The Deck’s Structure and Features

There are Five Aspects of a Card Feedback

• Clues to learning: types of lessons ensconced in the circumstance for the user or the other person(s) involved.
• A description of an attitude present.
• A call to action: offers a strategic behavior in which to engage.
• A point of view to adopt: suggests or implies an attitude that clarifies a situation; provides guidelines to shuffle assumptions or alter the user’s frame of reference.
• Possible outcomes: emotional or tangible consequences to an event or interaction whether the user addresses the situation, or if they do not.

The Deck’s Appearance and Construction

The deck is composed of 78 cards divided into subsets, each having a unifying color scheme and background image. The symbols, colors and groupings are presented in the Card Color Chart showing the interconnections. Corner symbols further associate specific cards to one another and underscore similar elements of meaning. Those associations have relevance within the MT system of concepts. An in-depth overview of each card’s meaning is presented in On Motivation: Getting Gotten on the Drives that Make us Human: available soon here at michaelcards.com

The Cards Indicated by Set, Group, and Color

The deck is divided into Exalted and Ordinal Arcana

(*Arcana is a plural of arcane = esoteric knowledge).

The Exalted Arcana of this deck are the first 8 cards 0 – 7

These 8 are the central Archetypes of this system. TAO, Server, Artisan, Warrior, Scholar, Sage, Priest, and King. When one of these appears, it suggests that you or other players are acting from the energy of this Role. All people are made of “God-stuff” or TAO and possess threads of each ray of light that emanates thereof. The Roles are the embodiment of these rays. Additionally, an Exalted Arcana card is both an actor in the drama or should be interpreted as the character you must emulate. Another way to consider these 8 is to see through the eyes of one of these players and understand the answer from their perspective. When you draw one of the Exalted Arcana, know that you are seeing some an archetype in play. Stand in the shoes of this Role and learn how it operates within you.

The Ordinal Arcana comprise the remaining 68 cards.

Composed of the remainder of the Overleaves but additional Michael Teaching concepts including Soul Ages. Cards from the Ordinal Arcana reflect lessons, feelings, challenges, and themes which make up life itself. When they appear, know that the attitude conveyed in the card offers a question, or method of analysis, or point of reflection, or instruction for action. This arcana signals the dynamic nature of of situations. For a graphical representation of the Michael Overleaves Chart, click here.

The Suits of this Deck

Of the 78 total cards which comprise this deck, the categories or “card suits” appear in 11 sets and are designated primarily by colors associated with various symbols tying groups together as a cross reference.

• Artisan Set is Blue
• Sage set is Green
• Warrior set is Red
• King set is Yellow
• Server set is Pink
• Priest set is Violet
• Scholar set is White Rainbow
• Process Stages or Soul Age cards are gray-green
• TAO cards are yellow on white
• Axis cards: Expression = Diamonds, Action = Clubs, Inspiration = Hearts, and Assimilation = Spades.
• Concept cards which are green-brown

Upright or Positive Poles or Illuminated Side

The Positive Poles or Illuminated side implies that you are acting from a loving, essence-aware, and respect driven state of being. The light side imbues you with the desire to serve others and your essence. This motivation does not imply that you act in some holier than thou, pious, or Pollyanna way, either. Working from Essence does not guarantee that you will be victorious or virtuous in your endeavors. Indeed, all that is assured from this ground of being is a state of honest self-communication and authentic awareness from genuine motives and emotional reactions. These are the conditions within which Essence evolution occurs. It is Essence evolution towards Unconditional Respect and Love that the Michael Teaching is encouraging us to discover and experience for ourselves. But positive is only one polarity in the duality of the Universe. Actuality, however, the neutral state is where TAO resides.

Reversed or Negative Pole or Shadow Side

When in the Negative Poles or Shadow side the Ego is activated and is motivated to act from a fear-based motivation. However, make the distinction that certain types of fear concerning concrete matters help to protect us from immediate danger. When reading the Shadow side of the card, know that you are in a defended position and probably unaware of the subconscious distress that is driving your mood or behavior. Fear, in itself, is not a bad or evil. But it can motive us to do harsh things to ourselves and others.Fear is an a potent motivator for learning. It tends to be very demanding and produces much stress and strain. Fear often initiates a contraction a person retreats into the depths of his/her Ego reactive patterns. The fear we refer to are those that generate distortions in the mind and cause a disproportional sense of foreboding or longing or helplessness. A person becomes consumed by the emotions of terror, hate, or shame, and the Chief Ego Features get engaged in defense.

Powerfully challenging, the Shadow or Ego aspect may sound completely rational! But at that moment, the exact thing you resist may be the very thing to be confronted. Shadow strategies are driven by dread or a fear of losing face. With some careful analysis, a pattern will emerge revealing Ego’s need to defend whatever it relates to as “right”. Remember, every battery would be useless without a negative pole. Contraction, retreat, and even fear is necessary and useful for survival. Yet this condition is constricted and its viewpoint inherently narrow and as such will hamper your ability to sense inner direction. In the negative poles, reactions are likely to be knee-jerk, potentially counterproductive, and tending to be governed by external circumstance. According to Michael, fear is a major evolutionary force. It is to be recognized, minimized, healed and overcome with conscious awareness and “seeing the big picture”. It is one motivation to encourage us to become a creator and create more options not fewer. To make Shadow, fear, or Ego an enemy; is itself a trick of Ego to stay alive. The term Ego is used in place of the idea of False Personality as noted by Michael in the original books.

Checking for overall reading “polarity”

An additional way to gauge the tone or your reading is to notice the prominent polarity in your layout. If a majority of the cards are in the Illuminated or upright positions, then you may assume the positive poles are active signaling expansion, addition, a move beyond, an opening of ranks, and use new alternatives or options. If your cards are all in the shadow or downward position, then you may assume the negative poles are in play resulting in a general state of contraction, subtraction, move back, close ranks, or use familiar options and know alternatives. When the cards are chosen in combination for both Light and Shadow, note how many cards appear in each polarity: 50%-50%, 30%-70%, 80%-20%, etc. This will yield a proportion of how much or how fast to proceed in the overall direction.

Some Notes about Terminology, Language, and Choice of Perspective

The English language has been chosen as the root language of this cosmology. Though other Earthly languages like: Sanskrit, Latin, Arabic, German and Chinese are in many ways more descriptive, English is becoming the unifying language of humanity, so called lingua franca. Also, the adaptability of this language and the acquisition of new words makes it ever more functional to elaborate the human experience. The Macrocosmic presence of Overleaf energies are inherent in biological, chemical, astronomical, and psychical nature of both temporal and spiritual spheres.