The Tarot

I have always cared a lot about what others think about me. Too much.

As I discovered the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky and started to watch many of them I learned to care much less. Alejandro repeats often that he never makes his movies thinking about how his audience will react to them. He simply does not care and does it because he feels it’s the right thing he should do or communicate.

I never dared to write or even talk much about my new interest in Tarot about a year ago. I felt I looked weird enough to my friends with my “spiritual” and self improvement interest or my trips to the Amazon Forest, to a secret moondance in Mexico or my two vision quests with the Lakota tribe that I also barely talk about as my teacher in South Dakota told me to keep it mostly secret.

I grew up very rational and focused on my mind. I started several businesses and learned to build startups in technology, shared what I learned through the conference I founded, LeWeb for 12 years in a row. I believed in what most my friends believe “what science cannot explain does not exist”.

Now I spend some time studying what most of my friends and myself in the past considered total bullshit or a total waste of time, like Tarot.

Less bullshit but definitely not business driven I am learning music and singing. I write every day. I meditate one to two hours a day.

What seemed “bullshit” in the past still often feels this way but there is something that draws me to it, not sure what or why. A friend of mine told me a few days ago “you’re becoming an artist, it’s okay”. While that was nice to hear I am definitely a total beginner. I don’t want to say mediocre artist because anyone as to start somewhere but it feels this way especially with the guitar. It’s okay. I’m having fun and it makes me happy.

Often I’m like the Fool in Tarot. The card that has no number because it’s a new beginning and everything is possible. The Fool could fall in the cliff in front of him but does not, he recovers, there is always one more step he can take. He is looking up and following his dreams but does not fall. He carries everything he owns in his small bag, light like a feather. It’s dangerous sometimes. Dangerous like sharing what other people find weird or crazy.

Inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky I decided to accept the weird while remaining present in this world.

I have decided to care less about what others will think. It’s okay, I am weird. Call me crazy sometimes if you like it’s okay too.

My Lakota teacher told me once

“you fall often and make a lot of mistakes but you recover very fast, focus on that”.

So here is one more weird thing that the technology entrepreneur or conference organizer that I am cannot really share to most of his friends without looking weird and a little crazy. I thought that too about people believing the Tarot has anything to teach us. I thought they were idiots, to be honest. Now I don’t. I just don’t take it too seriously.

About a year ago I got a reading from a friend. I was very intrigued by what he said. Another friend gave me a tarot deck. There is a lot of weirdness about the Tarot. While I stayed interested I was triggered by the books I have read about it still thinking it was too weird for me to keep learning and admitting to anyone I was interested in it.

A few months ago I discovered that the same Alejandro Jodorowsky spent years of his life studying Tarot. He collected hundreds of different decks and worked on the history of Tarot, trying to find the original deck, the most pure. For him the most pure form of Tarot is the Tarot de Marseille. I liked it, it’s French and curious synchronicity it is from where I was born, the South of France (I was born in Perpignan, not Marseille but that’s a few hours drive away). It’s hard because all the 1-10 cards, the 40 cards of the “minor arcana” have very little drawings compared to other decks. You have to learn their meanings by heart. I am getting there.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s wrote a beautiful book which I tend to cary everywhere I go “The way of Tarot” often hiding it as I do not dare to admit I am studying it. It’s the best book I have found about Tarot.

The one most important thing Jodorowsky repeats all the time is that Tarot is NOT meant to predict the future and anyone doing readings to others pretending to tell them their future are dangerously wrong. It should be about understanding yourself and life. You can also share with others too, which I have done only once giving for fun a reading to friend. It ended up being a fun conversation without pretending to be anything else.

Studying the cards got into my dreams. Very often I dream I become the character of one Tarot card. One night I even woke up with my body taking the form of the “Hanged Man” and dreaming with the attributes this card is suggesting. A deep self introspection. I spent the night dreaming of who I am inside and getting many new insights. I did not see nor did not seek anything about the future but got to know myself better.

I would say now Tarot is a wonderful tool. It’s fun and always teaches me something. There is something mysterious to it that attracts me. I stay very humble and approach it as a game. Tarot was hidden and turned into the card games we all know today, so it is a game and should not be taken too seriously. A tool for self reflection.

Jodorowsky raises money to make his films by giving Tarot readings and he shares them on YouTube. The readings are fascinating to me. I love how he approaches it and the way he uses the card to tell us life stories, not to predict the future. You would be surprised to see how much knowledge there is behind the cards.

Here is one I watched today: How to finally live fully

He says in it the most important for him in life is this:

“I do not want anything for myself which is not also for others. What I give, I keep and what I do not give I lose”.

The way to life one’s life fully is to live with passion and become a servant of nature, a protector of the trees, of nature and the universe. I heard that in the Amazon forest too, my friends there call themselves the “guardians of the forest”. The Yawanawa tribe protects the forest and Benki, leader of the Ashaninka tribe planted millions of trees on deforested land.

Here is one more step towards being weird in my self discovery new life. I feel totally okay with it and won’t hide my deck anymore. See it as a fun way to have a conversation.