overall air of medieval theatre, whilst the Zombie Tarot is themed on zombies, consider starting with a theme for your deck. The theme is not necessarily the style, by the way – in the Zombie Tarot, the style is of 1950’s infomercials and adverts, giving the whole deck a surreal and disturbing edge.

  So, take your destiny card and look at it, taking particular notice of any symbols that could dictate a theme – or use the keywords or correspondences to the card to suggest an overall theme. Here are some suggested questions to ask yourself;

  1. Is your deck going to be dark/light?

  2. Is it themed in some particular place?

  3. Is it themed in some particular time?

  4. Is any symbol on the Destiny card used in virtually every deck?

  So for example, if your Destiny card was the 5 of Wands, your theme could be ‘chaos’ or ‘practice’. This could lead you to decide that your deck is going to be called the “Chaos Deck” or the “Deck of Practice”. In the latter case, you might decide that each of the cards would picture someone practicing something appropriate for that card – that would actually be an entirely novel deck!