{"id":867,"date":"2006-08-29T01:00:14","date_gmt":"2006-08-29T00:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=867"},"modified":"2007-01-29T12:41:45","modified_gmt":"2007-01-29T12:41:45","slug":"the-major-arcana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/08\/29\/the-major-arcana\/","title":{"rendered":"The Major Arcana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/pantechnicon\/tarot.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/08\/tarot.jpg\" id=\"image866\" alt=\"tarot.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tarot designs proliferate at a seemingly unstoppable pace (you can see a selection of them <a href=\"http:\/\/trionfi.com\/0\/i\/c\/ALL-78\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>) so it&#8217;s probably fair to say that the world doesn&#8217;t need more of them. However, most modern designs are pastiches or fantasy-oriented works that tend towards an elaboration even more baroque than some of the older designs. My <a href=\"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/pantechnicon\/kabbalah.html\"><em>As Above, So Below<\/em><\/a> poster was an earlier attempt at presenting traditional occult schematics in a modern setting. The challenge with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/pantechnicon\/tarot.html\">this Tarot design<\/a> was to try and create a Major Arcana set using nothing but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aiga.org\/content.cfm?ContentAlias=symbolsigns\" target=\"_blank\">international symbol pictograms<\/a> or dingbat sets. It succeeds for the most part although I had to cheat a couple of times (creating a light bulb from scratch, for instance) and it&#8217;s debatable how recognisable these cards would be without their labels. I was following the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thoth_Tarot\" target=\"_blank\">Aleister Crowley scheme<\/a> that renames a few of the cards, and some of his designs, especially The Aeon which replaces The Last Judgment, are rather resistant to simplification.<\/p>\n<p>I would have uploaded this to a new CafePress shop as a poster design but their servers don&#8217;t seem to like my big jpegs just now. Maybe later.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> It finally uploaded. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/modernarcana\" target=\"_blank\">This is the shop<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tarot designs proliferate at a seemingly unstoppable pace (you can see a selection of them here) so it&#8217;s probably fair to say that the world doesn&#8217;t need more of them. However, most modern designs are pastiches or fantasy-oriented works that tend towards an elaboration even more baroque than some of the older designs. My As &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/08\/29\/the-major-arcana\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Major Arcana&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4,16,23],"tags":[391,2211,552],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-design","category-occult","category-work","tag-aleister-crowley","tag-cafepress","tag-tarot"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-dZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}