The Hermit's Tarot

A Project of Self-Expression and Self-Exploration

 

A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?

If this is my day of harvest, in what fields have I sowed the seed, and in what unremembered season?

If this indeed be the hour in which I lift up my lantern, it is not my flame that shall burn therein.

Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern,

And the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil and he shall light it also.

--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

One common symptom of tarot addiction is the desire to create one's own deck. It was not long before I succombed. This is very much a work in progress, with only a few of the card designs presently in a state to be posted on the web. I let the cards themselves tell me which images to work on, by drawing cards from one of my other decks (often the Tarot of Marseilles or the Minchiate Etruria). The first time I draw a card, I prepare a small color-pencil sketch of the design. The second time, I make a larger rendering in pastels and pencil. These are the ones that are posted here. At the very beginning of the project, I did preliminary sketches for the ace, two, and three of each suit. Consequently, these tend to have gotten rendered in "finished" form sooner than the other designs, and that's why they are appearing here ahead of the others. Unfortunately, that tends to misrepresent the look of the deck, since the ace through three were designed with an abstract look not characteristic of the rest of the cards.

Part way through the project, I grew very fond of the old Italian decks with decorated pips, rather than scenes, on the suit cards (minor arcana). So I'm now creating two parallel series of suit cards. (I hope to use the same major arcana for both decks.) I call the deck with decorated pips the Legacy Edition, and the deck with scenes the Luminary Edition.

A second idea that occurred "on the fly" was to create 20 additional Minchiate trump cards for optional use with the deck. So, in principle there are four decks here (Legacy Tarot, Luminary Tarot, Legacy Minchiate, and Luminary Minchiate). This translates into an ambition to create 154 cards! (Plus two extra trumps--see The Major Arcana and the Tree of Life)

This site contains not only card images, but accompanying text as well. The text covers much of my own "tarot philosophy". I hope you enjoy it.

Note: In some of these pages, I banter around the mystical language of God-Union rather shamelessly. Keep in mind that I am simply explaining one particular approach to illuminating tarot symbolism. I am not myself a mystic and do not expect to dissolve into the divine mind anytime soon.


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Copyright © 1998, 1999 Tom Tadfor Little