start

1) You know, I was thinking about it and to be honest there’s not one card which I prefer more than the others. Every major arcana represents something within us, something we are going through. Today, I would chose the Hermit, because like him, i am starting a journey, and no one can come with me. In solitude, i am searching for myself and looking to shed light. In my deck, the mother peace tarots, the hermit is represented by the Goddess, Hecate, who is the mother of witchery. I love Hecate so much, she is like my divinity.

2) Since I was little I was always drawn to any form of mysticism or oracle. My tarots arrived to me in 2016, after I encountered a wonderful witch. She gifted me my first deck and encouraged me to study them.

3) Fundamentally, reading Tarot Cards is an introspective Journey. I use them to help me understand in which point of my journey I stand in and what my blocks are.
You know, I don’t read tarot to just any one or every-time I am asked to, I don’t know why but I only want to connect myself to others in certain moments, when I feel it is the right time to do it. Its a strong exchange of energy and it still surprises me that every time I do a reading of someone it almost always reflects my own lived experiences. We are all mirrors.

1) Inside the Tarot’s imaginary world, the card which I feel most connected to is The Fool. He is the wise child who follows his inner voice and is at the beginning of the journey that will lead him to his highest self. The searching, changing and transformation he will undergo reminds me to the work of the alchemist, a feeling that’s been around me all my life.

2) The tarot arrived in my life the same way that the purest things arrive, with love. My first experiences with the esoteric world and hermetic knowledge were in connection with the person that I love, and that was the beginning of the trip.

3) The tarot has always been here, and always will be, even when there’s no cards left we can watch every thing manifest in the universe and see its light. They are a tool that can guide us through this journey. They show us the energetic moments in which we find ourselves and give us clues of how we can use this wonderful gift from the infinite which is life.

1) I really love the magician. It’s about desire, it’s about being creative, its about manifesting things. it’s about having an idea and doing something with it, so for me the magician is the author. You know, you take something everybody uses, words, and you make something that escapes the mundane and transcends life as we know it. It’s a powerful image. If we look at it we see the magician has all four elements and the sign of infinity. So its a card of infinite potential, when you get this card you know that anythings possible and you also know that the time is now. Whatever you want to do you should do it. It has dark sides too, like all tarot cards. He’s a master of illusion and in some cases it can mean trickery or manipulation. But tarot is about choice, this is what many people don’t realise, tarot doesn’t necessarily speak about our future, it speaks about our choices.

As part of my research, I interviewed the two people who introduced me to the world of Tarot. My close friend Marta who I met in Italy when I was visiting my family 2 summers ago and Niki, my dads girlfriend who reads my cards regularly and vice versa. Marta is currently in Havana, Cuba and told me about David, who also reads Tarot and was up for an interview. The aim of this part of the project was to get some insight on what Tarot means to people from Card Readers I know and share some real stories concerning a topic which is very often misinterpreted or misrepresented in the media and Hollywood.

The Decks They Use

Marta- The Mother Peace Deck
David- The Ancient Egyptian Deck
Niki- The Rider Waite Deck

The Questions I Asked

1) What card do you resonate the most with and why?
2) How did you first encounter the cards?
3) Why do you read cards and how do you think someone could benefit from having them read?

‘The clairvoyant, who was around 50, tiny, plump, and wearing a pink bathrobe, was sitting in a cozy arm chair. Two men who looked like they were of working class origin were kneeling at her feet gazing at her devotedly while cutting her nails. At the same time she was clipping the claws of her cat. A table offered several plates of cheese, salads, pastries, fruits, and wines of good quality. Her customers waited patiently in another room until the sibyl had dined. (…) Gluttonously devouring and incredible quantity of food. Film gossip interested her much more than my ideas of the tarot’

‘While her naked lover snored away, Marie, wrapped in a Chinese dressing gown, served us full bowls of the delicious broth in which we could find fish, meatballs, vegetables, grains, noodles, cheese, chicken livers, beef belly, and lots of other delicacies. She would then do a tarot reading, using cards she drew herself, on the stomach of her lover, who even a canon blast would not wake up. This bizarre contact with the cards was decisive for me, thanks to this woman, Tarot remains forever connected with generosity and boundless love in my heart’

I was drawn to two quotes in Jodorowsky's book about tarot, which described these two contrasting characters who he'd encountered on his journeys. I decided to design them

Tarot Cards Were Originally Part of Italian Storytelling Games-
As Europeans became interested in card games with the arrival of Mamluk cards, new card games were invented. One of these innovative card games spurred the creation of the tarot deck. Historians believe that reading tarot cards started as a storytelling game popular with Italian nobility. To play the earliest versions of this game, the tarot cards were arranged at random as players made up their own poems and stories based on each symbol. The first versions of tarot card reading were about creativity, instead of trying to discern information about life with the mystical interpretations psychics use.

Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa wrote, The Way Of The Tarot and redesigned a version of the Marseille deck. In his studies of the tarot, He found Masonic, Taoist, Buddhist, Christian, astrologica, alchemical, Tantric, Sufi beliefs in the cards. There is also reference to Hebrew Jewish Scripture, the Gospels and Greco-Latin Mythology.

collages made with printed photos, mono-printing and pen

I was drawn to the fact both characters I designed were wearing dressing robes so thought it would be fun to explore this since I love colour and pattern. I used oil pastels, paint, markers and also pages from magazines to make the cut out dresses and then used them to create paper doll clothes and a short stop motion animation.