Got Questions?
How does it work that this information is all based on your birthday? And what about cultures and societies that don't use the Gregorian calendar?
We honestly do not know why it is that your birthday establishes these symbolic patterns as the underlying patterns of your life. Perhaps one day soon enough, scientific instrumentation will be developed that can measure the energy field around us on a day-by-day basis.
We can speculate that it's based on something about the specific wobble of the Earth on its axis during that 24 hour cycle and the frequency that's generated by that particular wobble and how that energy frequency is imprinted on a newborn. We can also speculate that numbers themselves have vibrations. But then, the question remains: why these specific numbered dates and why not any other numbered dates? After all, the starting number of January 1st is arbitrary, and we could pick any day in our Earth's orbit around the sun as the starting point to count a yearly calendar.
But we have now travelled around the world and taught this Knowledge to many people in cultures that do not follow a Western calendar system. And it's always accurate. It doesn't matter if we're talking to orthodox Jews who only follow the Jewish calendar or devout Muslims who only follow the Islamic calendar. When we tell them their Source Cards based on their "Western" birthday, the results are always the same: dumbfounded, jaw-dropping resonance.
On one particular occasion, we were teaching in China. A woman came to our introductory session who did not know her "Western" birthday. She only knew and celebrated her birthday according to the Chinese lunar calendar. Through the translator, we worked out the date of her birthday according to the Gregorian calendar. Once that was established, she bravely asked her question, standing in front of a large group, speaking into the microphone. The translator translated her question into English, and then we answered it for her in English, by telling her what patterns she would expect in her life based on her Source Cards. As the translator began translating our answer back into Chinese, as the woman heard the answer in her own language, tears started streaming down her face. The whole room went quiet as she sobbed silently. She nodded her head in gratitude, smiling at us through her glistening eyes. It was a profound moment. And it was there and then that all doubt was removed for us as to the accuracy and validity of this Knowledge.
Why it works we still don't know. But what we do know is that it does work according to your birthday in the "Western" calendar.
What's the difference between my Birth Card and my Personality Card?
We cover this question in our free Welcome Guide.
How is it possible that everyone born on the same day has the same Cards to play?
That is, indeed, a question worth reflecting on.
The Source Cards reveal the underlying patterns of life. That's all. What we choose to do with these patterns is entirely up to us. We can feel trapped by and victimized by these recurring patterns. Or, we can choose to play them, like we might play a musical instrument.
And how you play your cards determines the trajectory and outcome of your life. So, two people with the same exact cards to play -- the exact same instruments at their disposal -- can have completely different outcomes in their life.
So, what about Free Will?
Your Source Cards are set for your life based on your date of birth, that's true. But, again, how you choose to play your cards makes all the difference. And that is your free will.
We also believe that as a soul you choose your Source Cards. And you do that, as a soul, by choosing your birth date. This is a deep topic, obviously, one that you can, if you wish, explore through the work of Michael Newton in his book Journey of Souls.
How do the mathematics work? How did you calculate my Birth Card?
Good question! We made a whole separate page on the basic math. It includes a fun math riddle.
Where do the Source Cards come from? How old are they?
Short answer: We don't know for sure.
Long answer: It involves obscure Biblical references, persecution, book burnings, Zoroastrian priests, Sumerian myth, Kabbalah, the Book of Thoth, and ancient aliens. And some say this Knowledge goes all the way back to the civilization of Atlantis.
It would make a great plot for an extraordinary tale about our life on Earth. Oh! Wait, a minute. It is the story of our life on Earth!
(And if the history of the Source Cards is interesting to you, you can read more in Alexander's book.)
How did you discover this? How did you find out the real meaning of the playing cards?
At a loft party in Brooklyn. Yup. Cue Biggie Smalls: "Where Brooklyn at, Where Brooklyn at..."
But even though it resonated powerfully when someone first introduced me (Alexander speaking) to the hidden meaning of these "playing cards," I was quite skeptical. Plus, the way it was introduced to me was as part of a fortune-telling system.
Now, at the time, I was doing regular Ayahuasca ceremonies (2008-2012). And it was in ceremony that I brought a deck of cards and set my intention to learn the true meaning of these "playing cards." It was then that the direct downloads started coming, and I started realizing what these "playing cards" really are.
I started seeing the visual language of the pip patterns and the sacred geometry and all the connections to the Tree of Life and the Flower of Life -- all the connections to the deeper Knowledge of life, hidden in plain sight, just behind the veil of consciousness, hidden right in front of my face my entire life, growing up playing card games with my family.
What proof do you have that any of this is true?
Arthur Schopenhauer said: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
In this profound philosophical statement, notice what is heralded as the benchmark of truth. Notice that truth is accepted when it becomes "self-evident."
This statement applies, importantly, not to scientific inquiry -- which relies on the scientific method and which, when practiced with integrity, never pretends to arrive at any final truth anyway -- but rather to moral, ethical, and metaphysical truths, the truths upon which we build our society. When a population of people accepts any idea as "true" and decides to orient their lives, their relationships, and their communal interactions around the idea they consider “true,” it only happens because that idea is considered self-evidently true.
It’s like the opening line of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” So then, why are these truths, true? They're true because they're self-evident.
And that is the only way in which the Source Cards will ever be true for you in your life. It will become self-evident that the information they reveal is true. You won’t know just how true the Source Cards are until you begin to accept their truth as self-evident.
But that inability to accept until you can accept or know before you know, doesn't necessarily need to be a psychological barrier. Nor is it a blind leap of faith. It’s exactly like when we encourage little children to try new foods they have never before eaten. “Just try it,” we say. “Just taste it.” “Take a bite and see if you like it.” And that’s it. That’s how it goes. If you want to know what value and what meaning the Source Cards will have for you in your life, the only way to find out is if you try them out.
It’s like proverbially taking them out for a test drive. That’s the only way you're going to know what they mean for you. Try out the Source Cards as a vehicle you can utilize to clarify your life's trajectory and inform the important decisions of your life. Taste and see. Find out how useful they are. Discover what value they hold for you.
So then, regarding the truth of the Source Cards, the only proof that will ever mean anything for you is the proof of your own lived experience... when their truth becomes self-evident to you.
Why do you call these cards, the Source Cards?
We call them that because that's what they reveal: the source code of our reality, the programming language with which our space-time matrix is encoded. They also, through conscious daily awareness of them in your life, begin to awaken your awareness of and connection with the Source of all that is.
In much the same way that a mindfulness meditation practice teaches you to watch your thoughts and to realize that if you are watching your thoughts, then you, of course, must be something else other than your thoughts, the practice of observing these energy patterns of life that are symbolized on the faces of these cards awakens you to the realization that you are not these recurring patterns of life. You are that which observes the play of life itself.
And life, as we know it, is a game. Simply by playing it, with the same excitement of a child at play, you will gradually master this game and begin to realize that you are that which plays this game of life.
How did you arrive at the meaning of my Source Cards? Why does my Source Card have the specific attributes that you list?
This set of questions asks the fundamental meaning of this ancient system of knowledge.
For, what these types of questions are really asking is this: how do you read this visually symbolic, mathematical language? Because that’s what it is: a language that’s been printed on card stock. And we are reading it, literally. So, what is listed as the attributes of each card is derived from reading the visual pip arrangement within that particular suit. The pip arrangements (Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades) on the faces of the cards are pictoral symbols, something like what you might find in Chinese language structure, Celtic Runes, or Egyptian hieroglyphs. They are a visually symbolic representation of the meaning of the number.
Now, commonly, we hold the idea that a “picture is worth a thousand words.” And that certainly can be true. Meanwhile, however, a symbol holds profoundly more meaning than a picture. A symbol, like a crucifix in Christianity or the Star of David in Judaism, holds meaning so deep that entire treatises can be written on what these symbols mean and why. In the case of the Source Cards, each visually symbolic pattern contains within it an entire representation of the pattern of life that will be experienced for the person born to play that card. And so, what we write on this website as attributes about each card is an introduction to the central thematic life experiences someone will have who is born to play that card.
For example, take the 4 of Hearts.
Suppose you are born to play this pattern as either your Birth Card or Personality Card. Notice that the visual symbolic representation of the 4 Hearts is as a rectangular box. And what does a box signify? I remember, for example, from my early upbringing in London how much I loved the Mr. Men books by Roger Hargreaves. In that classic series, Mr. Strong is visually represented as a box.
Within the suit of Hearts, this visual representation of a box signifies emotional structure, emotional order, and emotional strength. Now, that can be wonderful... if order, structure, and strength is what we want. It can be protective, supportive, and reliable. Or, as we all know, too much order and too much structure can be limiting, restrictive, stifling, and even oppressive. Or, what if strength is overplayed and becomes coercive or aggressive? If this 4 of Hearts energy is played well, the experience will be one of feeling content, at peace, and safely at home. Or, conversely, if this energy is played badly, then the experience will be one of being stuck inside a repressive box of constrictive emotional dynamics and closed-down feelings.
And so it is that we’ve listed the attributes for the 4 of Hearts that we’ve listed. They are all derived from reading the visually symbolic language of this Box of Hearts. If you look now at the 4 of Hearts page, based on what we’ve just explained, you may be able to see how and why we’ve listed each and every attribute for the 4 of Hearts in each category of life.
Note, too, in addition to purely reading the visually symbolic pattern, we have learned detailed expressions of these patterns directly from our professional experience of working intimately with thousands of people. Thus, we have learned first-hand how these patterns play out, for better and for worse, in the everyday details of life. You, too, as you engage these patterns consciously will begin to notice details and eccentricities of these patterns in your own life. Again, these are patterns, that like crayons or building blocks, can be used -- with your free will -- to color and build an infinite variety of possibilities based on how you want to utilize these patterns for yourself to color and construct your own life experience.
All of which is to say that, once you get the hang of if, it’s actually rather simple to read this visually symbolic language.
Note: it’s also why we uncover the medieval iconography to show you the visually symbolic pip arrangement for the royals as well. So, based on their pip arrangement patterns, you can learn how to read their meaning too.
Our hope and our intention is to educate everyone to read this lost language for themselves. It's how we will, we believe, elevate our collective humanity to a more harmonically stable shared experience.
What's the difference between the Source Cards and Tarot Cards?
Well, one is based on math and reveals the structure of our space-time matrix. The other is based on divination. So, it's like the difference between science and art.
With The Source Cards, your cards are pre-determined based on mathematic and esoteric calculations. As in astrology, where the planets are where they are based on the date and time of your birth, your Source Cards are what they are based on the date of your birth. With Tarot Cards, in contrast, the cards for each reading are based on shuffling and pulling cards from the deck.
Are the Source Cards derived from Tarot Cards?
No. In fact, the reverse is true.
And we can utilize three different lines of inquiry that all point us to the same conclusion: the Source Cards must have come before the Tarot Cards.
1. The Source Cards symbolize the foundational building blocks of our space-time matrix, the sacred geometric patterns (Platonic solids, Golden Mean, Phi Ratio, etc.) that construct reality as we know it. Thus, these Cards reveal the source code of our reality, which is why we refer to them as the Source Cards.
The Tarot Cards, meanwhile, symbolize the archetypal stories of our human existence. And these stories are layered upon and constructed from — as is everything in our reality — the sacred geometric building blocks of reality.
From a metaphysical standpoint, then, the Source Cards represent the foundational geometric-mathematical underpinning of the Tarot Cards. And the archetypes found in the Tarot Cards are derived from and elaborated from the sacred geometric source code of Life, which is symbolized in the Source Cards.
So, metaphysically-speaking, the Source Cards are the a priori foundation for the Tarot Cards.
2. Historically-speaking, the Tarot Cards appeared in Europe about 100 years after the first historical appearance of the Source Cards in Europe.
And Occam’s razor tells us that the simplest explanation is the best one. In this case, the simplest historical explanation is that the derivative appeared after the original. Thus, from a historical standpoint and using Occam's razor, we conclude that the Tarot Cards are derived from the original Source Cards.
3. Now, think about it from an archeological-psychological standpoint.
If you're excavating an ancient civilization, which layer of that civilization's history is the older layer? It's the one that's buried deeper underneath the layer above it, right? And the layer that's buried deeper is older in time.
Now, the real meaning of the Tarot Cards has been known publicly for hundreds of years. But underneath our collective awareness, hidden and buried in our collective unconscious, has been the underlying truth of what was considered to be merely a "deck of playing cards." And excavating the truth of these Cards requires us to dig much deeper underneath the layers of assumptions and beliefs of what we already think we know about these "cards" and our reality.
And why is the truth of these Source Cards buried deeper in our psyche than the true meaning of Tarot Cards? It's because these Source Cards are older, more ancient. And thus they are buried deeper in our consciousness, buried underneath more psychologically civilizing layers of assumptions and beliefs.
So, from this three points of inquiry: metaphysically, historically, and archeologically-psychologically, we can see that the Source Cards must be older than, deeper than, prior to, and foundational to the archetypal character patterns found in the Tarot Cards.
Is there a connection between the Source Cards and Astrology?
Short Answer: Yes.
Long Answer: Also, yes, and more than we can explain in a simple FAQ guide.
How did you calculate my Personality Card?
Using astrology.
Your Personality Card is one of the 8 planetary cards that are part of your overall Life Path of 13+ Cards. The planetary card that is your Personality Card is whichever planet "rules" the astrological sign of your birth.
Then, too, unwinding these esoteric calculations and getting into the nuts and bolts of this ancient system of Knowledge is not necessary in order to play your cards right in your life. It can certainly be fun to dive in and discover how it all works -- heck, that's what we've done! But truthfully, for example, you don't need to know how your flat screen TV works in order to enjoy Netflix.
Why do some cards have the same Personality Card as the Birth Card?
The Personality Card is determined by the primary planet that rules the astrological sign into which you are born.
For example, the ruling planet of Virgo is the planet Mercury. So, for someone born into the sign of Virgo, their Personality Card is their Mercury Card in their Life Path. (You can, if you want, look up your Life Path and the meaning of each card in your Life Path in Alexander's book.)
In the sign of Leo, however, the ruling planet is the Sun. And because your Birth Card is akin to your Sun Card and because the ruling planet of Leo is also the Sun, presto! The Personality Card of Leos is the same as their Birth Card. It means their Birth Card energy is not filtered through the energy pattern of their Personality Card. Instead, their Birth Card energy shines forth directly.
Yes, Leos, it means you're unfiltered baby.
What is the connection between the Source Cards and Numerology?
Both are based on the realization that numbers are the language of our reality.
In the Source Cards, as in numerology, each number does have a meaning. And the Source Cards reveal a language of life that is based on numbers. Also, as in numerology, we do add up the numbers to form meaningful calculations. So, yes, there's a deep connection.
Is this Cartomancy?
Well, historically, cartomancy has meant fortune-telling with playing cards. And the Source Cards are not for fortune telling. So, in that sense, No, this is not cartomancy.
But more broadly speaking, we are, of course, reading the meaning of these Cards as a means for guidance and direction. Sometimes, instead of cartomancy, people call this same discipline cardology or metasymbology.
Do the Source Cards show who would be my best romantic partner?
Yes. That's a big YES.
In fact, that's one of Viki's favorite topics. Don't get her started. Or actually, do get her started.
We are going to create a simple class for this topic. Stay tuned. In the meantime, you can read in Alexander's book about which cards are a good fit for you romantically, and then you can look for people who are born to play those cards.
Can the Source Cards help me to improve my relationships?
Yes. And this is pure magic.
When you know people's cards, you know what makes them tick. And when you know that, lightbulbs go off in your brain, and then, interestingly, compassion automatically arises.
We've seen this happen over and over again.
Two people who've been squabbling find out each others' cards to play, and it's as if their eyes are suddenly opened. A veil is lifted. Then, effortlessly, they drop their implicit expectations, relax their defenses, and open up to an authentic connection.
Can I use the Source Cards to help me pick my business partners? And hire the right people?
Yes! Absolutely.
That's a perfect use of this Knowledge. Think of musical chords. Some notes go together. Some don't. Or change the metaphor: it's like oil and water, some energies just don't mix. Others mix up to make the best damned apple pie you've ever tasted.
So, yes, consciously pick people who will be the right ingredients to your success. Surround yourself with people who will energetically -- through the patterns of their being -- amplify your gifts, support your goals, and bring out your best.
To do this well, however, you'll need to know some basics of the relationship dynamics in The Source Cards. (Stay tuned. We will create a class for this topic soon.)
Are the Source Cards the same as the Destiny Cards?
Well, it's the same cards, but a totally different approach.
Those who call the deck of cards the "destiny cards" are intent on doing fortune telling readings with these cards in the same way that Gypsies used to do. Only now, instead of manually dealing out the cards, computer software is used to "deal out" the cards.
And what we've heard from many people is that trying to use the "destiny cards" to read their future becomes a dangerous obsession that only creates anxiety and confusion. It's why we don't advocate for this practice of fortune telling.
Rather that trying to predict your future, with the Source Cards we intend to help you gain consciousness in this present moment.
Why do you call it the Personality Card and not the Planetary Ruling Card?
This is a technical card nerd question. The kind of questions we love!
We call it the Personality Card because that's how it functions in your life. It's your persona.
Plus, we've found over the years that people who do not know astrology are confused by the idea of a "ruling" card. "Ruling what? What do you mean ruling?" So, to keep it simple, we call it the Personality Card.
And if you think about it, technically-speaking your Birth Card is actually your Numerology Card, because it's calculated by the numbers of your birthday. So if you want to be technically consistent with your naming conventions, then it would be your Numerology Card and your Planetary Ruling Card. We prefer to call them your Birth Card and Personality Card.
I had previously learned that Scorpios have two Planetary Ruling Cards? Why do you only list one Personality Card for Scorpios?
Another great card nerd question!
The second PRC that you may have seen listed for Scorpios is the Pluto Card in their Life Path. And yet, for everyone, not just Scorpios, the Pluto Card is the next most influential planetary card in the Life Path. It casts a long shadow! So because it's the next most significant planetary influence for everyone, it's a moot point to assign secondary planetary value to the Pluto Card only for Scorpios.
Sorry Scorpios. You’re special, and you may have special uses for your plutonian energy, but you're not double-personality special.
How do I know if I'm playing my cards right?
Ahh grasshopper.
When you're playing your cards right, you'll know. Angels will be singing the Hallelujah chorus softly outside your bedroom window each morning. No seriously, that's a funny story.
Look for synchronicity. That's the sign.
How do I get started playing my cards right?
Get our free Welcome Guide.
Got another question for us?
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