H. R. Giger - H. R. GIGER TAROT

2 The Deluge (The Consequence of the Crisis)

The impact of a comet striking the ocean triggers off enormous tidal waves all over the world; they roll towards the coasts with deathly force. The second card therefore symbolizes the aggressive destructive power of the crisis because it “surges above” its own barriers and forces its way from inner seclusion into outer, manifested experience.

3 The Darkening of Light (Sexual Chill)

The sun’s light is eclipsed for decades by matter stirred into the atmosphere by as a result of the impact. Temperatures plummet throughout the whole world and most animals and plants do not have the right conditions for survival because they cannot adapt quickly enough to the altered circumstances. The third card is therefore life becoming extinct or the emotional nadir: the spiritual center of the crisis.

4 The Greenhouse Effect (Emotional Overheating)

With the settling of the stirred-up matter, temperatures quickly begin to increase again due to the enormous quantities of carbon monoxide released through the firestorm caused by the impact of the comet. This releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide that have a greenhouse effect. The heat consumes whatever life that remains. This card is therefore an allegory for overheating within the soul or the pressure of pent-up feelings.

5 End and Beginning (Human Beings)

The fifth card symbolizes the renewal that is fulfilled in the resurrection of human beings. Because the light reaching us today from distant galaxies was radiated millions of years ago, each look into the universe is a view into the past. Those human beings existing a million years from now will probably have emerged from the life forms surviving the present catastrophe. Consequently, this card does not show us the steps to take to overcome the present crisis on the psychological level. Instead, it depicts the goal towards which our development will lead us after the crisis is overcome.

The thing we call “fortune” is the manifest expression of the process of transformation that we experience in our lifetime. These show us the structures concealed within the deeds, which are both cause and effect to the same degree. Therefore, we are not prisoners of the Norns’ Wheel, but wanderers upon a path that leads us through the effects of our own actions. Although this means that we do not have the power to alter our destiny, we can still change our view of things. The vital question of destiny is not what we are able to change in the current situation, but what is the meaning of our actions: the goal towards which our development is heading.

This spread is a combination of beginning and end, of the Big Bang (IV) and the Hammer of Destruction (V). It links the polarities of creation and destruction to the steady movement of the Norns’ Wheel that, because it spins eternally, is therefore between the two. The question that moves you is the point of intersection through which you focus the journey to yourself (between birth and death). You must accept that everything you experience is in turn never the actual cause but only a ripple triggered by pre-existing causes that can themselves be traced back to a basic pattern increasingly distant in time; effects following causes that can be found in your spiritual development. Everything that you experience is never just the cause but also the effect of a genealogical pattern pressing tirelessly further into the future. As the subject of your question (and the focal point of your increasing consciousness) it swings both back into the past and forward into the future. On the allegorical level the three Norns – who turn the wheel of Fortune, and therefore keep the cosmic cycles in motion – symbolize the inner laws that take effect in the actions of people.

1 The material as the basis

The issue in question.

2 The impact as resistance from outside

The shadow you encounter outside yourself.

3 The flood as a consequence of this resistance

The physical plane, upon which the shadow manifests itself.

4 Chaos as the primal beginning

The first opportunity dawning on you in the fog of numinous fears (the aim).

5 The Quark Era as creative quality

The higher (spiritual) meaning of your action.

6 The cooling down of the Earth as inner frustration

Emotional resistance.

7 The Greenhouse Effect as emotional overheating

The inner (exaggerated) reaction to external resistance.

8 The Hadron Era as physical assertion

The dynamic quality of your actions.

9 The Radiation Era as physical condensation

The compression of your aim (hopes and fears) in time and space.

10 The human being as the outer goal of our development

The goal towards which your development leads.

What shall I decide to do? Should I buy a car? Resign from my job? Take a holiday? What’s going to happen if I do it? And what’s going to happen if I don’t? What’s the right path?

This spread is only appropriate when we cannot decide in favor of one or the other possibilities. The right-hand side (the left from the reader’s perspective) describes the active possibility (if we do it). The other side describes the passive possibility (if we don’t do it). In this process, the significator (card 1) makes it possible to psychologically clarify the background to the question since it reflects the personal state of consciousness, which is mirrored at the time of this decision.

1 The Basic Situation

The realities of those conditions that lead us to make a decision. This also includes the quality of the background of the question that you are currently interested in.

2 The Physical Level of Acting

The physical realm of experience if you decide to do it.

3 The Physical Level of Not Acting

The physical realm of experience if you decide not to do it.

4 The Emotional Level of Acting

The psychological realm of emotions if you decide to do it.

5 The Emotional Level of Not Acting

The psychological realm of emotions if you decide not to do it.

• How do I see my partner and how does my partner see me?

• What shadow do I reflect in the other person or live out in my counterpart?

• How do I consider my relationship overall?

• What does my inner image of the relationship look like?

This is about the relationship between you and your partner. In more precise terms, this is about making contact with the aspect of your partner that reflects you. None of us can be content with ourselves – or with what we consider to be ourselves. As a result, we need the other person, or at least the image of the other person, which corresponds to our expectations. A man experiences himself in a woman through his own unconscious feminine aspect (anima); the woman experiences herself in a man through her own unconscious male aspect (animus). We can emerge from ourselves only when we are prepared to accept that the opposite sex within ourselves can only be recaptured through a partner. Then we enter into a more complete form of the relationship: one in which our present self becomes the part that is only really “the complete self” when it integrates the image of our experience.