The Path to AGAT: Between Spirituality and Technology

My name is Shachar Shapira, and my connection to mysticism and spirituality did not begin with tarot cards. In fact, it began long before I had words for what was happening around me.

The Home I Grew Up In

My mother grew up in a Moroccan household and brought with her customs, beliefs, and rituals that were a completely natural part of our home. As a child, I was convinced that every family lived this way. Later, I thought these practices were shared by the entire Moroccan Jewish community. Only as an adult did I realize that some of them belonged mostly to our household—and to a few other families as unusual and a little eccentric as ours.

If a guest left the house and an unpleasant feeling lingered behind them, my mother would pour water in their wake. When the atmosphere at home grew heavy, she would burn bakhoor incense to clear the energy. She could look at people’s faces and tell things about them, and she interpreted dreams—but never before saying: “A good dream, a dream of peace.”

Every so often, we would visit coffee-ground readers and fortune-tellers to find out what lay ahead, what was hidden, and what might still be coming.

I did not know to call it mysticism then. It was simply life in the home where I grew up. So when I encountered tarot cards years later, they did not feel foreign to me. Their language was already somewhere in the background of my childhood: in symbols, dreams, feelings, and the belief that not everything that shapes our lives can be seen with our eyes.

When Life Lost Its Meaning

I got divorced at 35. Both of my parents had already passed away, and I found myself in a period when it was not only my family life that had come apart—my understanding of life itself had been shaken.

I was angry at fate, at life, and at what had been taken from me. I asked why these things were happening, what I was supposed to learn from them, and whether all this pain had any meaning at all. At the time, I was not looking for an interesting philosophical answer. I was looking for something to hold on to, because the meaning I had once known was gone.

I decided not to settle for ready-made answers. I set out to explore.

I searched through religion, psychology, and mysticism, turning to anyone or any approach willing to try to explain why we experience what we do—and whether we can change the way we meet our lives.

Three Years of Therapy, Study, and Searching

One of the first ways I chose to work through the crisis was intensive psychotherapy. Therapy turned my attention inward and required me to look honestly at my thought patterns, the fears that were running my life, and the past experiences that continued to influence my choices and relationships.

I began to understand that we do not always see reality as it is. Sometimes we see it through the wounds, expectations, hopes, and fears we carry within us. The more closely I looked at myself, the more I began to recognize the gap between what had actually happened and the story I told myself about it.

Alongside therapy, I embarked on a wide-ranging journey of spiritual study. Tarot cards had already been part of my life, but during this period, my relationship with them became much deeper, more systematic, and more central to my life. I have been reading tarot for about 20 years, and over that time I have completed roughly four formal courses in the field, alongside ongoing study through specialized books, various teachers, and many hours of practice and readings.

In addition to tarot, I studied Reiki, Access Bars, crystal healing, energy healing, and other forms of energy work. I bought books, took courses, and devoted many hours to reading, hands-on experience, and exploration.

Spiritual study did not replace the psychological work, and therapy did not negate the spiritual search. Gradually, the two paths began to complement each other: therapy gave me tools for understanding the psyche and the patterns at work within me, while the spiritual world gave me a language of symbols, feelings, and meaning.

For about three years, this search became the center of my life. As I went deeper, I began to see how psychological and symbolic language could illuminate one another—and how the cards could give shape and words to what is happening within us.

The Cards Do Not Determine Our Fate—They Illuminate the Shadow

The more I read about the inner journeys of key figures in psychology and spirituality, the more I understood that deep inner work is not about trying to uncover a predetermined fate. It is about what Jung called “shadow work”—encountering the patterns, fears, and parts of ourselves that we cannot always see.

The reality we encounter is real, and the people we interact with are responsible for their behavior. Still, the way we interpret that reality, respond to it, and choose to act within it is deeply influenced by our inner world. When we do not recognize a particular pattern, we may encounter it again and again in different places and through different people.

Suppose someone at work irritates me. I experience them as controlling, domineering, and disrespectful of my boundaries. They may indeed be behaving in a controlling way, and the right choice may be to set a clear boundary or even leave the job. But if I leave without examining what this encounter stirs in me, I may find that someone else at my next workplace brings up exactly the same feeling.

This is where shadow work begins.

Instead of asking only, “Why have I encountered another controlling person?” I can ask: What do they represent to me? Why does their behavior affect me so strongly? Do I struggle to express myself? Do I avoid confrontation until the other person has already crossed a line? Can I recognize and protect my own boundaries, or do I expect other people to understand them without my saying anything?

My response may have roots much earlier in my life. Perhaps I grew up in a home where there was never enough room for my voice. Perhaps, as a child, I could not set a boundary with a powerful figure, so even now, an encounter with authority takes me back to that same sense of helplessness without my realizing it.

Shadow work does not absolve the other person of responsibility, nor does it require me to stay in a situation that harms me. It asks me to examine what belongs to them—and what the encounter with them reveals within me. As I learn to express myself, set boundaries, and act with greater awareness, the reality I create and encounter also begins to change.

To me, this is where the power of tarot lies. The cards can point to a pattern operating beneath the surface, a fear driving a choice, or a part of us asking to be acknowledged. Sometimes they describe a possible future—not because it is set in advance, but because it is the future our current pattern will continue to create if nothing changes.

At other times, the cards invite us into deeper work: understanding what keeps recurring in our lives, why it recurs, and what is required of us to meet it differently.

The cards do not tell us what must happen. They show us what may keep happening if we remain where we are—and what can change when we are willing to face our shadow, too.

My Two Worlds Come Together

Alongside my attraction to spirituality, my greatest love since childhood has been computers. This is the professional world in which I have built my career and worked for many years.

On the surface, technology and mysticism seem to sit at opposite ends of the spectrum: one relies on systems, data, and logic; the other deals with symbols, intuition, and things that cannot always be measured. For me, though, bringing them together felt natural.

That is how AGAT was born—from the meeting of the two worlds in which I had developed knowledge and experience.

My spiritual knowledge gives the site its content, symbols, and approach. My technological knowledge makes it possible to organize that material, make it accessible, and tailor each reading to the question, the type of spread, the role of each card, and the relationships between the cards.

Artificial intelligence is not meant to replace human intuition, and it cannot predict the future. Its role is to help connect many layers of meaning and turn them into a clear, sensitive, and relevant reading.

AGAT is designed to let someone pause for a moment, ask a question, and see their situation from another angle—not so that someone else can decide for them, but so that they can choose with greater awareness.

Why AGAT?

Agate is not just one stone, but an entire family of stones with different colors, textures, and degrees of intensity. Within that family, there are soft, delicate stones such as blue lace agate, alongside stones with a powerful presence, such as fire agate.

The name is also connected to my young daughter, Agat, who was born on July 1. Even before she was born, we sensed that she was a child with a strong presence, which is why we chose this name for her.

As the idea for the site began to take shape, I realized that it, too, needed a name that could hold more than one path. I wanted to build a place that could bring together knowledge from different worlds, unite depth with sensitivity and spirituality with technology, and give people tools to help them move closer to their own truth.

Like the agate family of stones, the site can take many forms and touch on different fields without losing its connection to the source from which it comes.

For me, the name AGAT is also connected to the qualities of the number 1—beginnings, origins, independence, and the power to turn an idea into reality.

AGAT’s Invitation

AGAT grew out of crisis, searching, and study, but also out of the understanding that we do not always need someone to tell us what will happen. Sometimes we need a space that helps us see more clearly what is already happening within us.

The site is not intended to replace professional therapy, advice, or personal judgment. It offers a tool for reflection, connection, and discovery—a place where a question, a card, and a word can open up a new possibility.

The path is not written in advance. The cards can illuminate it—but the choice of how to walk it always remains in our hands.