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Tag Archives: consciousness

The Unifying Consciousness Tarot, by Lori Lytle and Leo Scopacasa

The Unifying Consciousness Tarot, by Lori Lytle and illustrated by Leo Scopacasa
REDFeather, 0764369121, 176 pages, 79 cards, June 2025

Lori Lytle’s The Unifying Consciousness Tarot, illustrated by Leo Scopacasa, provides a strikingly immersive journey into the liminal space between vision and form. More than just a tarot deck, it is an energetic portal into dreamlike inner landscapes, where archetypes shimmer with color and consciousness and symbolism becomes sensation. This 79-card deck reimagines the tarot as both a meditative tool and an artistic transmission—what the creators call “Activation Art.”

What immediately distinguishes this deck is its otherworldliness. There are no borders to contain the images; each card bleeds fully to the edge, immersing the reader in vibrant, expansive artwork that feels less like static illustration and more like a living vision.

The oversized cards themselves are another notable feature: larger than standard tarot dimensions, they serve as powerful statement pieces in a reading, especially in ceremonial or altar-based work. Printed on a heavier cardstock, the deck is built for durability and holds up well to regular use. The tactile quality adds to the sensory immersion—each card feels substantial in the hand, grounding the ethereal imagery in a practical, physical form.

The artwork by Scopacasa is lush, hypnotic, and saturated with radiant color. Filled with sacred geometry and high-frequency symbolism, the deck is a full sensory experience that evokes a state of heightened awareness or dreamlike reverie. It’s a deck that awakens intuition as much as interpretation, inviting the reader to feel their way through the story behind each image.

Grounded in the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith system, the deck maintains enough structure for experienced tarot readers to navigate intuitively, while offering new metaphysical architecture to explore. The four suits correspond to Mind, Heart, Soul, and Spirit—an elegant reframe that invites multidimensional readings.

Perhaps the most intriguing addition is the 23rd Major Arcana card: Activation. More than a bonus card, it acts as a metaphysical keystone, extending the Major Arcana journey into a full-circle moment of ascension. By positioning Activation as the final threshold, the creators suggest that the Fool’s journey doesn’t merely end with integration—but evolves into a full conscious embodiment from the subconscious.

The guidebook, written by Lytle, complements the visual language with clarity and insight. It offers both traditional and intuitive interpretations, while encouraging readers to trust their own experience with the deck. Lytle’s tone is grounded, inclusive, and resonant, rooted in spiritual practice without losing accessibility. Whether you are new to tarot or have been working with the archetypes for decades, there is something in this text that will meet you where you are.

What makes The Unifying Consciousness Tarot stand apart from other decks is its synthesis of beauty, depth, and function. It is both visionary and usable, aesthetically bold and structurally sound. The deck feels especially aligned for personal reflection, ritual work, and dream incubation—spaces where linear logic gives way to symbolic language and higher awareness. It does not seek to explain away mystery but to gently guide the reader toward their own inner knowing.

This deck will resonate with mystics, artists, and seekers who approach tarot as a living, breathing spiritual companion. It is also ideal for those drawn to the intersection of art and consciousness, or for readers who value bold visuals and metaphysical framing. The creators’ background in energy work and spiritual art is palpable throughout the deck. It feels less like a product and more like a transmission.

Overall, The Unifying Consciousness Tarot is a joy to explore. Each card a doorway, each image a frequency. It’s a rare and refreshing addition to the ever-expanding world of tarot, reminding us that divination is not just about answers, but also about resonance, remembrance, and return.

Psychedelic Consciousness, by Daniel Grauer

Psychedelic Consciousness: Plant Intelligence for Healing Ourselves and Our Fragmented World, by Daniel Grauer
Park Street Press, 9781644110300,  256 pages, July 2020

Daniel Grauer’s book Psychedelic Consciousness: Plant Intelligence for Healing Ourselves and Our Fragmented World goes as wide as it does deep. This book is an inspired inter-mixed odyssey of both the historical and personal in relation to psychedelics, the culture of usage and practice, and the implications and opportunities present to us today. The best thing about this book is that it lacks the usual pretense, which is part of its charm. At it’s heart, this book is a testament to the author’s desire to relay the message that a meaningful, modern personal journey with psychedelics as a spiritual path is both possible and presently available to us all.

In an era where first hand experience trumps all and the very nature of psychedelic experimentalism is often a solo pilgrimage to begin, this book is wonderfully timely. The jump between subjects occasionally feels like leaps, but the author’s aim is evident and reflective here in the book’s construction, providing a landscape that doesn’t sink us into theory but rather invites us into understanding. Psychedelic Consciousness is an optimistic book — one that looks towards the reader with an open-ended invitation.

This book lends itself to thought-work relating both to becoming-aware-of and dismantling our current biases on psychedelic culture and plant medicine. There is an intimate communion with Grauer as he shares his unique path into his own understandings. He offers practical tips for journeying along with a myriad of personal findings through his explorations.

I think many a psychedelic journeyer has reached the moment of desiring to leap into authentic journey into the jungle or connect with indigenous practices, casting aside the nihilistic and/or purely hedonistic usage and entering a deeper mystery, meaning, and mythology of these sacred medicines. It is natural to start longing for something transpersonal, restorative, and spirited. Grauer, in sharing his experience, offers a lens into what this longing can offer and how it influenced him in his own work, his own dream, and his own hope for bridging the indigenous world with the modern practitioner. 

Psychedelic Consciousness calls the reader to the question what it actually means to be on an integrative, integral journey with our plant teachers. Grauer poses the question to us that he asked of himself: If I were to die, what song would I be playing? If the world were to end tomorrow, would I be happy with who I am?

Beyond the individual in relationship to journeying and practice, Grauer calls readers to lean into our relationship with the unseen, which takes both courage and maturity. Trauma and oppressive ideologies bring fragmentation to the psyche, and Grauer posits that it’s our plant allies that can aid us in restoration. Grauer’s pathways of explorations and guidance offer an opportunity to explore how we ourselves relate to our plant teachers and what our journeying is all about.

The ending of the book is an invitation to connect with Grauer personally through his website — a testament to the book’s weaving qualities and the author’s desire to instigate and inspire an ongoing, evolving, experiential conversation. 

Overall, Psychedelic Consciousness is a wonderful resource for the tidal wave of people who are new to psychedelics and contemplating consciousness. It’s especially geared for Western minds who have had mystical experiences, or perhaps simply *an experience* with psychedelics and wondered what it was all about. I think it’s best for people experimenting or new to their journeys, though people who have been on a medicine path can also benefit from the questions it poses throughout to further refine their own practice and dream of what the possibilities and potentials are.