CHENNAI: It’s a bright mid-week afternoon and I am seated at Pankhuri Agarwal’s plush home on Harrington Road. As I wait for her, two intricately designed boxes — one blue and one green — catch my attention. The blue box, ‘Wisdoms From The Epics of Hind’, encases 50 oracle cards themed around 25 Devas and Devis, each from Indian mythology.
The green one, ‘Swagatam’, is a set of 92 tarot cards, based on Indian elements. Both of these are conceptualised and written by psychologist, hypnotherapist, healer, and divination expert, Pankhuri. Needless to say, I am eager to know what the day has in store for me. But before we delve into that, and I try my hands at reading the cards, Pankhuri explains the difference between the decks and what they have to offer. “A tarot deck has a set number of cards.
The most common and the most popular one has 78 cards split into two parts — the first part is called Major Arcana; it contains 22 cards. The next part is called Minor Arcana, and it contains 56 cards. But the oracle does not have any structure like that, it can contain any number of cards. The numbers have personal significance to the creator,” explains Pankhuri as she unboxes the cards.
Soon I learn that numerology is an intrinsic part of our lives and therapy, and everything from kili josiyam to tarot card reading comes under the umbrella called divination. “If you use it correctly, you can create a possibility for your future,” she adds.
‘Wisdom From The Epics of Hind’ is her first published work which is being received well worldwide. Her second work is the tarot deck, ‘Swagatam’, which recently went on stands in the US. This makes her the only Indian creator with multiple decks in the market. Her third work ‘I’m Perfect’ is expected to be released late this year.
Over to oracle
Pankhuri entered the world of tarot reading 18 years ago when she saw someone doing tarot reading. It got her interested and she went on to learn all by herself. It soon became a game of tarot at family gatherings.
“All of this was just fun and games till age 23. When I trained to become a hypnotherapist, I started applying the principles of hypnotherapy to this game of tarot that I used to play, and I realised it’s not a game anymore. It was making a lot of sense and giving me accurate insights,” she shares, adding that she took the path of trial and error and learned the field, which she finally retired from in June 2022.
Now with the decks, she is entering a new dimension. Originally, when she pitched ‘Epics of Hind’, Pankhuri wanted to create a deck with 25 powerful female characters from Indian mythology and named it ‘Devi’.
A second set titled ‘Deva’ was to follow. “They (US Games Systems) loved it but said 25 was too low and asked me to increase it.
So I merged the two sets and named them ‘Wisdoms From The Epics of Hind’. They are not quintessential Devis and Devas. It also has rakshasas,” she says, adding that the characters for the cards were designed by Rahul Das. Oracle cards are easier to comprehend and gentler in guidance, and the guidebook she provides with both her decks’ help.
Pankhuri hands me the oracle deck, and asks me to thank it, think of a question, shuffle it and pick either one or three cards after spreading them upside down. I draw three and get Satyavati’s Shrewdness, Arjuna’s Aim, and Kubera’s wealth.
It makes me feel positive already. If you know these mythological stories, you can interpret them in any way you like. After I finish reading mine, Pankhuri says, “If you want a deeper insight, and you want to be sure of what it is, you just read the guide. There’s a little story, see the questions that you must ask yourself, then you have these actions that you can take and then you have the next section, which is a message from the gods for you.” This makes me ponder.
While I don’t relate to what Satyavati’s Shrewdness offers, the questions, course of action and message from the other two cards make me feel a lot better than I already was. So why did she choose Indian mythology and Indian elements for her decks? “It came as an idea. In divination, we call it channelling. When you suddenly start working on something, and it magically just flows, effortlessly.
The idea just flashed into my head. I think the first card I wrote was the story of Durga turning into Kali on the Battlefield, and it’s one of my favourite stories. There’s a lot to learn from it. When I started writing, I felt it was an oracle card and that’s how it began. I chose 50 stories I like,” she shares.
Tracing through tarot
While with the Oracle cards, Pankhuri had a free hand, there was an added responsibility when it came to tarot cards.“In the 18th century, a game in Europe was called ‘tarochi’. It was a game of 78 cards with four suits — Pentacles, Swords, Wands and Cups. Each suit has 14 cards, and there are 22 major arcana cards. Soon people started using it for divination.
So when I wrote ‘Swagatam’, I found the 78 cards to be incomplete. Because in eastern philosophy we have five elements, not four. Four suits are four elements: cups is water, wands is fire, swords is air and pentacles is earth. But, there was no Akasha. So I created the fifth element. This deck has 92 cards,” she says. Pushing the boundaries was challenging because there had to be a point where people relate to the cards.
“So I stuck to the common symbols and created the fifth suit, Akasha/ ether, and called it Smoke. I called it so because in other cultures they can change Akasha to wood or metal or whatever else that would complete their circuit as per eastern philosophy."
"The other thing I did was, the major arcana cards start with the number zero, which is the fool, and they go through the Magician, High Priestess, The Empress and so on. I stuck to that system but I related that to Indian philosophy. The fool became aatma. Magician became Maya, The High Priestess became the chittha, the mind and heart, The Empress became aishwarya, Emperor became aham (ego),” she explains. Apart from grouping the cards as suits, she has also grouped them numberwise.
Pankhuri calls this deck a “crash course on India”. All the aces are mudras, twos are jewels of India, threes are tastes (Madura rasa, amla rasa), fours are natural dyes (Indigo, saffron), f ives are weapons (Sudarshan chakra, vajra, urumi, bagnak), sixes are festivals, sevens are geographical elements mountains forests, eights are trees, nines are flowers, tens are seasons, Pages are dances, Knights are musical instruments, Queens are animals, and Kings are layers of existence.
This deck called for intensive research, especially as it had to represent the whole country. So for each suit, Pankhuri made sure to include elements from different parts of India. “I chose the numbers and elements based on my discernment, channelling and design elements. For Aces, I wanted hands, so mudras became natural. The energy of the numbers also played a role.
For example, two is the number of romance and togetherness. So I chose jewellery, which is shringar and beauty,” she says. Bringing her vision into designs for Swagatam was Aishwarya R. In due course, we play a game of tarot, where Pankhuri picks a card for me and I for her. While I get three of smoke, indicating Tiktha/bitter, Pankhuri’s is a Page of Pentacles, Kaksar dance. Reading my card, Pankhuri asks me to doubt myself less, which when not reined in can make me bitter.
Meanwhile, I make my first proper prediction. The image on her card depicts a group of women dancing, giving me an intuition of a community, and the locked hands indicative of leading someone along. “You are right,” she says. “I am taking your readers on a journey with me.
My idea is to educate, lead people into light, healing, and establish this industry in India,” concludes Pankhuri emphasising that tarot or oracle cards can be a guiding light and not write your future itself. ‘Swagatam’, released this month in the US, will soon be available in India. ‘Wisdom From The Epics of Hind’ is available on e-commerce websites.