Tabula Mundi Tarot

At the end of May, I posted that poll asking you all to vote on the three cards you most want to see when I first post the work on my newest tarot deck. The poll results were posted at the end of June. In case you missed it, here they are:

Two more months have passed and now it is the end of August. You may be wondering what is up with the deck and when show-and-tell begins. Me too! I thought I’d be ready to post something after the poll, but as soon as I posted the poll I got sidelined for 6-8 weeks with the duty of cleaning up my departed brother’s estate. I am glad to have stepped up for it, for him and for my family, but it sure was a lot of work and took up energy and time and emotion.

But still good progress is happening. Since then I have been working on it every day for hours, except for a recent 4 day vacation where I didn’t paint for four whole days. (I missed painting, but the beach was fun.) As of now, all of the Major Arcana rough sketches are done, and many of them have been painted to completion. I haven’t shown any of them yet, because I have a goal of getting a majority of the Majors completed as full paintings rather than drawings, and then showing them or a bunch of them all at once rather than individually. I’ll still show the process if there are people interested in the art side of it, from concept to rough sketch to painting.

I know, I did the poll and was going to post a selection based on the results of that. But I am painting them in sequence and think the deck will be better presented with the Majors as a group showing the narrative of the work, if that makes sense.

But I can tell you a little about the deck in advance of the preview. I don’t want to unveil the final paintings just yet, so please bear with me a few weeks longer. I think the unveiling will be in September or more likely the first week of October, if all goes well. September is a busy month though, with the Fortune’s Wheelhouse Academy Meet-Up Sept. 15th (with Lon Milo!) and I also have a booth at the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival Sept. 29th-30th to prepare for, so it may be more like October. I’m really trying! I am having a hard time preparing stuff for those two events, and keeping up the work on the podcast, because it takes me away from painting where all my true energy is. In hindsight I should have kept myself commitment free, but since I honor my commitments, here we are.

What is different about this deck? I set out to do two things. One is to present the tarot archetypes in a new way, new in that it had to be different from what I or others have done before, and the other thing is to continue to grow artistically. How many times can one say something about each card in a novel way, that is innovative and yet true to tradition, and while challenging oneself as an artist and trying new things? It isn’t an easy task. And while I’d like to think each time around the wheel it gets better in some ways, I also just want to keep moving and working, and not get too hung up on whether it was “better” than my last two decks. So I won’t promise you will like it better, but it will be different, and I hope, good enough that you will like it.

For this new deck, I’m working large. The finished paintings are on A3 cold pressed paper (around 12×16.5″) but the painting area is around 9.5×15″. This is twice as big as the Tabula Mundi originals which are 7×9.5 – and oh maybe fifteen times as big as Rosetta, which was painted card size! Working larger felt right, as I’m also exploring a new medium: watercolors! Now before you start thinking of watercolor as being pale, pastel colors and light washes, I’ll just nip that in the bud and say nope. These are not that. I like COLOR, and the colors are vibrant. I’m working with the Golden Dawn Color Scales again of course, and learning so much more about them this time around. This deck is an exploration of LIGHT and COLOR – and water, thus watercolors, because watercolor is famous for allowing light to shine through from the white of the paper under the colors that are transparent and dispersed by the water. These aren’t the “loose” ethereal style of watercolor painting. I’m afraid my style of painting is more precise than that, though I do incorporate passages that are like that, within the painting. I guess you will see what I mean, soon!

The upside of working larger is, I can incorporate more of the watery techniques that make watercolor art so beautiful and luminous, rather than only working lightly with little water and tiny brushes on a small work. Although, there is plenty of tiny brush work, that’s for sure! I sometimes have to wear a magnifying headlamp. The downside of working larger is, duh, it takes even longer to paint something large than something small. Figures! I didn’t really think that would be the case but of course it does!

Watercolor is a medium I’ve never used much before, and it is said to be the hardest to master (of course!) so this has been a huge learning curve which may explain why it is taking me so long for each one. The only time I ever did anything in watercolor was in the Cups suit of Rosetta Tarot, which had a different media for each suit. That doesn’t really count in my mind, as though I used watercolor some of that was also water based ink which is very different and more like acrylic, and that art was tiny so it wasn’t really possible to use the watercolor in the watery way watercolor is known for. Plus, even then, I found it terribly difficult, and wasn’t very good at it! I had more difficulty with it than any other suit in Rosetta (though the Swords cards were hard too as I had to complete the etchings part of them, scratching the images onto plates in only two weeks for the entire suit, and that was a new medium too. Explains their rough look, but it fits the mood of the suit.)  Though I am still learning and by no means have mastered the medium of watercolor, I get it now in ways I didn’t then.

But to give you an idea of the difficulties of a self-taught artist trying to paint in watercolor for the first time, lets just say I’ve had to throw out many paintings. I think I threw out 6-7 versions of the Fool, a Magus or two,  4-5 of the Emperor and 3 or 4 Hierophants right at the beginning, and I still seem to have to throw out one of each for fails. Maybe I won’t have to later in the sequence but it seems to be the price for trying new techniques. I keep finding out maybe they don’t quite work how/where or in the way I envisioned, or having to get them right and keep trying. It is a process of finding my way.

I really loved working on Tabula Mundi Tarot, first the fine lined detailed line art of the black and white version, and then painting them in acrylic inks. But I didn’t want to do 78 works of art in the same media and style again. I wanted to do something new and challenge myself rather than continuing the same way even if it worked out great. These are so different. No lines that show, though I do paint over a light drawing, and what is really hard is that watercolor isn’t like acrylic paint or acrylic ink which can be painted over when dry, so if you don’t like something you can paint over it to modify it. You can’t really do that in watercolor. Maybe a little, but not if you want to retain transparency or avoid colors bleeding into each other.So you pretty much have one shot at everything you put down. So a lot of expensive watercolor paper gets thrown away, sadly. It killed me at first as a Yank but I got over it and now it isn’t the paper that bothers me so much as the time. I guess the time isn’t truly thrown away though, as I learn something each time I ruin one.

The next time I post anything about this deck, there will be pictures, I promise. Sign up for the very occasional newsletter on the home page and you will be one of the first to know.

I realized I should post something here for those of you who, like me, are not on Facebook and so don’t know about this event. If you have been listening to and enjoying the weekly podcast Fortune’s Wheelhouse, where my co-host Susie Chang and I talk about esoteric tarot correspondences, this is something you may be very interested in!

(and if you are just learning about the Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast, you can get it free on iTunes, Spotify, GooglePlay, Stitcher, Podbean, Player FM, and all of the pod places, or check out our Patreon site as every week we give away by random draw gifts to Patrons including decks, books, perfumes, prints, and all sorts of esoteric themed prizes made by us)

What you may not know is that there is a Facebook group called Fortune’s Wheelhouse Academy, where fans of the podcast and of esoteric tarot and all things occult gather to share all sorts of things. You won’t find me on there because I decided way back at the beginning of time that I should concentrate on art rather than social media and marketing. But Susie is on there, and lots of very well informed esotericists are there, and I admit to sometimes feeling left out of all the fun they get up to!

If you also are not a member of that group, you may not know that the fans who set up the Facebook group have also arranged for a meet up event, at a hotel venue in Massachusetts, for fans of the podcast. You won’t believe this – and I certainly am in awe at our good fortune – but we have a very special guest invited who has agreed to come. Drumroll please….LON MILO DUQUETTE!

Lon has been a governing officer of the OTO since 1975 and is the author of many great esoteric texts. You may know of or hopefully have many of Lon’s awesome body of works including the books Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, Chicken Qabalah, Low Magick, The Magick of Aleister Crowley, My Life With the Spirits, and many others! He is incredibly erudite AND has a wicked sense of humor. I have or have at one time had most of his books and enjoyed them all, so it is really exciting it is to have Lon joining us.

Lon is also a recording artist, and I really like his music! We are bringing a guitar to the meetup and he is going to play for us too! As well as give a talk on Qabalah! This is an intimate venue, so far a fairly small group, so it will be a very special event. Here is a link sampling some of his music on his 2015 album Sweet Baba Lon . Check out the tracks Sweet Babalon, Outside the Box, and Class Warfare for a sample of a few favorites.

So if you are a fan of Lon Milo, and of the podcast and the topics related to esoteric tarot, this is an an event to consider! It is happening the weekend of September 15th in central Massachusetts. I’m sorry I haven’t posted about it sooner and that it is short notice. It just occurred to me that those of you other FB outcasts like me might not even know about it! And the news of Lon joining us is fairly recent. I think at first I didn’t want to say anything in case it turned out too good to be true! But it looks like this is happening. If you are on FB, join the Fortune’s Wheelhouse Academy group to find out more. If you aren’t, and want to attend this event, let me know and I will put you in touch with one of the organizers.

Last month I posted a poll asking “Which card of my new deck(s) in progress do you most want to see?” The poll allowed everyone to choose up to THREE cards. I thought that might make it easier for the indecisive types to make a choice!

Here are the results of the poll, sorted and graphed:

Unsurprisingly, the Priestess card came in number one. Many tarot readers identify with her as an archetype, the mysterious keeper of wisdom. In the number two slot we have a bit of a surprise. While the Star was expected to be in the top three, the Hermit tied the Star for the runner up position! Another archetype of wisdom! I do think that perhaps many tarot readers, especially male readers, may identify strongly with him too. It is likely that many of us interested in occult pursuits are introverts, exploring the depths on our own. But I would have guessed that the Magus would have been there instead.

Personally, I was shocked to not see the Moon card in the top three. I would have guessed our other lunar archetype to be right near the top. I’m also surprised the Fool didn’t rank just slightly higher, simply because the Fool is said to contain the seed of the entire arcana series, and thus sets the tone of a deck.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the least voted for card, the Emperor. I guess patriarchy and structure are concepts considered pretty staid right now. Also, most Emperor cards are not all that interesting. Tabula Mundi’s Emperor I think is an exception if I do say so myself, but in general you can pretty much picture a red guy on a red throne, some rams and flames. So ok, I get why he isn’t that popular of a choice. The Hanged Man fared low as well. Waiting for wisdom is not what we want to do! One step above those two is a group that fared pretty low as well. What I think they all have in common is that they are cards with very simple images generally speaking.

Maybe you are wondering what I myself voted for. Well actually, I didn’t vote! I wanted the poll results to be untainted by my personal opinion. OK that is a bit of a cop out; I am also one of those indecisive types! Even picking three is hard. For the purposes of evaluating a deck, I’d probably choose the Fool for sure, for the reason already mentioned. I’d probably want a peek at the Devil and/or Death, because how a deck tackles those topics says a lot about it, and unlike a more simple archetype like the Tower, there is a lot of artistic license that can happen there successfully. Plus, I really like the Devil and Death cards; they are favorites! Another one I’d have to choose is the Art/Temperance card. Again, it can be a very complex card with an evocative image – or in the wrong hands it can be boring. As a Sagittarius, and an artist and alchemist, I identify with that card and it is one of my personal favorites.

If the deck purports to be Thoth based, I’d also want to see at least one of the following cards: Lust, Aeon, Adjustment, Hierophant. Especially the Aeon! If a deck doesn’t tackle the Aeon in a Thelemic way, then it is Thoth based in name only.

So by now you are probably wondering, when will I stop talking and show you some cards? And what will I show? I’m not as far along as I’d hoped when I put up the poll. Basically the very day I put up the poll, a situation came up that needed my immediate attention, was fraught with irritation and stress, and had to be dealt with. So zero time has been put into getting the art showing ready since then as all of my energy was pulled elsewhere. It was a situation that took weeks to resolve and lots of effort. Excuses, excuses. I’d thought that by the time the poll was done I’d have stuff ready for you, I really did! I was on a grand roll artistically. Life happens.

But since I said I would show something, I will honor that even though I’m not really ready. I wanted to have at least one of the top three card picks fully complete, not just in sketch form. Some background info: I have more than one deck started. I do have a Priestess card done in one deck, but in the other  she is only a drawing that hasn’t yet been painted. And the deck that she isn’t yet done in is the deck that I’ve decided to focus on. Because doing a deck takes so much time, I was crazy to start more than one at once! So I’m not quite sure what to do here. If I show the completed Priestess from the deck that has been postposed for now, it could get confusing. The other deck, I’m keeping her under wraps until she is painted.

That said, I do want to give you a peek. I have lots of drawings ready to transform into paintings. These are rough sketches though, so I am very hesitant to show them, as the final painted product in full color is always so much better than the pencil sketch hints at. I may pick three sketches to show just as a teaser: one from the top three of the voting results, one from the mid range, and one from the bottom three. Or finish the other Priestess painting, and show you the Priestess from both decks at once. Here is where indecisiveness kicks in.

Finally, apologies for it taking so long to get this preview out. I hope when it finally debuts it will be worth the wait. It is coming!

UPDATE: The Major Arcana sketches are complete – and the showing will begin this summer so stay tuned!

Tabula Mundi Tarot, Colores Arcus edition, has an optional expansion pack of 14 cards. These cards consist of:

• a Minutum Mundum Tree of Life diagram that shows the corresponding Golden Dawn color scale colors, with the paths (Majors) in the King Scale colors and the sephira (Minors) in the Queen Scale colors, and labeled with the corresponding Tarot numerals
• An alternate Lust (Strength) card In Nomine Babalon
• a set of 12 astrological decan cards

It comes up occasionally that someone will ask what the decan cards in Tabula Mundi’s expansion pack are, what they can be used for, and why they should get them. So I thought I’d post something here. First I’ll answer the what they are and why to get them, and then, some suggested ways to use them.

As for the why part, as the artist I believe that the decan cards belong with the deck and make it complete. They are a unique creation that no other tarot artist to date has attempted. They are optional and you can elect not to get them, but at some point they will be gone. The box that the cards come in is deep enough to accommodate them, and they complete the set and fill that space. William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite artist and textile designer, said that everything one keeps should be either useful or beautiful. It’s my opinion that these are both.

What they do is combine the designs from all three of the minor arcana cards that share an astrological sign into one image. They were intended to convey the symbols of the sign much like Johfra‘s Zodiac art, but by combining the three tarot cards that the astrological sign corresponds to.

A little basics for those unfamiliar with astrology might help to understand the concept. The Zodiac is a complete circle and thus 360 degrees. It is divided into the 12 signs that almost everyone is familiar with: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Each of these signs is thus 30 degrees of the circle, or roughly 30 days. But the signs themselves are further divided by astrologers into ten astrological degree or roughly ten day segments, called decans. So there are 36 decans in the circle of the zodiac, three for each sign. Each decan of the sign has a planetary ruler, separate from the ruler of the sign itself.

A lesser known thing is that the minor cards 2 thru 10 of the tarot, each correspond to one decan. For example, the 2, 3, and 4 of Wands correspond to the sign of Aries. The 2 of Wands is the first decan of Aries, the 3 is the middle decan of Aries, and the 4 is the last decan of Aries. Aries season runs from approximately March 20th through April 20th. So if you were born in the first ten days of that period, your Sun sign is likely at a degree between 0 Aries and 9 degrees 59 seconds of Aries, or the first 10 degrees of Aries, and thus your personal minor card is the Two of Wands. If your Sun sign is between 10 and 19 degrees 59 seconds of Aries, or roughly the second ten day segment of the period, then your personal minor is the Three of Wands. Or if you were born in the last ten days or so of the sign and your Sun is from 20 degrees to 30 of Aries, then your card is the Four of Wands. Aries itself is ruled by Mars, but each of these decans, or minor cards, also has a decan ruler. The Two is also ruled by Mars, the Three is ruled by the Sun, and the Four is ruled by Venus.

The Tabula Mundi expansion pack includes a card titled “The Decans of Aries”. It includes on the left of the card the symbol for Aries, and on the right side, the three planetary rulers of the three decans of the sign. The image on the card combines the images from the Two, Three, and Four of Wands into one picture. Shown below are the decan cards for the Fire/Wands signs, Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius, along with the minor cards that make up the image, so you can get an idea of how the images are generated. (click to enlarge the pictures)

So now that you know what they are, and how they were created, you may be wondering how to use them. Many of you will grasp this intuitively, and some of you may use them in other ways than the ones I mention here. But here are a few ideas.

Many tarot spreads suggest choosing a significator card for the querent. This makes it clear who the querent is and gives a focal point to the spread around which all the other cards revolve. Sometimes one of the court cards is chosen, less often it is a minor or major. Usually it is either based on the person’s Sun sign, appearance, or personality. But many readers dislike assigning a card as a significator, and thus removing it from the deck and taking it out of play so it then cannot come up in the reading.

One use for these decan cards is as the significator for the querent being read for. Most people know their own Sun sign, even if they are not familiar with anything else astrological. Without being familiar with their chart degrees, you can’t be sure which minor card they are if they are close to the edge of a decan. Anyway many people would find it cumbersome to memorize the dates, and no one likes taking a card out of play. With these, if the querent is an Aries, the “Decans of Aries” card can be used.

But a significator card does not have to be limited to the Sun sign of the querent. It can also be used to signify the question itself. For example, if the question is about getting ahead at work, the Capricorn card would be a good choice. If the question is about romantic partnership, the Libra card might be chosen, and so on.

So, what if you just don’t use significators at all? These cards are not limited to that! There are some other uses to consider.

Practical magick layouts as in Donald Tyson’s book, Portable Magic: Tarot is the Only Tool You Need.

One is simply for study and meditation. Taking the decan card and laying out the related minors as shown in the images, plus the related Majors, and studying the related symbols, can yield new insights. For Aries one would lay out the decan card with the Two, Three, and Four of Wands, and the Emperor card, to get insights about things Aries in nature.

Another use is for timing. Although timing questions are tricky with tarot, some do draw from the separate stack of decan cards for questions of timing. Things like, “When would be a good time to do X?”. Since each card corresponds to a 30 day period of the year, they can serve that purpose.

Some use them as a perpetual calendar. Since these cards each correspond to a sign and thus a season, many people will place the appropriate card on their altar, for example from March 20th thru April 20th, the decans of Aries card serves to remind you that it is Aries season, with all the themes that entails. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it serves to remind one that Spring has arrived and the Earth is awakening, and the days are getting longer, and it is time to awaken from Winter’s sluggishness.

This perpetual calendar idea can be as simple as displaying the one card during the season. But some also will include the other cards as well, so having the decan card of Aries displayed with the Emperor card for the season, and swapping out the minor cards every ten days as the decans change. And some take it further, by adding the Major for the planetary ruler of the decan. So for Aries season, the Aries decan card and Emperor card would be displayed for the whole month, being joined by the Tower for Mars in the first ten days, the Sun for the Sun for the second ten days, and the Empress for Venus in the last ten days. And some take it even further, making note of the moon phase and adding study material to their calendar. A magnetic board is great for this purpose. For an excellent example of someone doing this using the Tabula Mundi decan cards, there is a thread on the Cartomancy forum by a dedicated practitioner, titled Nemia’s Tarot Calendar.

Doing this as a practice really aligns one to the energy of both the cards and the seasons, and the sense of time as it passes. Too often nowadays we get busy and distracted by tasks and technology and forget to slow down and remember where we are in space and time. We forget what season it is and what the Sun and Moon are doing, and become disconnected. This keeping of a meditative calendar helps remind us to be present.

There are lots of creative people in the world, probably using these in different ways. Let us know if you are one of them!

I hope to show you some new work, both finished and in progress. But since I might not want to show them ALL, let me know what you would most like to see. You can only vote once but you can pick up to three – because I know choosing one is too hard! This is for a new deck I’m working on. I’m working on more than one! But this one is the farthest along and so I am focusing on it to finish at least the Majors first.

Poll is open until June 22, 2018. After it closes, there will be a showing.

Update: More about that, and some results analysis, now shown here.

Ode to the Parsnip, aka I Dig A Parsnip

How doth the humble parsnip root

Improve our Spring morale

How sweet to eat a thawed out fruit

Dug from one’s own locale

How patiently he seems to wait

How silent, bides his time

He passes twice thru Nick’s own gate

Before he makes the climb

In works of butter and of salt,

most things will taste good, true

It tastes of dirt and sweetest malt

and goes with any brew

Don’t be afraid though it looks lewd

it makes a decent fuel

It tastes good roasted, raw, or stewed

so eat, don’t be a Fool

Matter and Spirit: Deconstructing the Court cards and our Solar Year

Part VII of XVI, the Prince of Disks 

April 10-19 last decan of Aries: Four of Wands Completion (Perfected Work)
April 20-29 first decan of Taurus: Five of Disks Worry (Material Trouble)
April 30-May 9 middle decan of Taurus : Six of Disks Success (Material Success)

The season of the Prince of Disks begins around April 10th in the last decan of Aries. The decan ruler is Venus, and while she is not well placed in Aries itself, she does make a good match with her trump the Empress and Aries’ trump the Emperor. Around April 20th, we pass into Taurus season, the main sign we think of when we encounter the Prince of Earth. Taurus the sign is ruled by Venus. The first two decans of Taurus in the Prince’s domain are ruled by Mercury and the Moon, respectively. The Prince of Disks is shown with his bull driven chariot, looking more like a farmer plowing the fields. Yet there is a bit of the accountant about him as well, with that shield in the Tabula Mundi card looking a lot like a copper coin (copper is the metal of Venus). He may have times of Material Trouble but watches his pennies and plants them well, and in time, they bear fruit, turning to gold at the end of the season (gold is the metal of the Sun, a reference to the Six of Disks, a card of the solar sephira Tiphareth).

Mercury rules the first decan of Taurus: he uses his mental faculties to balance the books, one slow step at a time. He has  Worry; and questions if there will be enough to go around. With the second decan of Taurus he is much more fortunate. This decan is ruled by the Moon, which is very happy in Taurus, and is also a Six card in the beauty and harmony of the center of the Tree of Life. The Moon, that changeable orb of phases, gives him the ability to adapt to his circumstances and eventually he reaps the benefit of the fullness; the sweet taste of Success.

But what of Completion, and the fact that his shadow decan is a fairly positive card of work perfected? The idea of achieving perfection gets him to make a move, to keep up with the debits and credits in all his interactions, rather than stand like a stubborn bull in the fields. If he yields to the idea that all is indeed well enough as is, inertia would take over. We want him moving, where he can apply his talents for fecundity, increase, and steady multiplication. We can’t forget also that though the Empress and Emperor pairing of this card (Venus/Empress ruling the decan of Aries/Emperor) is a match, that part of every relationship is a bit of friction. Love and War, and all that entails.

His crest is of a winged bull’s head. The bull is a symbol of Taurus, but also of wealth, strength, and fertility. Though he can be a bit practical, plodding, and dull, we mustn’t forget that he is a creature of Venus, sensual Venus who loves her fine materials, her comfort, her lovers, foods, and pleasures. After all, the motto of Taurus is “I have”.

As a Prince, he is given one of the four Royal stars. His is the Watcher of the East, Aldebaran, the Eye of the Bull. Seems fitting to have him paired with the East, the direction of Spring and the place of the Hierophant, since the Hierophant card is the trump of Taurus. The Princes all have a common goal: to find and awaken their sleeping Princess, and remind them of the powers they have and their royal status as children of the supernals. This Prince bears one of the most potent powers, Tacere or To Keep Silent. Which really means, to take Action, and put Will, Love, and Reason into play in the real world. Only then go we Go, or evolve, reaping the gold of our inborn potential.

The Prince of Disks has a pleasant time of year in his sector. Here in the northern hemisphere the Earth is finally warming up, April’s showers bringing May flowers as the saying goes. My guess is that it is also a pretty nice time in the southern hemisphere, as heat gives way to golden fall. He has both “Earth Day” a holiday where we go out and do Earth clean up and trash pick up (or we should) and the fertility festival Beltane or May Day. Right around the start of Taurus, around here at least, it really is time to plow the fields, or at least for the early cool weather crops. And we dig our parsnips, that have wintered over underground, the roots becoming sweeter. Finally after the long winter, the earth is thawed and soft and ready for us. We can plant our little coppers, our seeds of potential whether literal or figurative, and anticipate the golden harvest to come, when our bounty can be shared.