The Preposterous Tarot (Beginnings)

         Now finally I’ve reached the point where I can explain what’s behind all this recent focus on block printed cards and cartomancy.  It’s because I’ve been having my own fun with the idea.  I’m making my own preposterous “tarot” deck of Deeply Significant Arcane Images.  Let me break down how I’ve been thinking about this project.

        1.  Since I always work on carving blocks during my shows, and since I have so many shows during the fall through holiday season, I knew I was going to need a lot of block designs to feed my need to be carving for so many days.  It occurred to me that making a “tarot” deck would keep me busy for a good long while!

        2.  I put “tarot” in quotation marks because my deck is not an adaptation of the now-standard tarot decks known among English-speakers.  The images are completely my own off-the-rails ideas, so perhaps I should be calling this the somewhat more generic term “oracle deck.”  However, in colloquial speech, people know what I mean by “tarot,” and besides, if you read my Words of the Month - Cartomancy, you’ll learn that the word tarot originally meant specifically the special trump cards added to a deck, and initially there was no standardization about what figures those cards had to represent.  There were lots of different versions and themes floating around, including Roman mythological figures, animals, Virtues, and others.  You can see some of these in my post on Cards as Fantasy.

        3.  The same etymological logic justifies my use of the word tarot for a collection of cards that includes only the ones with special pictures.  Nowadays tarot aficionados say that a full tarot deck includes all the regular suit cards of the Minor Arcana as well as the 22 figure cards of the Major Arcana, but the root word from which “tarot” derives originally referred only to those now-called Major Arcana trump cards.  My interest is really not in making an actual tarot deck for use by actual tarot cartomancers, but rather simply to amuse myself (and hopefully those who look at my art) with the fun cards.

        4.  So, given all that, what cards am I making?  I decided to give my Preposterous Tarot some arcane mythology of its own and divide it into the Trine Hominum (people), the Trine Bestia or Trine Zoic (animals), and the Trine Res (objects).  Each card is titled not simply with a noun, such as “The Emperor” or “The Chariot” of the standard tarot deck, but also with an adjective.  And I’ve been choosing particularly splendid adjectives: delightful, archaic, abstruse, entertaining, and even silly adjectives.  The nouns, too, tend toward the obscure and random, allowing me to entertain myself greatly with how to pair them.  (Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing that entertains me.)

        5.  Therefore, I am planning to make a total of 22 card designs.  When I finish them all, depending on feedback, I may make a poster showing them all, and/or have actual decks printed up, and if I do either of those schemes then I’ll make a 23rd design for the card backs.  So far I’ve finished twelve, so I’m just over halfway through the project.  I have designs or specific plans for three more, which leaves seven more spots that are pretty wide open (plus the possible back).  These designs will all have to fit into their proper Trines, though!

        6.  In case it is not clear by now, I feel no particular reverence for the standard tarot deck and I do not believe that it has any special occult or magical properties.  That said, I know that some people do find the cards useful in helping them to focus on their intuitions and subconscious, and I think there’s absolutely no reason that my cards couldn’t be used that way, too.  If they bring out associations and suggest connections and ideas for you, then by all means embrace it.  Personally, I think that’s one of the superpowers that all art can have.  However, to have fun with the idea, I’ve also got my own theories about what Arcane Significance each of my cards might represent, and if I do ever follow up on further schemes with them, I could write up a little pamphlet about interpreting the Preposterous Tarot.  However, since I don’t believe in the power of cards to foretell the future, I can’t promise you what might actually happen!

        7.  In today’s post I’m sharing a few of the cards that I’ve done so far.  You can see all of my finished designs posted on my web site.  Twelve are up now, but that web page will continue to be updated as each new card is completed.  I have three more art sales this year, all in early December, which probably means about 6 more cards completed by the end of the year.

        What do you think of this?  Amused or intrigued?  Do you have a favorite card?  Do you have any inklings of what significance they could have?  Do you think I should make a poster or have proper decks printed?  I’d love to hear your reactions!

[Pictures: I - The Mellifluous Gardener;

II - The Feathered Locksmith;

VI - The Numinous Mailman;

XXI - The Three-Tailed Shadow;

IX - The Ambivalent Lungfish;

X - The Rambunctious Jerboa;

XVIII - The Irrefrangible Gazebo;

XIX - The Cantankerous Gnomon,

all rubber block prints by AEGNydam, 2026 (Images from NydamPrints.com).]