Well, here it is, 11:44 p.m. I am NEVER up this late. Come on! I’m a nine o’clocker for sure! But this deck thing has me….. in an unusual state.

In case you haven’t heard, the new Oracle deck from my dad, CJ Freeman, (called “The Book of Knowing”) is due to be launched soon. It was going to be a week ago, then before that, a couple of weeks. Truth is, this thing is 35 years over due.

Putting this deck together has catapulted me on a personal journey I was not expecting. Sure, I knew it would be work, but the process of getting this deck out of the shadows has not only close to swallowed me whole, but demanded a tremendous amount of personal distilment and rigor. It is really a wonder I can pull this off, although I’m crossing my fingers since all is still underway.

But this whole “thing” is really more than all this. It is also the fulfillment a dream that almost didn’t make it. That really DIDN’T make it, at least in my Father’s life time. Although my dad did see some success with the publication of the images of The Playing Card Oracles, this work here – these original oils for “The Book of Knowing”- were truly his masterpiece.

He asked me in confidence shortly before his passing in 2010, “Should I just get rid of the paintings?” We all knew which paintings “the” paintings referred to.  Believe it or not, I actually considered my response. After all, my dad had been lugging these 54 large paintings around for 35 years, wondering WHY. As in why had he felt so compelled to put all the energy, all the life, all the originality and BRILLIANCE into this work simply to watch it ROT in storage? An entire KINGDOM (four kingdoms actually: Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs, and Spades!) poised for duty in the garage. Great!!!

Quite possibly all of the intensity I am experiencing around getting these images published is really just a small taste of the intensity my dad originally put into creating them. And all of this is likewise parallel with the force contained within this deck, and what the images will provide for those who use it. Buyer beware!! This deck is evocative. It is a shovel that will dig at the depths of you.

My father in his younger years was a comet of energy: full of turmoil, vibrancy, and a rebellious spirit that kept him constantly questioning things other people took for granted. He was somehow calibrated to a very unusual “frequency” that kept those around him scratching their heads. His private work on oracle images for the playing cards and the stories he wrote for them were perhaps his greatest expression for what he could not communicate in regular language.  He was obsessed with the world that was being created through him. Actually, it wasn’t a singular world, but multiple worlds existing in layers side-by-side and how to travel between them.  And the template for this meditation that lasted a life time was the very unsuspecting pack of regular playing cards.

For my dad, the longer he looked at regular dumb old cards, the more he saw, and the more he saw, the more fascinated he became. From his way of looking at it, the 52-cards represented the aforementioned worlds consisting of layers of density along with complex yet graceful hierarchy, all set within a perfect model of time and space. Not only that (!) but the whole thing had MOBILITY, meaning that it could all be shuffled, re-arranged to become the ultimate story – or reality – telling machine. And he gave this vision to me, and together now he and I afford this same vision to thousands of others who read our book (The Playing Card Oracles) and/or come in contact with his cards.

And now I am getting a new vision: a world with regular old playing cards spread out all over it. Imagine that. And somehow, there is a bit of a glow around all these cards, a glow that is somehow brighter than before my dad and his visions of worlds in layers. And now I see thousands of people picking up those cards, and quite possibly catching a glimpse of something extraordinary.

For more info on this deck, go to www.thebookofknowing.com.  Look for ordering information soon and please share with anyone you feel would be interested. Thank you.