Art Tarotscope for 2025

New Years is a time for reflection and prediction. This year I found an interesting take on looking forward into 2025 with Hyperallergic's Art Tarotscope by AX Mina.

Hyperallergic’s tarotscope series is a combination of tarot with astrology, a reading for the collective readership combined with cards for the major astrological signs, grouped by their elemental associations, developed by AX Mina, producer for Five and Nine, a podcast about magic, work and economic justice. These tarotscopes have a special focus on the arts and creative practice, for each solstice and equinox, to mark the turning of the seasons.

The winter solstice sets into the northern hemisphere during a time of metaphorical winter around the world. Mars has entered retrograde, and we see just a few more days left of the Strength Year (in the tarot system) before giving way to the Hermit Year. Let this hermit energy guide you, for winter is a time of slowing down and storing energy for us mammals as we prepare for more energetic days to come.

This season’s tarotscope is read using the Mixed Signals Tarot, designed by artist M Eilo.  These readings were drawn during a mild Brooklyn morning at the start of the retrograde, in this 12th month of the Strength Year (in the tarot system) and 11th month of the Dragon Year (in the East Asian lunar system).

Many stones have emerged in this reading. In this deck, they are like the pentacles, but drawn to more explicitly represent the earth. In last season’s reading, we learned of “big and transformative energies in the collective air,” and now the larger message is to find grounding. For this winter solstice, we read with the Seed Root Garden spread, developed by Dorothy R. Santos and Xiaowei R. Wang, as we look toward the new year.

Cards drawn and the corresponding signs can be read here.

 

 

 

The Tower Card Comes Up in My Election Readings

No matter how many times I shuffle the tarot cards, the Tower card comes up in the reading indicating cataclysmic change, a bolt from the blue, a shock. Needless to say, this makes me uneasy to see it so many times.

The appearance of the Tower card has happened over the span of weeks as I occasionally read for the upcoming 2024 election. I don't profess to be always accurate in my readings. Sometimes we "push" the cards, "wish" the cards or find that the cards reveal our own anxieties that don't reflect reality. So the appearance or reappearance of certain cards could be something emanating from our nervous energies rather than from a predictive occurrence. I would like to think that this is so.

The other thing I see in the tarot readings for the election is that the results won't be decided for a while with the appearance of the Hanged Man card.

I hope I am wrong about both.

Vanderbilt's Fortune Teller

Who knew that Cornelius Vanderbilt relied on a fortune teller to guide him? All was revealed at the reading of his will.

In his opening statement over the dispute of railroad tycoon “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt’s will, attorney Scott Lord proclaimed that Vanderbilt was “a believer in spiritualism” and “clairvoyance and was governed by its revelations.” Lord argued that these beliefs, among other “impairments,” rendered Vanderbilt susceptible to undue influence towards the end of his life while drafting his will. The will allocated the majority of Vanderbilt’s massive fortune to his eldest son, William Henry Vanderbilt, with comparatively modest sums going to the rest of the heirs. The claims of supernatural intervention brought the name of a well-known 19th-century fortune teller, Madame Morrow, into the contentious court battle between William and his siblings.

Read all about it in the book Mortimer and the Witches

Under the pseudonym Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P. B., humor writer Mortimer Thomson went undercover to investigate and report on the fortune tellers of New York City’s tenements and slums. When his articles were published in book form in 1858, they catalyzed a series of arrests that both scandalized and delighted the public. But Mortimer was guarding some secrets of his own, and in many ways, his own life paralleled the lives of the women he both visited and vilified. In Mortimer and the Witches, author Marie Carter examines the lives of these marginalized fortune tellers while also detailing Mortimer Thomson’s peculiar and complicated biography.

ChatGPT Has An Opinion on Tarot

ChatGPT is a free Artificial Intelligence software where you can ask questions and a computer will give you an answer. I was intrigued and wanted to see how it might handle a question on tarot. So I asked the question: What do you think is the best tarot card deck currently available and why?

As an AI language model, I do not have personal opinions or preferences, but I can provide some information on popular tarot card decks and their unique features.

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is one of the most popular and widely used tarot card decks. It was created by artist Pamela Colman Smith and published in 1909, and its images and symbols have become iconic in the world of tarot. The deck consists of 78 cards, with 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards divided into four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles).

Another popular deck is the Thoth Tarot, created by Aleister Crowley and artist Lady Frieda Harris in the 1940s. This deck features vibrant, complex images and symbols that draw from multiple spiritual and philosophical traditions. The Thoth Tarot also includes 78 cards, with 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards divided into four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Disks).

The Tarot of Marseille is another classic deck that has been used for divination and spiritual guidance for centuries. This deck originated in France in the 17th century and features simple, elegant designs and symbols. The Tarot of Marseille consists of 78 cards, with 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards divided into four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Coins).

Ultimately, the best tarot card deck for you will depend on your personal preferences and intuition. It's important to choose a deck that speaks to you and resonates with your own unique spiritual journey.

The Tarot Garden

Artist Niki de Saint Phalle has created a magnificent Tarot Garden with mosaic sculptures that represent the Major Arcana.

Situated in the Italian village of Capalbio, it started in the late nineteen-seventies when Saint Phalle had a vision to create mosaic representations of the tarot. What Saint Phalle, who died in 2002, left behind in Tuscany is, according to the New Yorker magazine, "dazzling or deranged, transcendent or tawdry, depending on whom you ask. Amid peaceful olive groves and ochre fields grazed by horses and sheep sits a house-size sculpture of a sphinx, with mirrored blue hair and a bright-red crown, a flower blooming on one of her breasts and a lavender heart on the nipple of the other. The interior is covered in shards of mirror, as if a colossal disco ball had been turned inside out. (During the two decades that Saint Phalle worked on the garden, her bedroom was inside one breast, her kitchen in the other.) A sprawling, fantastical castle, with a rainbow mosaic tower, sits near a blue head some fifty feet high, sprouting a second, mirrored head crowned by a huge hand. Downhill, the Devil stands amid some shrubs, a rainbow-winged hermaphrodite with a sweet face, womanly hips, and three gold penises. It is as if a psychedelic bomb had exploded in the most picturesque part of Tuscany."

For me, it would be something amazing to see!