Tarot and Oracles
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Design Notes 4: System and Structure
There’s more to an oracle than the visual imagery. In previous parts of this series I hope I successfully implied that I believe the role of the art can be overstated. Obviously Tarot and Oracles are visual tools, once described as “the Devil’s picture book” and the artwork is important to every owner and reader.…
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Design Notes 3: Art, Format, Representation
For the third episode in this series of thoughts and processes with the design of my new oracle deck I’m going to address an elephant in the room. The elephant is generative art, or more commonly referred to as AI art. There’s a lot of stigma around this topic, lots of valid concerns and lots…
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Design Notes, Part 2: Format and Platform
Welcome to the second part of my thought processes around the oracle deck I’m developing. I’m trying to create the deck I’ve always wanted to read with, something that’s as comprehensive and substantial as a 78-card Tarot deck but like an Oracle in that I’m working with a structure and sensibilities that are distinctly not…
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Design Notes, Part 1: I’m Doing A Thing
I’m breaking a personal rule here and going to talk about something I’ve been working on. I’d like to share design notes, discuss the process and the reasoning behind some of my decisions, and highlight challenges along the way. I love to talk about creative processes, but I have reasons for usually not doing it…
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What can Tarot offer you? (and some sentimental reflections on history)
It’s occurred to me I’ve been studying and reading Tarot for almost exactly 42 years now. A happy accident revealed the fascinating images, text and possibilities of Tarot to me and I set about acquiring a deck of my own about the time of my 14th birthday. Over this four decades I’ve changed a lot…
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Strength, The Lovers, The Devil
Design notes. Again, I’m going to explain some of the choices I’ve made in my design of The Tiny Traveler’s Tarot. I prefer to align with the design and structure of the RWS Tarot than the Marseille or Thoth decks, but I felt the need to diverge from some of the Major Arcana depictions in…
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The Chariot becomes The Rider (my argument for Tarot revisionism)
While I’ve said before that I initially learned Tarot in the Rider-Waite-Smith school and generally defer to that as the branch of tarot with which I most identify, I’ve still made the decision not to replicate RWS cards for my Tiny Traveler’s Tarot deck. Designing a Tarot deck is a series of decisions, even if…
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Reversals of Fortune (how Modernism got superseded, and what that means for Tarot)
When I first saw a reference to the Reversed iteration of a Tarot card meaning, I was perplexed. Truthfully, I’m still kind of perplexed about the whole idea, and even more so by people who take the idea seriously. What this refers to, and thank goodness the name implies it because there was no explanation…
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P.O.D and individuality.
YouTube has lots of videos about personalizing your deck – trimming it, edging it with gold paint. doing funky rituals with burning sage and “charging” it with crystals and sound frequencies, and so on. There’s a deep rabbit hole to explore if you’re into that stuff. I’ve never gone in for that personally but I…
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Minor Arcana – RWS, Marseilles and imagery.
I’ve been studying and reading Tarot for almost 40 years now and I’ve developed some strong opinions on many aspects of it. But there’s no point in studying if you’re not prepared to keep learning and possibly even update some of those opinions. Thankfully I’m glad to let you know that while my opinions are…
Copperscene 