# Divination > Symbolic objects such as cards can act as triggers for insight and awareness in the mind with the Atlantean origin story presented as Bashar account rather than verified history - Canonical: https://sassani.app/topic/divination # Divination *An open spread of unmarked symbolic cards reflects a viewer considering them* In this account, divination describes a way symbolic objects can act as triggers: occasions for insight and awareness to open in the mind. The source places the precursor of playing cards in an Atlantean setting and compares it with tarot, while treating the historical claim as part of Bashar's account rather than independently established history. > — Historical Origins Of The Deck Of Playing Cards (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/historical-origins-of-the-deck-of-playing-cards) ## Symbols as triggers for awareness The teaching's operative distinction is between the object and what it prompts. The earlier deck is described as a divinatory form that could trigger insight; over time it was simplified and symbolized into playing cards. Its continuing association with chance and destiny is part of the same account. > — Historical Origins Of The Deck Of Playing Cards (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/historical-origins-of-the-deck-of-playing-cards) ## Practical implications Within this framing, a learner can approach a symbolic practice as an occasion to notice what insight or awareness it brings forward, rather than treating the object itself as the teaching. That is an editorial application of the source's description of the cards as triggers. > — Historical Origins Of The Deck Of Playing Cards (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/historical-origins-of-the-deck-of-playing-cards) ## Representative passage This actually does go back to Atlantean times and was more akin to what you now understand to be, the tarot deck or something similar to that idea of divination back then. It was that which was used as triggers to allow insights to come into the mind, awarenesses to open up, and became simply simplified and symbolized down through the ages into its present form of what you call playing cards, but you still have attached to that idea the concept of what you would call chance and destiny, so on and so forth.— Bashar, ## Related - [Symbolic Meaning](https://sassani.app/topic/symbolic-meaning) - [Ancient Civilizations](https://sassani.app/topic/ancient-civilizations) - [Synchronicity](https://sassani.app/topic/synchronicity) Markdown twin of https://sassani.app/topic/divination. The HTML page is the source of truth.