in each of these threads i'll post a card (i'm also experimenting with various forms of visual deformation at the same time) and focus on capturing some thoughts that i have about the card, my design of it, and how to use it in a reading. i'm particularly inspired, or maybe amused, by Strength's page in "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot" (https://www.labirintoermetico.com/02Tarocchi/Waite_Pictorial_Key_to_the_Tarot.pdf) (1910), because i've always wondered what was up with Strength and Justice having mixed-up numbers... well, here the book illuminates why it's such a mystery. and so uselessly! "For reasons which satisfy myself, this card has been interchanged with that of justice, which is usually numbered eight. As the variation carries nothing with it which will signify to the reader, there is no cause for explanation." (beneath the header, "VIII // Strength, or Fortitude")
it is this spirit, above all, which i hope to capture in my small book on my cards.
also, i will edit the original post in each thread, if you have thoughts on any of the cards please feel free to share them! i'm interested in accumulating thoughts on each card, any relationship you may have to the cards, etc. i'll try to remember to note this in the work-in-progress cards specifically.
tarot is like what i wish all games were.
it has a book of rules, it has a regular set of pieces, you can play it with a number of players. it has an ending, but you can play it again if you want.
but everything is changeable. if you don't like the rules, you can make up your own. if you have a set that isn't working for you right now? get another. the number of players changes the dynamics of play but only as much as the number of players changes the dynamic of a conversation. everything is permitted.
in short, it's all house rules.
this book isn't a rigid set of prescriptive rules which you must follow or else play the game wrong; neither is it a full accounting of my practice of tarot, my "house rules," which i use my copy of these cards for. more than half of what i know is bound up in intuition, in habit, in personality, in brain chemistry, in something like the soul.
when you practice tarot with the people around you, you will develop your own way of playing the game, and if you're lucky you'll meet people who will share their ways with you, as i have been lucky to receive.
you can read a hundred books, but nothing prepared me like meeting the right person.
Quote from: droqen on Jul 09, 2025, 10:54 PMthis book isn't a rigid set of prescriptive rules which you must follow or else play the game wrong; neither is it a full accounting of my practice of tarot, my "house rules," which i use my copy of these cards for. more than half of what i know is bound up in intuition, in habit, in personality, in brain chemistry, in something like the soul.
when you practice tarot with the people around you, you will develop your own way of playing the game, and if you're lucky you'll meet people who will share their ways with you, as i have been lucky to receive.
you can read a hundred books, but nothing prepared me like meeting the right person.
reading this felt very liberating for me
something that i struggle with a lot is relying on outside feedback (on that note thank u tally <3 im happy to hear that that one was good for you!!)
yesterday i put a bunch of work into a finished soundtrack release for my videogame and then rather than giving myself time to think about how i felt about it, i posted about it on bluesky -- and then i paid too-close attention to, are people responding? are people listening? are people "liking" my announcement-bleet? i walked it back because i didn't like how i had relied upon that rather than my internal judgement.
i think one of the very primary functions of drawing tarot for me is to ask myself how i'm feeling, and to draw my own conclusions rather than relying on an outside force -- which is sort of funny, because of tarot's relationship to a large force outside of myself (perhaps The Universe, perhaps Simple Randomness, whatever i believe on a given day (usually Simple Randomness, which is a shame)), so maybe it would be better to describe this as "not asking other people for their ideas of what is right and wrong."
for the most part people can't tell you what they really feel, they tell you what they think, they use analytical and explanatory power to construct a Prison Of Sense. so, along with artmaking, drawing tarot is a way to get at feeling rather than thinking.
it has always been the best inside joke that the swords suit in tarot is both the suit of thinking and of suffering.