Working with the Shadow through Shustah
By Brenda Cutrell, Ph.D.

Shustah cards are a tool for intuitive work. One can use them for oneself or in service to others. Employed in the way of the Tarot deck of cards, or like many other newly developed decks, Shustah cards carry a clean, impersonal energy very unlike the emotional, mental impact of the ancient Tarot.

I learned how to use these cards when taking an Intuitive Development class at the Sancta Sophia Seminary, in Tahlequah, OK. It has been many years since that class, and these cards have remained with me throughout. I haven’t always used them. Things happen in cycles.

A short time ago I hauled them out of the drawer and a thought popped into my head: “these could be used to gain insight into the Shadow….”

Let me introduce the Shadow. It is not that heroic daring-do avenger of dark city streets made popular in the 1940s (although I’ll bet anything you like, The Shadow is a popular interpretation of the concept I am about to describe).

Shadow is anything in oneself that is not in the light, or en-lightened. It is what one cannot admit one carries because one has judged it to be “bad” or “unacceptable” or “wrong.” One has a distorted concept about what one holds in one’s Shadow, and one is anxious to keep it there, in the “dark.”

Many wonderful as well as difficult things are hidden in one’s Shadow. In psychology it was Jung who coined this concept, and psychologists have done a great deal of excellent healing work with it since then.

Shadow is not only personal; it is present in any group as well, of course (even at a planetary scale). The Shadow roles are easier to spot when working with a group because it is more out there in the open to be observed. Yes, that is a dichotomy. But spiritual work is always this way when one focuses at the level where the predicament lies.

When people take up the work of looking at their Shadow, they have to be very courageous. They are looking into a realm terrifying to them. Very few can truly admit what terrifies them about themselves, or even recognize that terror as they feel it. They are too well fortified against that emotional barrage. They have judged too harshly of themselves for too long. They have too long projected it out into the world. Stepping out of that protective circle is like baring yourself fully in public view, even when there is no real public involved. You are admitting to your harshest critic (yourself) what is truly there; or what you think is truly there.

In working to gain more knowledge of the Shadow through Shustah cards, it is very difficult to do so for oneself. The best way to use these cards as doorways for an insight into some part of Shadow is to have somebody else work the cards for you. Or conversely, you use these cards to assist somebody else in looking at some area of their Shadow so that they can take an important step forward on their spiritual path. It is essential to invoke the power of the soul.

What I have observed in working in this way is that the cards will act at whatever level an inquirer wishes to be. That is to say, because Shadow exists at all levels of consciousness, and in varying degrees of density and age, if an inquirer is light-hearted and wants a glimpse into something in him or herself that would help clarify a current situation, then this is what emerges out of the use of the cards. The focus, of course, of wishing to see into the Shadow, will perhaps address an unperceived barrier to understanding the situation, or something about the self that is blocking or complicating things.

But if the inquirer wishes to go deeper, then the cards will oblige (or rather, the person’s own inner self will oblige). The reader is given permission to voice that which perhaps has not been voiced for a long time.

The very best part of this process is that the reader is entirely impersonal in the interpretation (and it is an interpretation) because he or she has not judged. It is impossible to have a judging attitude when working as a soul. The reader has no personal investment in what that aspect of the Shadow is about. The inquirer has a sudden deep insight into a facet of the personality that is completely different than his or her own intensely personal condemnation.

Many doorways can be opened in this way to aspects of oneself that were never experienced. Truth can emerge, and one can actually move beyond a barrier that may have been present for a long, long time.

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