Happy Squirrel

[prog]

Zarf has finished all the trumps (major arcana) for his SVG tarot deck. PNG preview here.

Why don't I have any tarot-cardy icons? I guess because I'd have to pick one to start with.

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Fact you may not have known about me: During my fifth and final year of college, and for a little ways after graduation, I was deeply involved in the cartomancy aspect of tarot, to the point where I believed that I experienced something mystical through it (and also to the point where, ten years later, I can still easily summon the word "cartomancy"). I was also under a tremendous amount of stress and confusion from various sources. No doubt these were linked, but I don't think the relationship of the two is merely symptomatic: screwing around with the cards helped me get through that rough time. Typical story of someone lonely employing religion, really.

I left it behind around the time I reconnected with friends, the people I think of as my Maine tribe, a couple of years after graduation. As things stabilized, I reëvaluated my spiritual standing and found that the woo-woo was no longer part of it. The deck I used for all that, a Robin Wood Tarot I bought from Silo Seven in Bangor, was repurposed for a while as a Zarcana/Gnostica deck, but I eventually retired it in favor of the Aquarian Tarot's far more mellow and game-appropriate imagery.

I still have it, though, up on my game shelf, in its original, beat-up box. I don't regret going through that period, though for a long while before now I was hesitant to admit to it. Learning the tradition of tarot and all its elemental symbolism was a lot of fun, and I still enjoy seeing it used as a source of fantastic stories. (And I have long held a solid association between the four core Volity Games folks - prog, daerr, radiotelescope, jtroutman - and the four suit-elements. Though this sort of thinking was inspired as much by the comic The Invisibles as by anything else.)

Comments

[prog.livejournal.com]

I took out my deck to admire it for the first time in years, after writing this post. I find the royalty figures all especially beautiful. Love the outfits. (Though the Knight of Cups' shell-helmet-thing is kind of dopey lookin.)