Making art about people doing fun things with their bodies.
Making art about people doing fun things with their bodies.
About These Cards
This project came out a little faster than I expected it to – my Chariot card must have been driving me forward with absolute single-mindedness! Every single card is fully formed in my head; I have conversations with these cards like they are whole friends, foes, annoying teachers, and etc.
Show season crept up on me. I’m adding to this document *continually,* and it’s one of the things that brings me irreverent joy. Please don’t expect these descriptions to be extremely polished; I’m not extremely polished myself! You’re getting my real understandings of these, but honestly – I hope you gain your own understandings, too! You may consider this my field notebook about them. I’ve learned some of their favorite songs, some of their pet peeves and favorite things, and as I’m able, I’ll be introducing you to them – but of course, only through my limited lens.
Please, please, I want you to sit with these cards and interpret them through your lens. I’m coming at this from the vantage point of an artist – one who loves to learn about iconography and reinterpret it. This has been an absolute blessing of a learning project, in a time when I have desperately needed it.
What's In This Deck?
A tarot set is composed of 78 cards, divided into five sections.
There are the Major Arcana, a collection of 22 “big secrets” that the cards can talk to you about. These are broad concepts, intensely “loud” characters, and big or urgent responses to the other cards you may draw. They’re ordered 0 (The Fool) to 21 (XXI, The World) – and each card adds on to the story told by the card before. We go from the Fool, who knows nothing, to the Magician, who conjures things from nothing. We then meet the High Priestess, who wants to show you it’s not “nothing,” it’s just not something you understand. She wants to see you understanding it. The Empress, the matriarch and the HMFIC of the home domain, is paired with the Emperor, the HMFIC who creates and enforces rules and norms inside the broader community. Next we meet the Hierophant, who provides a similar function for the spiritual health of the broader community. Through the brief education we’ve received so far, going from “I know nothing” to a norm about community service and participation, we brush up against the Lovers card, who helps us see concrete, specific connections that are worth our drive and fire – so we focus our efforts inside the energy of the Chariot.
And that’s just the first eight cards of the Major Arcana.
There’s also the Minor Arcana, 56 cards arranged into four suits.
The suits are Pentacles, Cups, Swords, and Wands. They’re ordered Ace through 10, and then each suit has four face cards: the Page, the Knight, the Queen, and the King. There are a few different orders people commonly put the Minors in, but I like to follow this order:
- Pentacles (concerned with material goods, homemaking, the building blocks of a living). These are the things that keep you safe and prosperous in the physical world.
- Cups (concerned with love, relationships, and all matters of the heart). These are the matters that bring you closer to others and closer to yourself.
- Swords (concerned with intellect, right and wrong, defense of ideals, and conflict). These are the cards that remind you how to fight for right, and warn you to keep your wits about you.
- Wands (concerned with drive, creation, and sexuality). These cards egg you on to the impulses you desperately want to follow, and show you how to access your own desires.
It wasn’t *exactly* that, but that was the sentiment – and it stuck with me.