PRELUDE

As a person, who has lived most of his early life in West Bengal (India), I have always embraced worshipping different forms of Shakti. Events like Durga Puja, Kali Puja, Saraswati Puja, and Lakshmi Puja are hugely popular in West Bengal and since my childhood I have celebrated these events. Celebrating Shivratri is something I sometimes did along with my mother during my childhood. Thanks to my mother, I have developed an interest in religious and spiritual aspects of life.

In states like West Bengal and Assam, Shakti-sadhana and occult practices are performed immensely. Many great sadhaks of Shakti have lived here. If you hear about how they encountered Ma Kali or Shiv with their sadhana and devotion, you will get goosebumps. Probabaly you have heard of Sri Ramkrishna or Bamakhyapa, Ramprasad or Kamalakanta. They are just a few well-known devotees of Adya Shakti. On the other hand, Sadhguru is one of the wellknown Shiv Sadhak in recent times. The interesting thing about such sadhaks are that, a Kali sadhak will also be a devotee of lord Shiv and vice versa. It indicates the fact that Shiv and Shakti cannot be separated.

I would also like to add that the Aghori sadhus (Abodh) are the oldest worshippers of lord Shiv, in form of Gorakhnath. The early worshippers of Kali were actually the decoits in Bengal. The decoits would worship Kali before performing a robbery and this is one reason, Kali worshipping was considered taboo in the civilized Bengali community for ages. In West Bengal, celebrating Janmashtami or Ganesh puja was not a major trend until early 2010s. I won’t lie but I was hardly a fan of Sri Krishna until I reached my late teenage years. But, the seed of Hindutwa was long sown inside me due to family values, traditional Bengali culture and different books I read.

When I started with the project of Kali Oracle cards, I originally kept 20 forms of only Kali. Though it sounds exciting, I made two big mistakes.

1. I kept a few forms of Kali that should not be kept at home. Like Shmashaan Kali, Dhumabati etc. It is not that these forms are negative, it is just that for a normal human, it is hard to absorb the energies some of these highly-occult forms bring. Though, I did keep a disclaimer on this aspect on the pack of the deck. In case anyone who bought that previous deck and is facing issues, I would recommend them to simply donate the cards to any Shiv temple and ask for forgiveness from Ma Kali that you have given the cards away as you could not tolerate her power. After this, things will be fine.
2. The second error was that, I did not mention Shiv with that deck and did not keep any Shiv card. Actually, Shiv and Kali are inseparable, whenever they are separated, destruction happens. [A good example of this is the ‘Yogini Oracle’ deck that has 64 Yoginis and 1 Bhairav card.]

And then, I was facing some weird things for a few days. Basically my days were not going well, luck was not in my favour. You may call it coincidence or my own sub-consciousness, I felt that the cards that I kept in my room, were responsible for that. So, I decided to discontinue the previous version of the Kali cards. Instead, I created this current version of 24 cards where I kept Shiv and omitted a few Kali cards (those which have a lot of occult elements). Since then, I haven’t faced any issues and also, the ShivKali deck has received a good response from the tarot lovers.

In the current deck of ShivKali oracle cards (the deck you have received), there are 12 forms of Shiv and 12 forms of Kali. In each card, I have kept keywords related to the deity. These keywords are not random; rather, I have kept the keywords that match with the personality and characteristics of the particular form. Initially, I had no intention to write any guidebook for the cards but multiple clients have asked me for explanation of the cards. So, this guidebook is dedicated to those curious people who wish to remain under the lotus feet of our cosmic guardians Shiv and Kali.

Before I discuss the meanings of the cards, I want to clarify that I am not a sadhak, neither a tarot reader, nor a scholarly person who has read a lot of scriptures. I am simply someone who is interested in Hinduism and our deities; and I like to research about these aspects. All my explanations are based on my research. For some cards, there aren’t even any descriptive explanations because I could not find any. The real gyan regarding Kali and Shiv belongs to only a true sadhak and a true sadhak maintains secrecy. Even if I came to know about a lot of secrets regarding spiritual aspects, I would not have published those. If you want to learn about Kali or Shiv, I would recommend you to get deeksha or even talk with sadhaks who have experienced Shiv and Kali.