Doing all these pop culture tarot cards has really got my mind spinning in a great way. I’m suddenly tracking down symbolic connections like nobody’s business. I mean, things are literally just popping out at me everywhere I look now. I think that’s probably the biggest benefit of creating these cards - is that it trains you to think in a way that is not rational, but which is really important and useful. Robert Anton Wilson writes about how this is central to the kabbalistic way of thinking (and when I say kabbalah, I don’t mean the Madonna/Britney Spears kind):

To the Cabalist, the whole uni­verse is a network of meaningful connections. The seemingly coinci­dental is as full of meaning as anything else. To begin thinking like a Caba­list you must regard everything as being just as important as every­thing else. All that seems “acciden­tal,” “meaningless,” “chaotic,” “weird,” “nonsensical;’ et cetera is as significant as what seems lawful, orderly and comprehensible.

An elementary Cabalistic train­ing technique is to try every day to “regard every incident and event as a direct communication between God and your soul.” Even the li­cense plates on passing cars are such communications-or can be considered as such-by the devout Cabalist.

I can say with absolute certainty that these cards are a highly effective exercise in this direction. I’ve noticed all kinds of synchronicities lately. Just off the top of my head: the rattlesnake that I included in the One-Eyed Willy card found it’s way into the dream I had that night about the electro-snakes. Not sure that the dream correlates to my intended meaning in that card, but the coincidence is certainly undeniable.

Another big one happened yesterday in reading a post on Rigorous Intuition about dwarfs in an UFO account. The description immediately reminded me of something Jung talks about: dwarfs as an animus figure in the psyche. He calls them Cabiri (I’m going to write about them in more detail later). There is a reproduction in his book of one of these fellows wearing a soft conical cap called the pileus. Here’s a good photo of the pileus. The reason this is noteworthy is because I’d just finished creating another tarot card called the Child Prodigy. Part of it is Harry Potter wearing none other than a soft conical cap - in this case a wizard cap. In the comments on that Rigorous Intuition article, somebody else also mentions “stepping onto a chessboard.” They are (I think) talking about Twin Peaks, but this is a bit freaky since my Child Prodigy card also features him standing on a chessboard.

Now these are all “just coincidences” to the unitiated, or “synchronicities” to those who find them more meaningful. But so what if they’re meaningful - what do they actually mean? This is a good question, and I think fills the mind of anyone who begins noticing lots of bizarre seemingly random connections in their lives. I remember one other great example of a synchronicity - this happened to me a year or so ago. I was walking home from work, listening to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. And exactly at the same time when he sung the words “Putting on his little red shoes” I looked up and on top of this ledge to my right was a pair of little red boy’s shoes. I was floored.

So what does synchronicity *mean*? What is it trying to tell you? Here’s how I look at it. The message is simple: Everything is connected. You might not understand how or why right now. And that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that things are invisibly connected. And there is purpose and there is reason in even the most seemingly random and unimportant things around you. This is in fact the positive aspect of what the Secret Society tarot card is all about. So become aware of it. It is an invitation to play a game of connect the dots. See how far you can take it. As Wilson says in the quote above, can you decode the message being transmitted by the license plates you pass? Working with these pop culture tarot cards will cue your mind into those little hidden signals you might be missing every day. So tune in, but don’t “turn off” as Leary suggested. Instead turn it up! There’s music to be heard all around.