Franco Santoro's Blog: Astroshamanism, page 20

Daily card layout

The Astroshamanic Binary Tarot is basically used to create complete and partial arrangements representing multidimensional and shamanic cosmologies on the ground or other surfaces so as to enable individuals to position and move in significan positions. These arrangements are employed and taught in seminars and sessions. In addition to this experiential and ritual use, the cards can be used for meditation, guidance, inspiration and divinatory purposes in ways similar to those of traditional decks.

In this article we deal with the simplest and most essential layout, which will be followed by other simple and more complex spreads in our next articles.

Before starting a layout and reading dwell on your intention and function. Then carry out a brief centering practice, such as the opening of the Sacred Cone, or the Holy Practice of the Circle of the 12. After the practice transfer the energy to the deck, shuffling it 12 times, then using the right and left hand, place the cards on the forehead, the belly and the heart, finally laying them down on a table.

This layout involves drawing only one card and placing it face-down on a surface. Then close your eyes and consider your intent, what you want, highlighting the bright aspects, then take note of any grievance, discomfort, fear or dark aspects. Finally enter into a space of neutrality, in the Center, becoming a detached witness of the above. Open yourself to the feelings, thoughts and intuitions you receive.

Then open your eyes, turn the card and focus on it for a while, bringing your attention to your breath, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Close your eyes again and hold the card in your mind. Pay attention to how you feel, what stands out about the card. Then allow your imagination to be creatively at work: the symbols and seal of the card can change or it can move in a setting spontaneously emerges. After a while open your eyes again and look more carefully at the card. Focus on the glyph and what reminds you or stimulates you. Consider the technical nature of the card, its binary or matrix number.

This is the simplest arrangement that you can use from time to time or also daily as guidance.

You can also consider the card together with the binary of the day. For example, if today the Sun is in Gemini and the Moon in Sagittarius (binary 3.9), while the card you have chosen is binary 2.8. The latter is the key to understanding the nature of the current moment and transcending its separate and conventional aspects.

This is the simplest arrangement that can allow you to learn about the cards individually, allowing each of them to act as an inspirational element for the day.

Identity

Your identity is something that others have made you believe.

When you cease to believe in this identity, then you cease to exist, and therefore only the identities of others remain.

When you stop believing in the identities of others, they too cease to exist.

And then, if you really want to understand who you are, it’s about accepting what’s left.

Single-use or Multi-use Body?

There are two types of bodies you can employ:
single-use (disposable) and multi-use (renewable)
As human beings we are very familiar with the single-use body. This is the physical body, to which we dedicate our almost entire resources, for its procreation, gestation, birth, upbringing, growth, management and maintenance, until it inevitably decays and dies.
The multi-use body is often unknown, also because the disposable body takes so much time and energy that almost nothing is left to consider other bodies. The only exception is when the disposable body is in a sleep state, through dreaming.
The multi-use body is multidimensional, it exists simultaneously in many parallel realities, it travels back and forth in time, it can change shape according to circumstances, it is recyclable, renewable, “photovoltaic”, indestructible and free. It does not require any time and energy to be procreated, given birth, nurtured and managed because it exists naturally and above all freely. So you are free to use it or not, you are free to put it away somewhere, maybe in a vase, and forget about its existence and also to feel so bad as a result.

Living around or within

How are you living your life?
Around or within?
You live around when you depend on the circumstances, on what surrounds you: climatic, material, social, political, relational conditions, what others do and say and above all your physical body.
Circumstances constantly change, at times they give you gifts, then they take them away. At times there is peace, power, joy, then conflict, pain, weakness follows. At times your physical body is in good shape, then it is not.
When you were born in this world you identified yourself with a physical body, a family, culture, race, profession, social role, ideology, religion and many other circumstances.
Then at some point you probably began to realize that there is another identity, something within that lives beyond circumstances. That part is the only reality, security, source of power, while everything else is illusory, provisional. When you understand this then you start living within.
You live within when you are intimately creative, when you realize that your purpose in life is to give birth to and bring up your
MULTIDIMENSIONAL SELF, your CENTER.
The circumstances accompany you in this process, they surround you, but they cannot support you. Their purpose is to act as a contrast. Just as emptiness allows you to identify the objects and bodies you see, the circumstances serve to highlight your Center. But if instead of recognizing the Center, you continue to pay attention to the circumstances, then there will only be circumstances.
I regret to point this out, but the circumstances of your life, although they may improve sometimes, they are destined to worsen with absolute certainty. You can ignore it, but at some point this will happen. All circumstances will degenerate, including your physical body.
The pressure of circumstances and their alternation is useful when it allows you to awaken from within your true SELF, your CENTER.
Every day, when you feel the pressure of circumstances, immediately bring your attention to the Center, make sure it is fully awake, and let it express, live, be.
NEVER allow circumstances to determine who you are.
Learn to live within day by day.
Start immediately. Give space to who you are inside now, without depending on any circumstances. Let your CENTER express and know that the most favorable moment to do so is when the circumstances are worse.
The time will come when the circumstances will be the worst possible ones, and that will be the decisive moment.
So use any situation a little less worse to train yourself to live within. Start immediately.

Doing & Being

The reason why separate human beings are so focused on doing, acting, creating and attaining goals rather than simply being is completely legitimate.

How can you be if indeed you are not? If you don’t truly exist? If a separate human being is a total illusion?

In this case the only remote chance of proving your existence merely relies on what you do.

Predatory identity

Regularly considering the limited conditions of your current life in comparison to the kind of life you would like to have in order to be happy serves the purpose of supporting a predatory identity based on chronic dissatisfaction.

The only limit of your current life comes from the presence of this predatory identity, whose purpose is to devour every bit of your happiness.

Clouds

The purpose of clouds is to allow the Sun to enjoy some intimacy.

A Better Future

From a material perspective there is no better future since in physical life everything in the future is inevitably destined to wear out and die. So, in the long term, for each individual on a material level the future can only be worse.

It follows that any enterprise intended to guarantee a better future is essentially illusory, false and untruthful. The only realistic aspect of a better future, if we really want to use this term, would involve the acquisition of the ability to manage the worst future in the best possible way.

Soul Loss

“If you lose your soul and you know it, then you still have a soul to lose.” (Charles Bukowski).

Soul loss is based on the awareness that all our problems are due to separation from parts of our being.

For this purpose, the shaman travels to alternative realities, which include past/future dimensions and parallel universes, to locate the lost parts, recover and restore them.

Soul loss is the result of traumatic events that happened to all human beings during childhood, when they were forced to perceive the world according to conventional reality.

In astroshamanism the recovery of parts of the soul consists of simple techniques designed to identify, awaken and integrate areas of ecstasy and power. When a subject has acquired sufficient awareness of these areas, then they can make significant improvements in their life.

Every part of our soul is strategically identified in astroshamanism with one of the twelve zodiacal signs. These 12 parts constitute the original matrix of the soul, which are meant to be recovered, awakened and integrated into our consciousness.

The Beloved is Here

The Beloved is here, fear not.
This is not an act of faith.
The Beloved is here, in the darkest night,
when also the Moon fails to appear.
The Beloved is here, even if it has to be invented, created out of nothing, in this valley of tears.
The Beloved is here, you can rest assured,
because even if he has never existed,
your passion is bound to generate him,
in this lunation night,
and share it with everyone, now.