TAO

The record

The Tao Oracle is a 64-card oracle deck based on the Chinese I Ching system. It is published by St. Martin's Press as a deck and book combination set. The cards are 3 1/2" x 5 1/4", on study laminated cardstock. (The thickness of the cards gives them durability, but makes them slightly hard to shuffle.) The cards are illustrated with beautiful paintings by Ma Deva Padma, whose wonderful artwork is also seen in her Osho Zen Tarot. The backs feature a red background superimposed with a pattern of 48 I Ching hexagrams, and overlaid by a complex symbolic representation of the interaction of the Yin and Yang energies with the eight I Ching trigrams and the eight directions of the compass. The backs are not reversible, but that's not really relevant for use of this deck for I Ching readings. Each of the card's front surfaces features a colorful painting, several keywords, the traditional Chinese depiction of the hexagram using six broken and/or unbroken lines, and two more symbolic representations of Padma’s own devising. One of these is a combination of two graphic symbols (with one representing each of the eight trigrams); the other is a variation of the Taijitu (the Yin/Yang diagram)

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