brujaja
I created this majors deck over three weeks for a History, Fiction, and Memory class. There were a couple goals in mind -- to fit tarot structure onto different images and see how that changed the tarot structure as I knew it. To use images resonant with Western (Popular) Culture and explore ancient archetypes in modern guises. To use tarot as a tool for busting into western (American) academics, and my academic studies as a way of busting into tarot.
I used a mix of RW imagery, personal associations, and randomly found images (god bless serendipity and google image search). Text pulled is from books for that class. Regarding copyright: this deck is a study and shared in that spirit -- I have no intention of selling or reproducing these images.
Since I don’t have a site or tarot blog, I’m adding some notes as well.
cards 1-9: http://s84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/kill_time/deck/?action=view¤t=0784c60f.pbw
1. The Doctor
The caption for this picture outta rolling stone's memorial for him reads: "Hunter and his essentials: Motorcycle, booze, cigarette holder, guns." And that table, just like the Magician’s altar.
2. The Spy
A young Mata Hari culled from the internet and painted. She kind of inverts the RW imagery…the duality of those pillars is still there, but with negative space instead. She, in the middle, takes the emphasis.
3. The Greenhouse of Illusions
Photo by my friend, of a strange Southern Californian flower. Text about Mama Pilar’s brothel in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Imagination Cultivation. Women tending the primal completion, self-proliferation, timelessness, paradise, the walled garden.
4. Ceasar
Culled from the internet. Tying the traditional Emporer with Western Histor/iography.
5. Code Red
Yes, that is Charlton Heston dressed as Moses. Scanned from my Charlton Heston Presents The Bible book. He is accidentally reversed, but I think it’s funny so haven’t changed it back. What’s rollin down from the mountains. (and a nod to the song of same name) An apt Heston quote: "...We have to pass on to America in the 21st century the same Bill of Rights that those wise, old, dead white guys that invented this country passed on to us. ..."
6. The Lovers, With Eris Ascending
An old painting of Paris and Helen. Conjures all the connotations of temptation and choice while maintaining the lovers arc. But instead of the archangel, we have Eris -- who not only kicked off the whole affair but represents chaos and choice as well.
7. Check Your Lattitude
Here’s Freud, lookin saucy. The basic symmetry of RW, with those dashing military youths rather than the sphinxes. The Chariot’s imagery is, indeed, said to be Oedipal. The cosmos circling out from Freud’s head. Waite sez:
“He has led captivity captive; he is conquest on all planes--in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain trials of initiation. … He is above all things triumph in the mind. It is to be understood for this reason (a) that the question of the sphinx is concerned with a Mystery of Nature and not of the world of Grace, to which the charioteer could offer no answer; (b) that the planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself; (c) that the liberation which he effects may leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding; (d) that the tests of initiation through which he has passed in triumph are to be understood physically or rationally; and (e) that if he came to the pillars of that Temple between which the High Priestess is seated, he could not open the scroll called Tora, nor if she questioned him could he answer.”
“He has externalized all these phases of his mind and sees them only outside himself. This is his fundamental error. He entered the outer court of the Temple of knowledge, but thinks he has been in the Temple itself. He regarded the rituals of the first tests as initiation, and he mistook for the goddess, the priestess who guarded the threshold. Because of this misconception great perils await him. Nevertheless it may be that even in his errors and perils the Great Conception lies concealed. He seeks to know and, perhaps, in order to attain, mistakes, dangers and even failures are necessary.”
Sounds like Freud to me.
8. Strength
A still from “Lisa the Iconoclast.” I particularly love this one. In the episode, Lisa busts her little ass to uncover the shocking truth about her history -- only to realize that she doesn’t have to be destructive… “people need the myth too,” and there are other ways to go about it. So we see her -- her hair making her a fusion of the RW woman and lion -- poised as this higher golden alternative to the violent showdown between the cardboard-cutout of History and the shrouded silver tongue of Truth.
9. DaDa
Thinking about inside/outside and reciprocity. About DaDa and “outsider art.” About the need to share from beyond the border, but the eventual co-opting and mainstreaming. Give and take.
the rest will follow...
I used a mix of RW imagery, personal associations, and randomly found images (god bless serendipity and google image search). Text pulled is from books for that class. Regarding copyright: this deck is a study and shared in that spirit -- I have no intention of selling or reproducing these images.
Since I don’t have a site or tarot blog, I’m adding some notes as well.
cards 1-9: http://s84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/kill_time/deck/?action=view¤t=0784c60f.pbw
1. The Doctor
The caption for this picture outta rolling stone's memorial for him reads: "Hunter and his essentials: Motorcycle, booze, cigarette holder, guns." And that table, just like the Magician’s altar.
2. The Spy
A young Mata Hari culled from the internet and painted. She kind of inverts the RW imagery…the duality of those pillars is still there, but with negative space instead. She, in the middle, takes the emphasis.
3. The Greenhouse of Illusions
Photo by my friend, of a strange Southern Californian flower. Text about Mama Pilar’s brothel in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Imagination Cultivation. Women tending the primal completion, self-proliferation, timelessness, paradise, the walled garden.
4. Ceasar
Culled from the internet. Tying the traditional Emporer with Western Histor/iography.
5. Code Red
Yes, that is Charlton Heston dressed as Moses. Scanned from my Charlton Heston Presents The Bible book. He is accidentally reversed, but I think it’s funny so haven’t changed it back. What’s rollin down from the mountains. (and a nod to the song of same name) An apt Heston quote: "...We have to pass on to America in the 21st century the same Bill of Rights that those wise, old, dead white guys that invented this country passed on to us. ..."
6. The Lovers, With Eris Ascending
An old painting of Paris and Helen. Conjures all the connotations of temptation and choice while maintaining the lovers arc. But instead of the archangel, we have Eris -- who not only kicked off the whole affair but represents chaos and choice as well.
7. Check Your Lattitude
Here’s Freud, lookin saucy. The basic symmetry of RW, with those dashing military youths rather than the sphinxes. The Chariot’s imagery is, indeed, said to be Oedipal. The cosmos circling out from Freud’s head. Waite sez:
“He has led captivity captive; he is conquest on all planes--in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain trials of initiation. … He is above all things triumph in the mind. It is to be understood for this reason (a) that the question of the sphinx is concerned with a Mystery of Nature and not of the world of Grace, to which the charioteer could offer no answer; (b) that the planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself; (c) that the liberation which he effects may leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding; (d) that the tests of initiation through which he has passed in triumph are to be understood physically or rationally; and (e) that if he came to the pillars of that Temple between which the High Priestess is seated, he could not open the scroll called Tora, nor if she questioned him could he answer.”
“He has externalized all these phases of his mind and sees them only outside himself. This is his fundamental error. He entered the outer court of the Temple of knowledge, but thinks he has been in the Temple itself. He regarded the rituals of the first tests as initiation, and he mistook for the goddess, the priestess who guarded the threshold. Because of this misconception great perils await him. Nevertheless it may be that even in his errors and perils the Great Conception lies concealed. He seeks to know and, perhaps, in order to attain, mistakes, dangers and even failures are necessary.”
Sounds like Freud to me.
8. Strength
A still from “Lisa the Iconoclast.” I particularly love this one. In the episode, Lisa busts her little ass to uncover the shocking truth about her history -- only to realize that she doesn’t have to be destructive… “people need the myth too,” and there are other ways to go about it. So we see her -- her hair making her a fusion of the RW woman and lion -- poised as this higher golden alternative to the violent showdown between the cardboard-cutout of History and the shrouded silver tongue of Truth.
9. DaDa
Thinking about inside/outside and reciprocity. About DaDa and “outsider art.” About the need to share from beyond the border, but the eventual co-opting and mainstreaming. Give and take.
the rest will follow...