This tape presents a guided meditation journey using the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot as doorways to inner knowing. Bartholomew emphasized that mankind's great difficulty is being trained to forget the dark - the deep, wondrous roots of being - while striving only for the light. He describes humans as double-pointed crystals, with white light above and a black point below, teaching that wholeness requires embracing both. The guided journey leads listeners into a personal cave of power, where they encounter a chosen Tarot figure through their eyes, receive guidance, and integrate its energy. This practice, done repeatedly with different cards, reveals all parts of the self, and in that knowing, fear dissolves into total acceptance and love.

The Nature of This Journey: This is not a psychological, spiritual, or earth journey - it is a journey from the outer consciousness deep within to the inner core of being. There are many doorways inward: dreams, fantasies, daydreams, nudges, imagery, music, sun, moon, stars, and astrological wanderings. You did not come to this planet without ways inward. This doorway uses the symbols of the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot, but Bartholomew cautioned against addiction to any single method - this is simply one among many.

The Forgotten Dark: Mankind's great difficulty is being trained to forget the deep, wondrous knowledge of the dark while concentrating only on the light. Bartholomew offered a striking image: you are a crystal pointed at both ends - above your head points toward white light, your body contains all the splayed colors, and below your feet points into blackness. "This is the end you do not like to look at," he said. Yet you will never stand as the Magician until you totally understand the dark. Every Tarot card, however beautifully colored, has a dark side - and it is fear of this darkness that keeps you from full, brilliant, whole consciousness.

Roots and Branches: Religion has taught you to cut yourself in half and disregard the dark, but the dark "will not allow itself to be left alone." It is out of primordial dark wonder that you arose; from that darkness comes your nourishment and power. Bartholomew described humans as trees: leaves above catch the light, but roots go deeply down into the earth. You have been striving so hard to catch light in your upper branches that you have forgotten the roots that give you nourishment from the depths of being. Without claiming the dark, nightmares come, fears wash over you in the night - all that unclaimed darkness seeking recognition.

Working with the Cards: The method is simple: select any card that calls to you and place it before you. Set the mind aside - do not rely on what you have read about the cards. Simply look. Feel the colors, the sharpness, the warmth. Allow the card to "play upon you." Each card is a doorway into a different part of who you are now, who you have been, who you will be, who you were before taking form, and who you might be when you leave. There are gods and goddesses, men and women, children, animals, trees, mountains, water, sky - a totality, a wholeness.

The Guided Journey: The meditation leads through specific steps: walk to a cave opening, feel the earth under bare feet, enter and find the center - your point of divine power, safety, and security. Create a power object at your feet, pick it up in your right hand. Turn left to find an opening into a tunnel, move through with left hand feeling the wall, emerge into a landscape that changes each time. Walk until the selected Tarot figure approaches you. Note from which direction it comes. When it stands opposite you, exactly your size, look into its eyes - "it is through the eyes that the truth will come." Ask your question and listen.

Integration and Return: Step forward with your right foot as the figure's left foot displaces you - you enter deeply into each other's energy field. Feel what the card's power brings. Then shrink the figure to the size of a charm, place it in your left hand. Feel your power object grow warm and heavy in your right hand. Ask: "How can I use this power?" Join both hands at your heart center, express gratitude, then return through the tunnel to your cave. Ground the energy - coming in, going through, going out. Finally, sit and write everything that arose: advice, suggestions, ideas, fears, resistances. Done day after day with different cards, "you will know yourself, all parts of yourself. And in that knowing will come the release from fear... total acceptance... total love."