How Psycards work

The power of symbols

Symbols are wonderful things that play a key role in human existence. Everyday we encounter hundreds of symbols, on the roads, in literature, on the TV.

Take an arrow: it is a symbol that directs us in a particular direction. The symbol is powerful because we understand it directly, it needs little by way of interpretation.

Take a more interesting example: a candle. A candle might symbolise a number of things: romance (a candlelit dinner), religion (candles have significance across many religions); spirituality; birth; light; warmth; oldness.

Like the arrow symbol, the symbol of a candle talks to us directly - it needs little by way of interpretation. But unlike the arrow, the candle symbol is much richer in associations. There will be similarities in the associations each of us have of candles, but also differences. For some of us, they might remind us of birthdays, for others, of festival days, for others, maybe great fires.

Those two features, directness and richness, make symbols powerful tools to exploring our psyches. By moving from thinking in words, which encourages us to apply logic and rationale, to thinking at the level of symbols, we let our minds move in a freer, more primitive, less everyday way - one that better enables us to connect and see things in ourselves that we might shut out of our everyday thoughts because they don't lend themselves to everyday logic.

Our collective unconscious

The symbols used on each Psycards are carefully chosen for their richness. There are symbols for characters, buildings and situations that feature in many different literatures, cultures, folk tales and poems. They are a constellation of elements that make up our lives, and the lives of those around us back in history. It is because they are so common, so essential to our cultural fabric, that we recognise them immediately, and can use them as anchors to start meditating or free associating from as directly as possible.

Psycards is based on Jungian psychology. Jungians hold that the symbols that reoccur in stories, dreams, poems throughout our history do so because we share a collective, unconscious memory. By tapping directly into that, Psycards help us to tap into our own unconscious, enabling us to start to explore our own psyches.

Self understanding

Self understanding leads to happiness. It is not obvious that this is the case, but it is undoubtably true: if we understand our own natures, what it is that people around us do that make us unhappy, why it makes us unhappy, and what we can do to make things better, it puts us in control of our own destinies. It helps us to change things when we can make a positive difference and also accept them when we cannot.

Self understanding is difficult. Human beings aren't logical, rationale creatures; we're also busy creatures, constantly working, shopping, eating, sleeping. Self understanding requires time and effort: it requires us to step back from the situations we are in, look inward, and "feel" our way through the situations we've been in, and the impact they have had on us.

Psycards are a tool to help us in that project of self understanding. By sitting down, thinking about a particular situation, and then listening out to the way we react and feel in response to examining different cards, we get a sense of perspective, and start to get a better sense of lies deep within our own psyches.

Divination

Some of us are blessed with, or through hard work develop, some kind of psychic power. Psycards does not seek to explain what this is, how it works, or even if the remarkable things one psychic can perform are the same as another. For some people that can divinate, Psycards can be a useful tool.