“In ancient Egyptian culture, owls have long been seen as a symbol of darkness and supernatural wisdom protected from those who do not deserve to receive this knowledge. Their dark qualities were celebrated because they were said to link with the unknown mystery of the hereafter.” From Bird Watching by David Swanson.
In Chrysalis Tarot, a good deal of the same symbolism represented in Janie Olsen’s art (left) is expressed on our Celtic Owl card; in traditional tarot this card is called The Hanged Man. However, we find owl symbolism to be far more pleasing and pedagogic
In fact, in our Little White Book, the guidebook we include with Chrysalis decks, we made this observation, “The unseen world remains dark to many because its reality is doubted or denied.” And therein lies the rub: materialism – the denial of God, spirituality and what Chrysalis calls the Unseen or Otherworld.
Chrysalis cosmology posits a duality known as Manichaeism: good vs. evil, light vs. darkness, spirit vs matter. Indeed, by definition as a tool for divination, tarot appeals directly to the Collective Unconscious, a unseen realm or field that adds meaning and direction to life.
Divination is distinct from fortune telling, which is a debasement of tarot. Divination invokes divine guidance and protection. It imbues tarotists with the ability to best use their innate faculties of discernment and intuition – faculties materialists and other non-believers ridicule.
It’s useful, I believe, to revisit three basic beliefs essential to understanding Chrysalis Cosmology and to efficiently using Chrysalis’ unique methodology:
- Panpsychism. This is the belief that everything possesses some inherent degree of subjective consciousness.
- Non-locality. This is the belief that consciousness itself is not an emergent property of the human brain but rather is what theologian Paul Tillich termed, “The Ground of All Being.”
- Interconnectivity. This is the belief that all things both in the seen world and the Unseen Otherworld are interconnected. All cosmic information therefore is accessible. In Chrysalis’ Celtic Owl art, Holly chose the Celtic Knot to symbolize this universal interconnectivity.
Around the same time we published the Chrysalis Companion Book (2014), we put the finishing touches on an academic paper titled Evolution of Consciousness and the Emergent Aquarian Paradigm. My thesis is that the ascending Aquarian Age will shepherd a quantum leap forward in human consciousness. I’ve long felt Chrysalis would play some modest role in that evolution. In the paper, I quote Indian philosopher and mystic Sri Aurobindo: “Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists.”
Zeitgeist is a fun word. It refers to the invisible spirit or Daemon that comes to dominate a given historical epoch, such as a 2000-year astrological age. Carl Jung saw the advent of Christianity as the dominant theme in our present Piscean Age, which appears to be in its archetypal death throes as it gives way to the Aquarian Age. The Daemon of the Piscean Age was the image of the Divine writ large in humanity’s personal and Collective Unconscious. That “image” includes Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and to a large extent, Greek Philosophy.
J.W. Waterhouse’s painting of the The Tempest came to mind when I wrote the “death throes of our current Piscean Age.” Certainly the 20th century was haunted and traumatized by one display of the Apocalypse followed by another. Now, firmly in the 21st century and staring down nuclear holocaust, we have all become Mirandas: We beg our father to save the men at sea and still the sinister storm that besets our times.
We make life easier for ourselves and for the paradigm shift into the Aquarian Age when we discern and cooperate with the nascent Aquarian Daemon rather than misperceive and resist it. Such a cooperative effort requires keen critical thinking and acute self-awareness. Too many are in denial of evident truths. Too many remain asleep.
P.S. For more in-depth analysis of the emerging paradigm, please consider subscribing to my Substack, Rational Spirituality. It’s always free!
© Toney Brooks, 2023
The main goal of Chrysalis is increased self-awareness. You’ve heard many times assurances that “all the answers are already inside us.” We just have to coax them out. Tarot is one of many modalities people employ to achieve this highly desirable goal.
What is an archetype and how to they cognate? Well, an archetype, in 21st century metaphysical parlance, can be defined as an integrated, anthropomorphized emergence of information defined as attributes that exist concurrently in the brain and in what is known as the 
“The point is that you start with any image … Contemplate it and carefully observe how the picture begins to unfold or to change. Don’t try to make it into something, just do nothing but observe what its spontaneous changes are. Any mental picture you contemplate in this way will sooner or later change through a spontaneous association that causes a slight alteration of the picture. You must carefully avoid impatient jumping from one subject to another. Hold fast to the one image you have chosen and wait until it changes by itself. Note all these changes and eventually step into the picture yourself, and if it is a speaking figure at all then say what you have to say to that figure and listen to what he or she has to say.” ~ C.G. Jung
Chrysalis Tarot 