Have you ever considered turning to an “ordinary” deck of playing cards to navigate your life?

If not, maybe you should. The ordinary deck of playing cards can be read as the “Ancient Book of Life.”

These cards predate the Bible and no one knows exactly from where they’ve come. They are mathematically precise to our universe and astoundingly accurate, and not unlike many ancient secrets of life, they’ve been hidden in plain sight for all these years.

Still not sure?

Well, consider this: there are 52 cards in the deck, just as there are 52 weeks in the year. If you add all the values of the cards together where kings are worth 13, queens 12, jacks 11 and aces one and then you multiple this sum by the four suits; the result is 364. There are, of course, 365 ¼ days each year.

  The joker is the 53rd card, the anomaly that makes up the remainder. He can impersonate anyone at any time. The joker is worth one and a quarter, or himself plus one each of all the four suits. He balances the matrix similar to what occurs in a leap year.

The main difference between playing cards and the tarot deck is that playing cards are based on mathematics. The tarot cards are strictly a divination tool. However, playing cards are more akin to numerology, or Kabbalah.

Based purely on mathematics, we each have 13 cards in our life path. It’s where we get the common expression to “play the cards we’re dealt.” Who knew this was a literal expression?

We cannot change our cards, but we can choose how to play them. In our lives we can play the “victim card,” or we can play the “trump card.” What we do with our cards is truly up to us.

We have 13 cards to indicate our entire “Life Path”: a “birth card” plus 12 others. Then, for each year of our lives, we have 12 new cards dealt to us by mathematical formula. So, every year we have new cards to play. It’s why we might ask, “what’s the deal?” And, of course, why we don’t want to “get lost in the shuffle.”

The cards have been essential in guiding the trajectory of my own life.

A few years ago I went through a divorce. On the day of our son’s second birthday, my now ex-wife unexpectedly served me divorce papers.

I decided I needed to go out.

I went to a loft party and ran into an old friend from Burning Man.

The first thing he asked me was, “What’s your birthday?”

“Umm, it’s August 30th. Why?”

“Oh,” he says, “that means your birth card is the nine of hearts. I’m guessing that means you’ve gone through a series of tragic endings of the heart in your life. The life path of the nine of hearts includes a lot of heart break as you learn to let go of the people you love…”

Wow!

After that, I started studying the meaning of the cards.

And knowing my cards gave me the direction in life I needed to navigate my divorce and find my new career as a life priest.

  I had always been interested in the priesthood. Knowing my birth card is the nine of hearts gave me a real clarity. You see, the highest vibration of the nine of hearts is to give love unconditionally, without strings attached, no matter what.

My “ruling card” is the seven of clubs, the card of spiritual knowledge. The “ruling card” is the way that we express our “birth card.” So, the way that I express unconditional love is through spiritual knowledge.

In other words, just from my “birth card” and my “ruling card,” I realized that I am here to give love to people unconditionally in the form of spiritual knowledge. And it hit me: that sounds like the work of a priest.

So, knowing my cards gave me my life navigation: I am a priest in the world with no religion, offering love to all in the form of spiritual knowledge.

I’ve certainly been on my own journey to find my way in life. My family is still not quite sure what I do. “You do what with cards again?”

I used to work as a consultant on Wall Street, after leaving the Jesuit Seminary and graduating from Harvard having studied philosophy. I was never satisfied with the corporate world anyway. And so now, I’m making a living doing the work of gypsies, helping people to find the true direction of their lives from a deck of playing cards, which are not actually playing cards; at least not in the way we think of them. They are not to play poker, but to play the game of our life.

For example, in our cards, among other things, we can see:

• >>The primary light we are here to shine
• >>The keys to our financial abundance
• >>The patterns in our relationships, i.e., why they fail
• >>Our shadow side, the part of us that can sabotage our success
• >>Our biggest challenge that we must face
• >>Our lifetime reward for playing our cards right

The real power of the cards is to liberate us to play the game of our lives. We are each born with a specific game to play, and the cards are the ancient tool kit to tell us which game to play to have the best, most satisfying and meaningful life.

And there you have it; may you play the best game of your life.

*If you want to find out your “birth card,” you can go to my website. There is a free widget on the right side navigation bar. Put in your birth date, and you will learn your “birth card.”*

Alexander Dunlop is a Life Priest. From an ordinary deck of playing cards, he can show you your true purpose, your gifts, your challenges, your keys to financial abundance, your greatest lesson to learn, your relationship patterns, your shadow side, your lifetime reward and much more.

Alexander is the founder of the Center for Spiritual Nutrition. He created this Center to offer real nourishment for the life journey we are all on. He has worked as an Evangelical Protestant minister and been trained as a Roman Catholic priest. He is initiated as a swami and is practicing shamanic healing in the Lakota tradition. He is a Harvard graduate and former Wall Street Consultant.

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Editor: Thaddeus Haas