remembered with a little effort) and the unconscious mind is the vast remainder of the iceberg-well underneath the surface. The Id is found in this part of the mind ( Heffner, online, accessed 2010). The size of the unconscious mind is at least two or three times the size of the conscious mind therefore the amount of unconscious information held within it must be far more than in the conscious.
It may be that somewhere in the unconscious mind symbols on Tarot cards trigger a deep-seated experience of an emotion or feeling which contributes to a Tarot reading. Simply by seeing the cards and touching them as they are shuffled, cut and then dealt into a spread the reader may prompt the minds’ unconscious and release some old, deeply submerged information.
Is this facilitated by sensory inputs of sight, or touch? The use of information channels may be seen in the Chinese diagnostic and treatment tool, acupuncture.
Acupuncture was invented in China and was widely dismissed by Western medicine, which have limited mechanical models to describe the workings of the body. Language used in acupuncture is rooted in Daoist philosophy. It works by change, growth, balance of the yin and yang values of the Qi and harmony and has a holistic approach to health. Acupuncture uses meridians-pathways which have no physiological equivalent. Although acupuncture had been used in Chinese culture for centuries, it was 1926 before it was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. It had success in animal and human treatment ( Gargill, Thorpe-Vargas, online, accessed 2010). Now, the World Health Organisation state that’…sheer weight of evidence demands acupuncture must be taken seriously as a clinical procedure of considerable value‘(WHO,1979).