A deck of cards can work because each of us guards, beneath the surface of consciousness, a vast archive of forgotten knowledge, intuitions not yet articulated, individual and collective memories that continue to influence our choices.

Consulting a deck is not an act of magic, but a gesture of access. Through the language of symbols, one descends into the deep levels of the psyche: into the subconscious—or, more precisely, the Freudian preconscious—where there are the things we know but have buried; then further down, into the unconscious, where are the things we do not know that we know; and finally into the collective unconscious, the most ancient layer, where the ancestral memories shared by all humanity dwell.

But perhaps there is something more.

Perhaps, in that suspended space between intention and image, we can enter into dialogue with something that is not only ours. Something that observes us, knows us, and sometimes responds. Something that knows our path and returns to us, through the deck, a fragment of truth.

Some, as we have said, call it the subconscious; others, spirits or collective memories. Perhaps it is all of these at once, or perhaps it is the voice of silent intelligence that has accompanied us since the beginning and that, for an instant—taking advantage of a temporary suspension of rational focus—uses the cards to speak.