Quantum mechanics represents perhaps the strangest, most counterintuitive area of all the sciences. Apart from being a cool sounding word, “quantum” refers to the quantization of particle properties to a fixed handful of possible values. This is in contrast to the simultaneous characteristic that the exact location and momentum of particles cannot together be known with certainty, and that there is some probability of any particle existing anywhere in the universe. This speaks to the fact that not everything can be known, and that Chaos is everywhere; but also that there is a structure to that Chaos, and that, from it, anything is truly possible.
The remainder of this chapter, and the next one, will go into perhaps excessive detail about the theory tying the practice of tarot, and this deck in particular, with the Quantum realm. It is not necessary to read before using the deck for either cartomancy or cardplay, and for those seeking to begin practice right away they may go ahead and skip to Chapter 4. That said, it may enhance the user’s experience with the cards and make for a fun read in any case.
Where the reader may disagree with the assertions made, they may instead make their own, and indeed are encouraged to.
All the Universe we see, as well as much of it that we can’t, is made up of only a handful of particle types, combining and interacting to produce what we call reality. Almost all of them are in the smallest First Generation or are among the Gauge Bosons that mediate Force (Fig. 1).
Quarks interact with all the fundamental forces and are thus quite sociable. In fact, they are never found in Nature alone. Everything we can touch is made of Up and Down Quarks in some combination, forming Quark Groups such as Protons and Neutrons and the Mesons that they exchange to talk to each other. They also have color charge that they pass around to their Quark friends by way of Gluons, making them an altogether lively bunch.
Some Quark Groups are super positive, others neutral—the neutral ones need to be there to keep the excessive positivity of the others from driving them all away from each other. At the same time the Neutral Groups will quickly get bored and fall apart without the infectious energy of the Positive ones nearby.
The heavier Quarks come into existence under very high energy and vanish just as quickly, leaving only energy behind. The Stranges are strange indeed, they may yet be able to combine with the lighter Quarks to produce stable Strangelets, such that in spite of their weirdness they can have very healthy relationships with the “normal” Quarks (and then turn everything they touch Strange too. The entire Universe may one day become Strangified, I hope.)
Leptons come in two sub-categories, electrons and neutrinos.
Electrons respond to all Forces except the Strong. They are everywhere and love to hang out with those Quark Societies I mentioned. They like to even out the charge from the Positive Quark Groups, although they will happily jump to other Quark Societies to balance those out as well, inducing that flow we call Electricity or just bonding Societies together to make Super-Societies and States and Worlds that eventually compose everything we see.
Shy and insanely tiny neutrinos only respond to the rare and esoteric Weak Force and to Gravitation. They make up nothing that we can touch, and in fact roughly A Lot of them go through you every second. They may play a vital role in mediating the fabric of all the Cosmos that we don’t know. Don’t underestimate them. The heavier Leptons come into existence under very high energy and vanish just as quickly, leaving only energy behind. Notice a pattern here?
Bosons are (mostly) the particles that mediate the Forces. Unlike the Fermions described in the last two sections, they can occupy the same Energy State, letting them stack on top of each other—that’s how lasers are a thing!
Gluons mediate the Strong Force. They carry two Colors at once and interact both with Quarks and with each other, making them complicated little buggers. This means the more the Quarks are pushed apart, the stronger the Gluons pull them back together. They have no Mass but don’t let that fool you.
The Photon also has no mass, and no charge, either, even though they mediate electromagnetism.
The W (in both + and – forms) and Z would be much stronger, they would have you know, if their surprising heaviness didn’t cause them to evaporate before they could get very far.
The Higgs, contrary to what you may have heard, has no godlike powers, nor indeed does It “give particles mass” or any nonsense like that. Its Field does all that. It does nothing and usually doesn’t exist at all unless somebody tries really hard to make it show up, and then It leaves again after the tiniest fraction of a second. But boy is It a hoot for that fraction that It’s there. The Fool behaves in like manner much of the time and parallels between the two are inevitable.
Antiparticles are the exact, perfect counterparts of Particles: not the Evil versions, simply opposite. To the point that if they ever touch, the Particles and Antiparticles will explode into a shower of more Particles and Antiparticles (or just Energy). Opposites may attract but too-opposites will simply end each other, though perhaps in a very Creative way.
The Universe is not made of Particles: it is made of Fields. Particles are simply excited states of Fields each spanning the entire Universe: all electrons, for example, are part of a single “electron field” from one end of spacetime to the other. All the matter and energy, all the color and life in the universe that we can see, is created from just a handful of these universal fields, ever interacting with each other. You are the same fields as everyone you know and everything you see on to the most remote star. And all of them are ever in fluid, complex dance with one another producing Reality itself.
All interactions between particles are mediated by four fundamental Forces, which themselves have their own universal fields and particles that convey them. They are gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force. Each has its own unique properties, and interacts with other particles in different ways, but the highest energies, these forces are believed to become one (Fig. 2). The energies at which each force unites with the unified force parallel the relationships between their respective Suits. The resonances of Forces and Suits are described further in their respective sections.
The Electromagnetic (Swords) and Weak Nuclear (Batons) are different aspects of one force, and are paired as the two Long suits in the deck. They become a single force at very high energy levels, as is the relationship between mind and spirit. The Strong Force (Cups) merges in at far higher energies still, producing a physical synergy of Mind, Spirit, and Heart that is known to science as the GUT.
The merging of Gravitation (Coins) with the remaining forces, aka merging Gravity with the GUT into the TOE, has eluded the resolution of physicists, resonant here as the physical world represented by Coins has a certain but unknown relationship with the inner world encompassed by the remaining three.