Introducing Telos Tarot of 777, my latest tarot deck creation over four years in the making. Pre-launch page now live on Kickstarter!

It’s a journey through the magical images of the decans as listed in 777 (mainly Picatrix based with a few outliers) for the minors. And to finally have a deck that combines and reconciles the images of the decans with the minor cards of tarot, both in art and meaning.

But it also is an attempt to finally have a deck where all majors actually follow the “correct design of the tarot trumps” according to the teachings of the Golden Dawn anyway, also per the descriptions in 777.

You might say, but wait, don’t many Golden Dawn based decks already follow that for the majors? Like the Rider Waite or Thoth? Well no, not exactly, if you read the descriptions not every major aligns. Some majors do, but some do not, and even the ones that do, don’t do every nuance of every part of the description. And some cards not at all, ever anywhere, at least that I have seen. For example, check out the description for the Fool:

A bearded Ancient seen in profile…He laughs; bearing a sphere containing illusion in his left hand, but over his right shoulder, and a staff 463 lines long in his right. A lion and a dragon are at his feet, but he seems unaware of their attacks or caresses.

Wow, have you ever seen a Fool card that checks all those boxes? Bearded! Ancient! Profile! Laughing! With a sphere? Containing “illusion”? And held in left hand, but somehow also over the right shoulder? And a staff 463 lines long? With a lion and a dragon attacking and caressing him?

Nope, I haven’t seen one. Maybe one exists but if so I haven’t seen it, and I’ve been looking at tarots for decades.

Over the years I read and reread that description. If you unpack it, of course it is all about the Tree of Life. But I always wondered why most Fool cards only have him with a staff (but not “463 lines long”) and either a dog (RWS) or a tiger and crocodile (Thoth, at least closer to a lion and dragon). Even some of the “Golden Dawn decks” instead have a Fool as an infant with a wolf, picking a rose off a bush.

So I wondered about that, and came to the conclusion that drawing it was just too hard. Getting that exactly contorted posture right. Getting in that sphere so that it contained “illusion”. Drawing a staff “463 lines long”. I mean really.

Now I guess someone can just feed all that into AI or something and see what they get. But I actually just thought about it. A lot. Over a long period of time. And I finally understood it, and how I actually could draw it, and get all those elements into it. And what each element of the description actually means. It’s the creation of the world.

Bearded, Ancient, profile, left hand with sphere over right shoulder, laughing. Animals both attacking and caressing.

Just for fun I did a little homage to Pamela Coleman Smith’s RWS Fool too.

The sphere contains maya written in Sanskrit, meaning “illusion” (and magic!). Of course it represents Kether (and the three veils of “nothingness>light” preceding it) on the Tree of Life, where the path of the Fool, and the lightning flash of creation, begins. The “illusions” seen that escape from it descend, creating the entire tree, and eventually, this illusory material world.

The staff of “463 lines” refers to the Middle Pillar on the Tree of Life, the paths of the Priestess (Kether to Tiphareth), Art/Temerance (Tipareth toYesod), and the World/Universe (Yesod to Malkuth). Their respective Hebrew letters Gimel, Samekh, and Tau are numbered 3, 60, and 400. Adding to 463. Rather than trying to draw 463 lines on something that small, if you look closely you will notice the staff is engraved with the letters.

This entire deck started, of course, with the Fool. The original pencil drawing was done in Aquarius season 2020 (Aquarius, Fixed Air sign as the Fool corresponds to the Air element).

The black lines of the drawing were ritually inked in ceremony with a dip pen at the exact conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn at 0° 0′ 00′ Aquarius on the Winter Solstice of December 21st 2020. It was precisely timed to the astrological “Great Mutation” when Jupiter and Saturn, the creator gods, conjoined at 0 degrees Aquarius ushering in a new cycle of Air sign conjunctions. It’s a big picture thing as it is a 20/200/800 and ultimately 2400 year cycle.

It’s part of a series of interlocking cycles of Jupiter and Saturn – Zeus and his dad Cronos, the two creator gods. They meet in conjunction every 20 years. This happens in the same element for 200 years, then switches to a new element for the next 200 years. It takes 800 years to move through all four elements, and 2400 years to move through the entire zodiac. So on December 21st 2020 (significant as Solstice), there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn at 0 degrees of Aquarius, which marked what they call a “Great Mutation” as it was one of those 200 year marks where the 20 year conjunctions switch elements – this time from Earth to Air (Fool). And it was on the 0 degree (Fool) and sign Aquarius (also Foolish as Aquarius is the domicile of Uranus – Ouranos, Cronos’ Dad and Jupiter’s Granddad). That won’t happen again for 2400 years. But now we also have Pluto (Zeus’ brother Hades) in the mix, who also moves pretty slowly and has been passing over and then back and forth as he retrogrades over that 0 degree Aquarius point activating that degree a few times.

Every time Pluto hit that zero degree Aquarius point exactly over the last few years, is when I worked on the color painting for the card.

At the moment of posting this, Jupiter has hit 0° Gemini, another Air sign (trining 0° Aquarius), which is why I decided to finally share this Fool with the world.

So that’s the story of the creation of the Fool. But also the creation of Telos, where every card has been similarly created during specific astrological alignments.

You can see prior posts in the history of the blog, like this one: https://www.tabulamundi.com/new-deck-update-completion/ Hint – and all the ones preceding it!

To learn more visit:

Telostarot.com

and, the pre-launch page, now live on Kickstarter!

Please share it with anyone you think might be interested.