The Empyrean Project
Welcome to Empyrean
The Empyrean Deck is designed for Neurodivergent people seeking something more.
It is a game, and divination system, and the basis of life philosophy that realizes that all aspects of the world can be experienced and understood as moments in a sacred Hero's Journey toward meaning and wholeness. The deck is a tool to unlock your own innate insights into your life and the cosmos. It builds on and empowers your unique capacity for seeing connections and patterns. ​Using the deck can help you clarify your needs, limitations, goals, and resources for creating a form of life in which your unique mind can be fully alive.
Some time ago, an acquaintance suggested that I design and teach a course on How to be a Good Human. Without entirely intending to, this is essentially what I have done in developing the Empyrean Deck.
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Just as the physical body has certain needs that can be identified, catalogued, and organized, the mind or soul has certain experiential requirements in order to be healthy and sane. Anybody could come up with a simple list, and most people would come up with lists that were basically similar. The cards represent (in principle!) a list that is complete and well-ordered. The structure of the deck displays not only what we need, but how these needs overlap and interact, and also says something about how we can meet these needs most easily. The cards in the last House, the House of Self, focus on the dangers and risks inherent in being human, on those aspects of human nature which, though necessary for human fulfillment, are highly unstable and tend toward unbalance. Through learning the system as a whole, you get a fairly complete picture of the structure of the human psyche. Through actually using the cards in Tarot-style oracle readings, you get insight into what you need to focus on at a specific moment in your life-journey.
The cards are meant to be used with other people- that is the reason why they are designed for doing readings, and also have a game-play dimension, rather than simply being one of those creativity or affirmation decks that you do by yourself for a quick pick-me-up. Similarly, if you look at the cards, you’ll notice that many if not most of them really describe different modes of relations: friendship, intimacy, reciprocal exchange, mentoring, hospitality, etc.
All things considered, the Empyrean Deck is meant to provide a framework for investigating not only humans as individuals (which is understood to be the exceptional or limiting case) but human nature as a fundamentally social, embodied, spiritual project. Being human is not an essence or identity. It’s a project. The Deck provides not just a description of that project, but a way to actually do it.