Man, let me tell you, when I first started seeing this Minds Eye Tarot Deck pop up everywhere, I was seriously skeptical. You know the drill, right? Every few months, some artist rolls out a new deck claiming to unlock deep, secret wisdom, and usually, it’s just a slightly prettier version of the standard imagery. I usually stick to my old, battered Rider-Waite Smith deck; I rely heavily on established tradition and symbolism. I don’t like guesswork.
But my personal journey into truly understanding what this deck is about wasn’t some gentle academic study. It was a straight-up trial by fire. I actually ended up with this deck through pure necessity, and that’s why I can stand here and tell you exactly what it does and why it works, better than anyone who just read the instruction booklet.
About two years ago, I took a contract job that required me to live and work on a remote site for six weeks. This place was totally isolated. No cell service, barely any satellite internet, and my laptop decided to just die a slow, painful death two days in. I had packed maybe five decks, but crucially, all my detailed digital notes, all my heavy reference books on Golden Dawn symbolism, all my crutches—they were unreachable.
I was stuck. I needed to keep up my personal practice, but I couldn’t verify anything. I had my trusty old decks, sure, but without the context I usually pulled up on my screen, those traditional cards felt thin, almost flat. That’s when I pulled out the Minds Eye deck, which I had bought on a whim and barely looked at.
The imagery is abstract, right? It doesn’t use standard figures or scenery. It uses colors, geometry, and raw, visceral energy shapes. My immediate reaction was frustration. I tried to force the traditional meanings onto the cards. “Okay, this red triangle must be some sort of Fire/Wands energy.” It was a terrible match. The readings were muddy, unclear, and worse, they felt dishonest.
The Forced Isolation and Deep Dive
I realized I had to shift my entire approach. My usual methods had completely failed me because the external references were gone. This deck was basically mocking my reliance on scholarly knowledge. So, I sat down and made a decision: I was going to read this deck exactly how it demands to be read—intuitively, from the gut, forcing my ‘minds eye’ to engage without the filter of tradition.
I spent three full days doing nothing but connecting with the imagery. I didn’t look at the tiny booklet. I spread the cards out on the floor and I forced myself to feel the energetic frequency of each one. Forget the name of the card; what does the color, the flow, the texture say?
- For the card that corresponded to the Major Arcana’s Justice, I saw huge, intersecting lines of cool blue and sharp silver. I wrote in my journal: ‘Sharp truth. Uncomfortable alignment. The cost of balance.’ I didn’t think about scales or swords. I just felt the starkness.
- For the Hanged Man, it was a blurred vortex of sickly green and muddy brown. I identified that energy as: ‘Self-inflicted stagnation. Refusal to move. Waiting for a change that won’t come if you don’t cut yourself down.’
By stripping away the names and simply cataloging the raw feeling the image provoked, I began to build my own personalized, direct lexicon for the deck. It was slow going, and frankly, it felt weird at first, like trying to learn a language without a dictionary.
The True Meaning Revealed
The profound realization slammed into me during a complex spread I did on my own confusing employment situation. When I used my traditional decks, I got the standard ambiguities: ‘Potential change, watch your boundaries, wait and see.’ But when I pulled the Minds Eye cards and used my forced, isolated definitions, the reading was immediate, brutal, and crystal clear: ‘This current path is a slow drain. The structure is decaying. Leave now or risk collapse.’ It didn’t mince words.
So, what is the Minds Eye Tarot Deck about? It’s not about new symbolism; it’s about breaking your dependence on any symbolism. It acts as a sledgehammer, demanding that you bypass the intellectual part of your brain that wants to reference book knowledge, and instead, it forces you straight into the intuitive, feeling brain.
I know this because I was cornered into a situation where I had no choice but to use it this way. I couldn’t look up what the Three of Cups traditionally meant. I had to look at that swirling, messy orange and yellow image and ask: What does this feel like? And the answer I got was always pure, unadulterated energetic truth.
If you feel like your readings are getting stale, or you’re too bogged down in memorizing card meanings, this is the deck that will kick you out of the rut. It doesn’t offer comfort, but it offers clarity. My forced isolation with this deck completely recalibrated my intuitive muscles, and honestly, that’s a skill I wouldn’t trade for all the reference books in the world.
