This is the first in a series of 78 renders which I will do over the next couple of years, its my own personal interpretation of a Tarot deck, I am doing a rough mixture of the Rider-Waite tarot deck and the Thoth deck, mainly dominated by the Thoth which I am the most used too; having used it for years to do readings.
This first card is the Queen Of Discs, or the Queen of Pentacles in the Rider and Queen of Disks in the Thoth…
I’d rather play 52 pickup or war with a tarot deck instead of actually doing readings with them, but I have no control over what is essencially your work, you do tend to know Luxrender well.
Any reason you’re into occult related stuff, you already have the image of that globe thing, do these readings you do even work?
Thanks for looking Cyborg Dragon tho it sounds like you are offended by this render, interesting…
The Tarot is not about predicting the future as most people seem to think, it is about studying how we form meaning based on systems of archetypes.
In a Jungian system the mind is based on archetypes not behaviors.
The system of the Tarot has evolved over 100s of years and I would look to it first for real insight into the mind, not less mature systems that seek to solidify the ego.
When I show someone a card how they draw meaning from it provides a map into the structure of their mind. I help them understand that, if it happens to match the future it is because we form our own futures subconsciously.
The subconscious mind does not speak in word but in symbols, this is one way to access it.
So when you ask a question like “do these readings you do even work” I guess I need you to define what you mean by “work.”
As to the reason I am into “occult” related stuff, my goal is to gain enlightenment which is the hardest thing a person can do, being a billionaire or leader or some other social success metric is easy, too easy, nothing else is good enough.
Gaining enlightment, well there’s more than one way people say that can be achieved.
Take meditation for instance, some people try to do it for different reasons, and some don’t try to do it like a Buddhist monk because the lotus position is virtually impossible to get comfortable in for most people.
Then there’s me at a time when things were in such a way that allowed Dragon memories to surface, but I was laying in bed and it helped any enroaching thoughts to muddle the Dragon memories was kept out by by the little drain noise our jacuzzi behind my room’s wall was making.
I could ramble on and on, I found before that for me getting into a meditative state is nearly impossible for me, so I don’t bother with meditation, even when I tried I wasn’t going ‘Olm’ or chanting in sanskrit, in fact when a lot of otherkin meditate they don’t do that stuff either.
I think the Dragon is a Kundalini metaphor and always has been, both in terms of Egyptian and Hindu culture, but also in the coded alchemical traditions and later Masonry, the core of dormant energy at the base of the spine is awakened and fills the body with “light” taking the spiral form of the snake and forming into the hood of the cobra around the head, clearly the Celtic tradition also but we have lost so much of this after the Roman empire etc, but the universal constant is mapping this into “Qi” energy flows inside the body.
So you can meditate on your own “energy” via even martial arts training etc, really seated meditation while very useful for clear light kinds of things, Ie, non-attachment observation of thought etc I am personally in the camp that thinks that enlightenment is a full body process and can’t be attained by seated meditation anymore then it can by some kind of magic rune or siddha power or great insight, however the path itself is full of detail.
But from me the deeper truth is the dream logic, dream language of the universe, which to me the Tarot speaks in.
I see human culture as organic not mechanical thus I think evolution is at work in terms of idea sets and the Tarot is one of those things, I think complex systems emergence is far smarter then our liner rational fact gathering so in part the Tarot is a exploration of a data set that could never have been constructed by a regular human, its something that can be explored, visited and mined again and again…
Thus making it fine-art.
But we both know enlightenment is beyond form and non-form, meditation and non-meditation, etc as the heart sutra states.
From what I know trying to achieve enlightment in the manner you’re trying to put it I’ve heard before of warnings from people of faith it’s very dangerous.
By resorting to this occult related stuff I (or pretty much anyone) would risk harassment by spirits, possesion, and a possible host of other things, it’s definately not something I’m willing to go into as the dangers I have heard are simply too great to attempt for me to wade through these sort of things.
Cyborg Dragon, I agree, a author named Gopi Krishna wrote a great book about his experiences, he almost went totally insane, everyone he asked about it said the experience should be blissful but had never experienced it themselves heh, this is why you do Mahamudra practice or study Zen for years first or some system that allows you to control your attachments to sense impression/meaning clusters, otherwise its like trying to clean a house with a fire-hose. It lights up whatever is in your mind, so you see Jesus or The Buddha or Demons etc, whatever is the closest template the mind can find for a experience it has no reference points for. The ancent system of Chinese Qigong is one expection to this however and using it these circulations can be done safely, the problem with Kundalini etc is that it forces the gates in the spine open rather then unlocking them like Tibetian Vajrayana or Qigong, but its also much quicker. <handwaving>
When you say “people of faith” I assume you mean born again Christians, I have had many conversations about the Tarot with born again’s and have never made much progress in overcoming what I view as a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the Tarot. I am a practicing Buddhist so I don’t need to fear spiritual attack the way a occultist would
TKR101010, thanks for looking the rainbow on the back wall is produced by varying the thickness of a thin film coating on a mirror also there is a slight bump map, the kanji is roughly “Carbon Flux” in sort of Japanese, I hired someone to paint it for me years ago and he was skeptical if he could really translate it correctly but he said this was his best attempt, its from a scan of the brush painting he did, I use it to sign my renders
Carbonflux and Cyborg Dragon: I don’t think these renders violate any of our rules, but if you want to continue to discuss the merits of different belief systems I’m going to have to ask you to do so via PM. Kudos on keeping the discussion civil so far, but it still counts as a violation of the “no-religion” rule.
Good eyes spotting the Rose Cross, the Thoth decks have it on the back.
PlantPerson, very sorry, my goal with these renders is to produce a “art deck” so I have no desire to get into religious contexts with this or make a religious point. I view the Tarot as a historic psychological tool and a framework for doing surreal art. My mistake, it won’t happen again.
Nyrath, yes, tho some debate here if they are really correct heh, I am using the Book Of Thoth and The Pictorial Guide to the Tarot by Waite as rough symbol guides, part of what I am doing is also trying to make loose matches to Chinese five element theory in relation to acupuncture, so in this case I think the hexagram is ok, mountain over lake is how I think of it. Another difference is I am doing all the cards forward facing at a flat angle like a Thanka painting. What I like about relating a hexagram is how they can all be seen as transitions between elements.
