The Fool
Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne
Pat Reble. Perth, Western Australia.

I chose to represent The Fool as Winnie-the-Pooh because everyone’s life journey begins in childhood. Although we set out alone, we are accompanied by childhood tales and familiar toys. The Child Fool has a teddy bear companion. The very first deck I created portrayed The Fool as a teddy bear, so it is also a reference to my own journey through the Tarot and Tarot creation.

The Magician
Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
Keron Smith. Auckland, NZ

I have chosen Harry Potter as my inspiration for the Magician card.
I have incorporated symbols used in the card (yin yang symbol, the four elements, the wand) combined with familiar images that are associated with the films and books about Harry Potter.
I’ve achieved this by using collage, crayon and bitamen to express the alchemy, magic, creativity and spirit that is the Magician card.

The High Priestess
The Sybilline Oracles
Ronnie Wiblin. Huntly, NZ

The Sibyls occupy a conspicuous place in the traditions and history of ancient Greece and Rome. Their fame was spread abroad long before the beginning of the Christian era. The original Sibylline Books were closely-guarded oracular scrolls written by prophetic priestesses (the Sibyls) in the Etruscan and early Roman era as far back as the 6th Century BCE.
The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, and of female spiritual power, instinctual, and secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information, and she might reveal the secrets you need to know if you are ready to receive such information.

The Empress
The Homeric Hymns
Aileen Flynn. Vermont, Australia

Mother Earth – abundance flows from her as she moves within the moon cycles, transforming all around her by hard work, creativity and love.
“I will sing of well-founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly; all these are fed of her store. Through you, O Queen, men are blessed in their children and blessed in their harvests, and to you it belongs to give means of life to mortal men and to take it away. Happy is the man whom you delight to honour!
Hail Mother of the gods, wife of starry Heaven; freely bestow upon me for this is my song, substance that cheers the heart!” (Hymn to Mother Earth - Homer)

The Emperor
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Jason Dean. Sydney, Australia

In Heart of Darkness Mr. Kurtz is sent by The Company from the civilised world up a river into a remote primitive region to extract resources for profit. Tempted by the absolute power over primitive peoples, he turns to unconventional and immoral methods to work the locals to achieve quotas. Mr Kurtz’s world is hazy. The perpetual fog and his own mythic presence permeate the river region he controls. The fog is a device used to show how thin a layer civilisation is over our own primitive savagery.
The Emperor is performing a grand smoke and mirrors act as he hovers over his watery forest domain. The art of The Emperor is intentionally hazy and analogous to the fog in Heart of Darkness. His mask is a false image covering civilised society, while, ironically, civilisation is a thin veneer masking our own brutal savagery. The other devices The Emperor holds and wears add to his created mythology and are the means by which he wields his authority.
When this card’s influence is felt, it is time to assess your methods of approach to life. A harsh but fair attitude might be advised to deal with problems. Alternatively, it may be that you have been too stubbornly adhering to strict ideals.

The Hierophant
Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.
Louise Sadgrove. Auckland, N Z

The Hierophant is sometimes a Pope, sometimes a Centaur. The Hierophant is the teacher, the giver of knowledge that builds bridges between the unknown & the knowing. The Hierophant, although associated with religion, does not favour any particular religion, he favours your beliefs. He wants you to make connections between the earthly and the spiritual, the material & the natural.
The Hierophant is representative of those with limitations, wounded pasts & those with inner strength gained by suffering.
I have depicted the Hierophant as Ruth - as the Centaur, the link between the material human & the natural. I have depicted Ruth in her Graduation attire, to symbolize her endeavor to close the gap between the earthbound & the spiritual, a seeker of knowledge & the truth.
Susie’s death becomes the catalyst for Ruth discovering & then nurturing her sensitive aspect, noting all in her journal in her bid to understand what happened to Susie & why.
What I found most interesting in studying the link between The Lovely Bones & The Hierophant is the bridge that Susie & Ruth started to construct on their own side of reality in a bid to meet in the middle. I hope they got there.

The Lovers
Eros and Psyche by Lucius Aupelius (from The Golden Ass)
Fern Mercier. Auckland, NZ

Desire – that most ancient of gods – forces our destiny upon us. Eros is a god but also a sniveling child and a ravaging beast. His arrows of love charge us on a journey that opens us to our divinity (Beauty) and our animality (Beast), the ecstasy and the agony.
Eros and Psyche by Apuleius is a template of many of the great love stories in our western culture. It tells the dilemma of immortal Eros, that great life-force of desire falling in love with the human soul Psyche. It is she who must quest for her lover – she who carries the burden of this love. Their marriage rests on her capacity to complete seemingly impossible and overwhelming tasks.
The human Beauty has to learn to listen to her own beating heart and make choices that will reunite her with her Beast. The marriage between mortal and divine then results in the birth of a daughter called Voluptas - Pleasure.
My mother and father are the sweethearts on my Lovers Card.
Their love story is still as dynamic as it was in 1943. Their choices have had dramatic, tragic and fateful consequences that reverberate through our family’s successive generations.
As their eldest daughter, despite all the history – and maybe because of it – I willingly embrace the god’s designated name of Joy, as my own.

The Chariot
The Owl and The Pussycat by Edward Lear
Melanie J. Cook. Alexandra Hills, Brisbane, Australia

When I heard about this project my first thought was that I wanted to illustrate my favorite poem of all time – The Owl and the Pussycat. My daughter was thrilled too, because its’ also her poem. Although she was quite shocked when she discovered that I hadn’t asked for The Lovers, which was the card she thought they’d be perfect for. I thought they’d be perfect for The Chariot with their beautiful pea green boat being pulled by spiraling, foaming waves of seahorses, over the crest of a wave….that was a chariot if ever there was one!

“The pea green boat climbs over the waves,
The climb it isn't easy,
Seahorses strain, and buck their reins,
And Pussy-cat starts to feel queasy.
The Owl looks out over foam all around,
And whoooos to calm the horses
Seahorses respond to the tranquil sound.
And the boat she crests the wave,
The wave,
The wave.
And the boat she crests the wave.

The trick, says the owl to this ride of ours,
Is not to fight the squall,
Coax horses gently, and they'll pull our boat strongly,
Fight them and they'll stall.
They tumble and spiral, and flow with the waves,
And pull us safe to shore,
To shore,
To shore.
They pull us safe to shore.”

Justice
Pomera, a story from Stradbroke Dreamtime by Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker)
Helen A. Meinicke. Brisbane, Australia.

The high ideals of Justice demand the wisdom to accept Truth. Essentially, Justice represents fair-mindedness but often self-righteousness and lust override prudence.
Pomera barely fills a page but its poignancy echoes the philosophy of the everlasting Dreamtime. It arouses thought, as Justice should and offers insight into the poetical wisdom of Australian Indigenous Dreaming.
As a skillful hunter Pomera was well respected until he declared his love for a girl promised to another and his inappropriate intentions were met with surprise and outrage by tribal elders. Driven by a defiant passion, Pomera’s plans go horribly wrong and he kills the girl. After finding the bloodstained club the elders learn of the girl’s fate. Grief-stricken, they plea to Biami, their wise Guardian Spirit to bring the now remorseful Pomera to Justice and as punishment he is transformed into the Banksia. The tree and Pomera share parallel qualities; just as the handsome hunter provided well for his tribe, the nectar of the beautiful apetalous flowers supplies ample food for birds, possums, flying foxes, and insects.
On the card Pomera is depicted as the Banksia; a captive spirit with no promise to journey; his shame eternal. The hot colours symbolise both passion and bloodshed.
Any empathy towards Pomera doesn’t deny the tragic outcome of his brutal actions but perhaps, metaphorically speaking, his story of misguided passion serves to mirror mankind’s folly.

The Hermit
Envoy to Mirror City by Janet Frame
Catherine Ballantyne. Auckland, NZ

Janet Frame spent much of her early life guided from outside herself, with no appropriate feminine role models to fit the inordinately creative person she was. Her attempts to create an identity through more socially interactive means led to the adoption of disastrous masquerades, principally the masquerade as the mad genius, the schizophrenic.
Her misdiagnosis as mentally unwell, confirmed she could no longer hold to others’ view of herself and she found her own way to her internal Mirror City, a place where writers are free to create. This process starts in London but much occurs in Ibiza the place I see most when she talks of Mirror City - hence the background of the card. No snow covered mountain for this Hermit, but Ibiza in 1950s was a poor predominant Spanish-speaking place, giving her plenty of room for solitary exploration.
The 6-pointed star around her neck symbolises both the inner and outward direction. The inward hunt for Mirror City, the outward production of telling works of fiction. The purple centre represents her battle to find a feminine expression that also served her creativity.
The candle, illuminates the page on her typewriter. The typewriter is her staff, the thing she leans on to open her inner awareness. It also signifies her role as guide and teacher as it is through her writing that she opens us to expansive new worlds.

Media: silk-screened image on perspex. Acrylic paint.

The Wheel of Fortune
The Monk’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)
Claudia Pond Eyley. Auckland, NZ.

“I will bewail in manner of tragedy
The ills of those that stood in high degree
And fell so far there was no remedy
To bring them out of their adversity:
For certain ‘tis when fortune wills to flee,
There may no man, the course of her withhold:
Let no man trust in blind prosperity:
Be warned by these examples true and old.”

The Wheel of Fortune has fascinated me and addressed my art work as an artist for many decades. The theme of generational continuity through all ages and cultures is summed up by the enclosed quote by the English poet of the 14th century that human psychology and the Fates are for every age in this universe.
As an artist the constellations fascinate me in their richness in myth, philosophy, our histories through from ancient times. Here in the Southern Hemisphere I see the Southern Cross outside my bedroom window in the clearness of balmy summer nights. The richness of the celestial “Wheel of Fortune”

Strength
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Ben Scott. Korumburra, Victoria, Australia

Lucinda is pictured in her glassworks holding a ‘Prince Rupert Drop’. This is a teardrop shaped piece of glass that is seemingly unbreakable. It can withstand a blow from a sledge hammer and it will not break, however, if you squeeze the tail with a pair of pliers it will explode into thousands of pieces. I like the principal behind the Prince Rupert Drop. It suggests that sometimes we need to take a different approach to a situation. Sometimes a gentle persistence is required to achieve a desired result rather than brute force. Behind Lucinda is a leadlight window depicting a lion.
The metaphor of glass shows what fragile creatures we are, but, at times we are capable of great inner strength.
Oscar drew on his inner strength as he made his foolish journey across the outback with the glass church. Unfortunately, the journey took its toll on him and he is depicted here as fragile and broken as the glass church he is drowning in.
To me Strength is all about passion. It is when we are in touch with our life purpose that a great fire burns within us. This raging life-force is where we draw our great strength from.
It wasn’t until Lucinda lost her fortune to a bet and had to go and work in a factory that she found her passion and fought hard for workers rights.
What are you passionate about? When you truly embrace your passion you feel confident, clear in your direction, invincible!

Medium: collage (public domain), pen, pencil.

The Hanging Man
Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Bron Deed. Bethell’s Beach, NZ

My interpretation of this card combines symbols of suspension, gestation and internal processes of growth or creativity.
I based my ideas on Coleridge’s description of the imagination as “that willing suspension of disbelief that constitutes poetic faith”. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria translated his interior life into literature, a body of evidence of the internal gestation process of creativity that lies beneath finished artistic works.
The card replicates a botanical specimen from Coleridge’s period, showing papaver somniferum, the opium poppy that Coleridge was addicted to, which is a symbol of the workings of the unconscious world of dreams, reverie, fantasy and creativity.
Suspense can involve the anticipation of something yet to come, or it can be about the cessation of some thing or state. Within the chrysalis the caterpillar deconstructs its original form and metamorphoses into a new form. During this time it remains in suspended animation, alive and yet not. Sometimes we need to stay still, waiting in hope and faith for things to become clear, for mystery to become form.
This card encourages us to consider unlived potential, creating potential, and potency. My visual interpretation invites us to suspend disbelief about our potential selves.

Death
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Kaz Blenneerhassett. Auckland, NZ.

To me, the Death card represents the absolute end of a chapter in one’s life, and implicitly therefore – a new beginning!
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a book about a seagull who believes there is more to life than simply existing. Refusing to conform to the restricting life of the flock that has cast him out, he continues to pursue his ideas independently, learning more and more until eventually he has learnt all he can from his current life and must move on.
This card shows a solitary seagull (Jonathan) leaving behind the flock he no longer belongs to as he moves up and on towards the next stage in his life.
I have represented the flock as grey and static, symbolic of the uninspiring, limited present situation. In contrast, Jonathan (the 13th gull) is pure white and shown in full motion, propelled inevitably to leave behind this life that he has outgrown. As he ascends, the blue background tones increasingly lighten, to validate his faith in the promise of a brighter and better future ahead.
As the gulls in the book who escort Jonathan to the next world remark, “One school has finished, and the time has come for another to begin.”

Collage images on watercolour paper.

Temperance
An Angel At My Table by Janet Frame
Sarah McKenney. Auckland, NZ.

I am fascinated by the temperance card. When I looked up the word temperance in the dictionary it said; moderation, self restraint in speech, conduct, eating and drinking. In tarot temperance conveys more meaning than simply thoughts of self control and moderation. Some ideas associated with this card are mixing, combining and transformation. In the image the angel pours the essence of life from cup to cup. For me this card signifies healing. The angel is mixing up some medicine.
An Angel at my Table is part of Janet Frame’s autobiography which covers the lengthy period of time she spent incarcerated in mental hospitals. When a book she had written won a prize, she was given the proper care she needed and she was eventually released .It is a very moving and inspiring story. Janet Frame went on to become one of New Zealand’s most respected authors.
An Angel at My Table was also made into a film by Jane Campion.

The Devil
The Bible
Linde Rosenberg. Auckland, NZ.

In this card, I have reversed the usual Christian version of the devil, as the one who causes us to be bound by bodily and earthy sins, and looked instead at God’s punishing and shaming Adam and Eve by casting them out of Eden for challenging his authority, by eating the apple of the tree of knowledge (wanting to learn and grow), as a narcissistic response which has caused a great amount of suffering through repression of natural creativity.
(‘Evil’ as the reverse of ‘Live’).

The Tower
The Bible
Roisin Kearney. Auckland NZ

The story of the Tower of Babel (Babylon) is synonymous with traditional Tarot interpretations of the tower card.
The card I have created shows a dark, stark, foreboding landscape.
The skulls depict the old worn down concepts, false words, false ideas on which the tower is built.
The eye coming down from the heavens, casting light and colour on the scene, is the Eye of Horus bringing super-consciousness to the structure, tearing it apart with light.
The three Yods forming a triangle, fall from the eye directing a stream of Universal will and consciousness, destroying the tower.
The upside down purple triangle is sub-consciousness, the yellow triangle being self-consciousness, together with the eye descending, they form a perfect alchemical triangle.
Without the eye they are fallen.
The archway surrounding the tower is five sided, signifying the four corners of the Earth, the point at the top, the point of real power, the great I AM descending.
Colour emanating from the eye is red for pure life-force, orange for manifestation, yellow for will, and purple for the light of consciousness.
And so through grace, and only grace, our false structures and ideas about life are knocked over, and the light of consciousness illuminates our lives.
And although it can appear catastrophic, it is really a necessary liberation from bondage to outworn structures.

The Star
Manon des Sources by Marcel Pagnol. Film by Claude Berri
Mala Mayo. Auckland, NZ.

After the treachery of the neighbours, who by blocking a spring turned Manon’s family land into a wasteland; leading to the death of her father Jean de Florette and the loss of her family home and land, Manon spends several healing years in the hills as a goatherd.
On finding out that the people of the village had known about the spring and done nothing, her fury is aroused and she seeks retribution by secretly blocking the spring feeding the village water supply and fountain.
Recognising their ills are connected to the wrong done to Manon and her family, villagers ask her to pardon them by joining a procession through the drought stricken fields and praying with them for the return of the water. They place in her their hope for a miracle. Manon, at first reluctant, agrees, then secretly unblocks the spring with the help of a young man, allowing the water to return.
This story has resonances with myths of the Well Maidens and the Holy Grail. It is also an important lesson for our time, that when nature is exploited everyone suffers. Even the green New Zealand pastures shown here can become a wasteland unless we individually and collectively learn to act in accord with nature and the heavens.

The Moon
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Samar Ocean Wolf Ciprian. Auckland, NZ.

My Moon is a visual reconstruction of how I experienced The God of Small Things. An icy arm floated out of the bowels of the book and choked me with fear and grief. The danger of a woman's unfettered sexuality was the most powerful and personal theme to me.
I was also captivated by the pickle factory's imagery. Badly packaged jars, dripping oil, expanding moldy mango chutneys and peeling labels. The compartmentalization of everyone and everything echoed by these awkward parochial vessels.
The task of photography and nudity was to make the story real to the viewer. The inverted naked woman represents the character of Amu on a surface level, and more deeply shouts of the drowning of all the characters, the subdued immersion of women and the collapse of the feminine through death and murder. The drowning motif is strong in the book, and marries well with the moon's personal medicine of shadows, madness and grappling for truth in the dark.
The woman's luminous skin is torn by the jagged edges of the cut jars and pieces of her start to fill them. The juxtaposition of the two elements conveys the depth and breath of 'shame-drowning' and subsequent loss of self.

The Sun
Maui and the Sun - Maori Legend
Lyn and Scott Olds. Auckland, NZ.

It seems fitting that a deck with origins in New Zealand should contain some works that represent New Zealand’s Maori culture.
Traditional meanings of The Sun card include: joy, happiness, success, satisfaction, accomplishment, triumph, confidence and vitality.
In Maui and the Sun, a traditional Maori folk tale, each one of these qualities is realised.

Maui and his brothers were not happy that the sun raced across the sky each day leaving only a few hours of daylight for the villagers to enjoy. A clever plan was devised and Maui and his brothers trapped the sun, and - in return for his release - the sun promised to travel more slowly across the sky. To this day we all enjoy extended hours of daylight.

Notes on the card: The sun image is a chalk and pastel work depicting the sun from the Maui and the Sun myth. It is the work of my son who was at the time learning about Maori myths and legends in school. He was five years old. As reference is sometimes made to children with The Sun card, it seemed appropriate to use art work of a child. The original work was photographed and subsequently manipulated using Photoshop.

Judgement
Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
Steven Mark Ciprian. Auckland, NZ.

I wanted to make a piece that people would judge. I also wanted to use a story that had a lot of judgement running through it. I felt that Of Mice and Men conveyed this on many levels, none more so than the fact that Lenny was judged i.e. he was considered to be an idiot. I feel that Judgement, like the zodiac sign of Libra, has two sides to it, and this can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have in balance. Hence, I used half yin and half yang energies of male and female on my piece, which I also believe each one of us has. I also wanted to use caricatures of 'perfect' maleness and femaleness. This came about from the fact that society, as in the book, judges us primarily on our exteriors. I also sat them on traditional male/female colors, pink and blue. These were mirror images of each other. The typeface used is 'Federal Reserve', and is the same typeface used on American currency. This I did, because money/power can in a lot of instances influence the outcomes of certain judgements, i.e. people who are percieved to have more money are treated differently from those who are perceived to have less money. Again, this was another strong theme in John Steinbeck's novel.
My hope for this piece is that the viewer makes judgements and then realizes that they have made a judgement.

The World
The Adventures of Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Lynda Robinson. Adelaide, Australia

Alice in Wonderland is a story of a dream full of adventure, the unexplained and hidden gifts and so is my card. The expansive sky, representing endless possibility, surrounds and enfolds all. It’s a beautiful day and with it comes a sense of satisfaction with how things are and what has been achieved. Life is full of joy, laughter and good company. Good fortune reigns and all are blessed.
The card reflects a fulfilled beautiful life with the elements, earth, the flowers, air, the sky, fire, the clock and water included. The lotus brings harmony and balance between the inner and the outer worlds. There are pairs of swans, cups, and hibiscus flowers representing the opposites that drive life and its mystery. The result is balanced and perfect in it’s revelation, if we take the time to look. The teapot is my rabbit hole that started the story as well being part of the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
Maybe, each time you look, something else will be revealed.