Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The Egypt Cards Book is a Great Resource and a Real Treasure!





Egypt Cards: Using the Sacred Hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt in Today’s World by Constance Trillich

I’ve been an amateur Egyptologist for over 50 years, since I was a very young boy, and had the privilege of visiting Egypt at age 5 with my family. Recently, all these decades later, I have discovered a remarkable resource to continue and deepen my study of the ancient Egyptian culture, language and religion, in the deceptively simple form of Constance Trillich’s Egypt Cards deck and the companion book that I obtained from Amazon. This is concentrated information, like a far bigger book!
The cards are not precisely a Tarot deck, though the creator and author now plans to add a set of “Major Arcana” so that it will correspond neatly with the structure of the Tarot, which it already does in many ways, minus those trumps. My own study of Tarot, also many decades long, though not quite as venerable as my love for Egypt, has led me to some unconventional interpretations.
I view the Tarot (and also the Egypt Cards) not only as an oracle deck that can yield profound insight from the unconscious mind into conscious awareness, but at core, as a book that depicts the grand design of the evolution of energy in formation. That may sound complex or challenging to understand, but think of how during formation from embryo to fetus to you as an adult human, your form underwent all those stages that parallel the single cell, worm-like form, fishy form, little tailed animal, then human ape, and finally domesticated primate grown-up.
 A remarkable thing that can be seen in Constance’s superb cards is that the deck also suggests “future” paths for human evolution, as our conscious awareness continues to expand and heighten. She makes Egypt relevant to today’s people and our world now.
To keep this review simple, let me mention that I still keep my copy of the deck in the numerical order that the cards are discussed in the beautiful book that explains them. To me, this is something like the “Periodic Table of Evolution,” and Constance clearly spent much time arranging the order of the cards with great care as well as creating their clear, beautiful artwork. Here you have a comprehensive inventory of key Egyptian hieroglyphs and deities, core concepts and patterns, all beautifully encoded into the deck and its imagery.
My knowledge is fairly in-depth, in that I study the language of ancient Egypt, as well as the art, culture and history, the archaeology and its interpretation, yet I still gain nuggets of new information and insight as I work with the deck and read this book.
I’ll confess that I have never before come across another contemporary interpreter of Egyptian civilization with whom I feel quite such a sympathetic alignment, in terms of Constance’s interpretations, choice of terms, spellings for many of the somewhat mysterious terms and names. She comes across as both practical and visionary. Kudos to Constance Trillich (who uses the last name Johnson on Facebook) and my gratitude to her for her creation of this book and the deck of cards, her sharing these, and her generous personal communications with me as well.
This work confirms what I feel more than ever, that in essence, Egyptian culture was not overwhelmingly complex, rather it was grounded in everyday experience and simple central patterns.
If you are interested in ancient Egypt, this is a major contribution to contemporary appreciation and understanding of that fascinating civilization to which we still owe so much of what we are today.

www.egyptcards.com