Tarot – The Art of Transforming The World
Adam J. Malone
Tarot Wizard & Creative Director of The Tarot Experience VR.
MAs in “Myth, Cosmology and The Sacred” and “Immersive Storytelling.”
Gemini Sun, Virgo Moon, Scorpio Rising
Somewhere in the Ashdown Forest, East Sussex, UK
Web: www.the-tarot-experience-vr.com
IG: @adam_the_tarot_experience_vr
TikTok: @adamjmalone
Why do we read the Tarot? Where are we going when we are in that space? And perhaps most importantly… what… are we looking for?
These sorts of deep questions are something that have driven my interest in Tarot since my first ever encounter with the cards some 20+ years ago.
These are also the exact same questions I ask of two other topics that I am equally and profoundly interested in as well… the field of Psychedelics and of Virtual Reality.
By Dan Johnson & Adam J. Malone
For me the answer to these questions is clear. The motivation driving the exploration of these three super fascinating topics is almost the same… the search for an authentic Self.
Lots of people ask me how and why I got into the Tarot, and this is the reason.
In the context of my early twenties and a very live, very real and equally troubling spiritual emergence (or what I was later able to call a spiritual emergence anyway) I encountered a Tarot card reader in the cobbled street South Laines of Brighton, England. For the modest sum of five pounds, he pulled 3 cards… Past, Present and Future. What struck me the most about this experience was how could a complete stranger know so much about my personal story? When it had finished, I immediately walked to the nearest bookshop… went straight to the burgeoning ‘Mind, Body, Soul’ section and started to read about Tarot. Cut to 10 years later… where I found myself starting my first day as a professional Tarot card reader… in those very same streets of Brighton in 2013.
This is how my interest in the Tarot started, but the second question I get asked the most is… how did I learn to read the Tarot?
Now… the answer to this question is harder to convey because there’s lots of ways in which I ‘learned’ the Tarot. Yes I read books, but two significant things also took place which are important to mention.
Firstly, I would say that the Tarot cards themselves taught me… Hear me out! After that very first reading in the streets of Brighton, I became what I would describe as a ‘believer’. For the next 10 years or so I was 100% sold on the Tarot’s ability to communicate something vital to me about my Self, something I was unable to see or at that age, had never been shown before.
“I would seek out Tarot readings about 4 times a year, and if I ever found myself in a new town anywhere in the UK or on my travels abroad, I would tend to end up in some weird, dimly lit room… waiting in trepidation for the latest Tarot card message… from yet another slightly odd stranger!”
And so, I always say… that these experiences formed a significant part of learning the Tarot. It was a kind of street level education that gave me a lens to recognise charged aspects of my state of being and how those states were reflected by the Tarot images that emerged. To be able to recognise, from your own personal experience, which emotional states generate which Tarot images, is a vital aspect of learning to read the Tarot. Once you can recognise the Tarot cards as certain qualities in yourself, and if you are armed with enough empathy, you will be able to read the Tarot cards for another.
By Dan Johnson & Adam J. Malone
However, I do have to say… that up until this point of my journey… I was still unable to read the cards myself. Something else significant needed to occur first…
Whilst this dance with Tarot and a whole lot more was going on… I also wandered (like any spiritual alternative type worth their salt these days!) onto the psychedelic medicine path. After a particular encounter with Ayahuasca… I was guided to seek some formal training in Shamanism. This I quickly sought and found with Leo Rutherford at Eagles Wing in England. During their ‘Medicine Wheel Practitioner Training’ course in 2010, I along with the rest of the group was initiated into the 4 directions and their representative 4 elements, earth, air, fire, and water. What this process established for me was a deep and connected relationship with the four elements and in particular, how they manifested in my life (as recognised in the ‘Minor Arcana’ of the Tarot) as four metaphorical aspects of my being. Earth – my body, Air – my intellect, Fire – my will and Water – my emotions. We journeyed with the drum, we spoke, we listened to each other, we laughed, cried, hit pillows… and really got deep into our relationship with Water! It was fascinating. For example…
“I remembered that I was a late swimmer, was scared of the water as a child and had nearly drowned before I had learned to swim... It dawned on me… no wonder I feared relationships and always felt ‘out of my depth’!”
The power of viewing my life through these important and ancient metaphors was unleashed and what happened as a result was that I could read the Tarot! It’s like I got it all of a sudden, like a key had been turned in my mind… my Tarot reading ability had been unlocked! What followed was quite a lot of people over the next several months just started to come to me and ask for Tarot readings. But I never set out to be a Tarot reader, it just happened…
By Dan Johnson & Adam J. Malone
What these experiences have in common… is that they represented a kind of accidental self-initiation into the Tarot. In ancient times initiation was valued so much more than it is today as a vital form of education. I believe we need this more than ever in today’s society.
There were, of course, other significant moments along the way during my journey with the Tarot… like tripping in a Tarot readers shop in Camden… or building and living on a canal boat named The Aeon (after Crowley’s second to last Major Arcana)…
“…or going on a peyote pilgrimage to Mexico and being told to stop using the Crowley deck… or accidentally initiating my Marseille Tarot deck into the 4 elements… or being forced to change my readings by a client with Tourette’s… or realising that it’s all just a load of bullshit…”
… and then studying the Tarot on my MA in Myth, Cosmology and The Sacred… but that’s all another story! And that’s the point. All of this is a story. My life, your life… the planet, the Universe, God... we are all these little stories interacting and existing within bigger and even bigger stories. Essentially, we are narrative creating beings, a fact which our current culture has encouraged us to forget. But this is probably why Tarot holds more power for people than it ever has done before. It’s not because we are becoming more naïve, irrational, or led astray, as the critics of Tarot’s growing popularity will undoubtedly say. It’s because the true power of Tarot is not in its falsely claimed power as a fortune-telling device… but because of what I believe is its true function as an important immersive storytelling device. And the story it immerses you in… is yours!
I view Tarot as a significant and participatory story of Self and world transformation… which reminds us that we are all on a heroic, sometimes crazy journey to work out who we really are meant to be in the world. The goal that the Tarot encourages all of us towards… is to bring that Self into being and into a world that is in dire need of our participation.
For these reasons I believe that Tarot is the ultimate storytelling device for now.
This is why I've created a psychedelic inspired Virtual Reality experience called ‘The Tarot Experience VR’. Last year it was nominated for ‘Experience of the Year’ at the VR Awards for which I am super proud.
“But what excites me the most about all of this… is the fact that the Tarot, now unleashed in this new, weird, exciting, and slightly concerning medium of VR… still works!”
But not only does it just ‘work’, it takes Tarot’s ability to touch people so very deeply, to speak to the core of their being and to inspire them to be better versions of themselves… to a whole new level. This is exactly what we should be using this weird new technology for in my opinion.
There is great educational and initiatory potential in Virtual Reality, which when inspired by Psychedelics and filled with the transformational power of the Tarot card images, symbols and wisdom becomes a formidable tool for Self and perhaps world transformation.
I hope you can try it for yourself.
ADAMX
From the Tarot Experience VR
Adam J Malone is the Creative Director of The Tarot Experience VR. During his first MA in Myth, Cosmology and The Sacred, Adam’s interest in the power of mythic narrative brought him to focus on the divinatory system of the Tarot. Having written a dissertation in 2020 entitled ‘The Art of Transforming The World: Tarot and the Future of Immersive Experience’ Adam went on to study a second MA at Royal Holloway in Immersive Storytelling, where he graduated in 2021. Adam’s final piece for the course later became The Tarot Experience VR and aimed to prove his hypothesis that Tarot is an important immersive storytelling art form for the future. The experience was nominated as a finalist for ‘Experience of the Year’ at the VR Awards 2023. Adam’s professional and creative work is now focused on bringing meaningful and transformative experiences to the world of digital art, whilst his writing focuses on the power of myth, narrative and metaphor. Adam currently lives and works in East Sussex, UK and continues to read Tarot for those who can find him… somewhere in the Ashdown Forest.
From The Tarot Experience VR