"The Illuminated Road" is an adaptation of the 78 images/concepts of the tarot's divinatory cards on three fixed boards, forming, therefore, in a new dynamic ludic, a new game: a board game, to be played in group and competitively, and no longer an individual divinatory game. During its course, the participants learn the hero's archetypal journey, facing different situations and questions representing the existing difficulties of their lives. The pack of 78 cards generically denominated by "Tarot" is a self-awareness method that allows one to discover and locate attitudes and postures that condition our behavior, identifying, in it's combinations, the existing reoccurring situations that block our development. The 78 images/concepts work as self’s or identifies, that organize themselves in determined symbolic patterns corresponding to the situations in which we find ourselves. Thus, the tarot reflects the soul: like a reflection of the interior life that takes form and that presents how our many "selfs" are structured in the unconscious.

In the case of the Illuminated Road, although a combination between al the archetypes not being possible, there is also a blatent correspondence between the participant’s lives and its representation in the game. In fact, the Illuminated Road player can become an expert card-reader in no time, as long as he/she knows the meaning of the common symbolism between the cards and the boards. Because of this, besides the adapting of a self - awareness traditional method, this game is also an excellent way to learn the archetypes, without reading books or manuals.

It is common to subdivide the tarot's 78 cards in two big distinct groups: the Major Archanes (22 allegoric cards) and the Minor Archanes (56 suits).
 
 

The 22 Major Archanes: the Sorcerer, the Female Pope, the Empress, the Emperor, the Pope, the Enchanted, the Litter, Justice, the Hermit, the Wheel of Fortune, the Hangman, Death, Temperance, The Devil, the Tower, the Star, the Moon, the Sun, Judgement Day, the Crazy Man, and the World.

  

In the card-reading manual, it is affirmed that the Minor Archanes emphasize the "objective" life, mode of happiness such as: trips, illness, children, money -- while the Major Archanes would be more psychological or "subjective", representing in its allegories, states of our interior life or "levels of conscience". Esoteric authors, with more initial rather than divinatory worries, like G.O. Mebes, emphasize that "only after studying and understanding the 22 Major Archanes, can the disciple go on to the study of the Minor Archanes, because they are more profound and abstract".

In a general sense, we can say that the two groups in which the tarot is subdivided emphasize different levels of conscience, the Major ones bordering on psychic biography and the Minor ones specifying details and more profound relations, as in previous lives and the general configuration of the destiny of the person on the spot.

Thus the Major Archanes work like masks or sub-personalities before frustrations and complexes, that we suffer throughout life. They are structuring symbols of our biographic and social experience, which operate on the Interpersonal Relations level. These archetypes form the first board of the Illuminated Road Game, in which the players begin a move by searching for self-awareness: The Crossing.
 

The 16 figured cards represent the lnterpersonal Relations, that is: they are used in the study of a relationship between two or more people, in the four levels of activities (material, mental, emotional, and spiritual ) principally in the field of projection and transference of roles: "What does so and so think of me?" or "What are my feelings toward so and so?" or even "Why don't so and so and I get along? This group of 16 symbols and a board formed by the first four Major Archanes, constitutes the second stage of the Illuminated Road game that boarders on the relationships between the participating couples, being, therefore, called the Game of the Twin Souls.
 

King of Clubs	Lady of Clubs	Knight of Clubs	Page of Clubs
King of Hearts	Lady of Hearts	Knight of Hearts	Page of Hearts
King of Spades	Lady of Spades	Knight of Spades	Paje of Spades
King of Diamonds	Lady of Diamonds	Knight of Diamonds	Paje of Diamonds

The 40 enumerated cards represent the Interpersonal relationships, those that concern comprehension that one has of the universe and its development in the 4 activity's stages. The number 40 represents the totality of existence and the human experience. The periods measured by this number are frequent in the Christian-Judaic tradition: the 40 days of Noah’s flood, the 40 days during which the Israelis walked around the desert, the 40 days that Moses spent in the Sinai, the 40 days of Jesus Christ's fast, among others. All these experiences have the same meaning: a lime for reflection about totality of the existence, the conscience exiled above and beyond manifestation.
 
 

This third and last stage refers to Jacob's Ladder board, final phase of our archetypal journey through the unconscious. We can, therefore, say that the Illuminated Road,  shows a complete cartography of the human psyche, subdividing the tarot cards in three distinct groups, representing the three levels of the unconscious in three different games.
 

Maybe it is important to emphasize that the three stages of the Illuminated Road are independent and can be played separately. However, it was elaborated to be used in always that, with the excessive use of the boards, the discussion about each person deepens and intensifies. Naturally, the veracity of the answer will depend on the intimacy existing between the participants. If there are strong ties between players, the Illuminated Road will become a powerful therapeutical game of self-awareness and of the study of interpersonal relationships.