The Mercurial Fool

Without reiterating too much of what those familiar with the tarot will know already, and what anyone can discover with a quick web search, I’d like to say a little about my illustration for trump 0. Any standard definition of the meaning of the fool will talk about the combination of childlike innocence with an intuitive wisdom, about the start of spiritual journeys and their cyclical endings. The fool is to many the quintessential tarot trump, even more so than the final trump, The World, as it contains within it the potential for all the other cards. The world gazes back at us from the end of the major arcana, omniscient and omnipresent but the fool is so much more relatable. It’s a very human card and yet it contains the seed of the godhead. It’s the seed for the entire oracle in fact, it’s nothing at present, a present of the future. In the Rider-Waite illustration, and many others the fool has a feather in his cap, a classic thespian token symbolising lightness of spirit, gaiety and the tricksters’ nature. This got me thinking about birds in general, animals I’ve always felt an affinity for as my father is a keen ornithologist and I grew up surrounded by spotters’ guides and other illustrated textbooks on avian life. I conceived the first three trumps almost all at once and from then on things got a lot more difficult! 

In an earlier illustration for a deck I never finished I took a more traditional composition and replaced the fools knotted pack with a feather on a string, their belongings were literally as light as air. They carried nothing with them but the world followed in subservience. I replaced the dog (or cat) at their heels with the snake of wisdom. Their body was a precarious skeleton, their head a cracking egg, a visual juxtaposition and an oroboros of sorts. 

It was a busy image, I liked it at the time but the Mercurial deck needed to be more concise. So the cracking egg and the feather remain, in an almost naturalistic composition. The nest in which it rests is precarious too, echoing the looming cliff edge we are familiar with. I kept the ten rays of the sephirot although in a simplified form. They divide the cosmos and also create a focal point, mirroring the world card waiting at the end of the journey. The egg itself is pure and blind, knowing nothing but containing immense potential. The drip of albumen escaping echoes a single tear, the pain of wisdom at the eternal joke of life! 

As I said I conceived the first three trumps together and they continue and enhance this narrative thread. So on to the Magician next.

In the court of the Mercurial King pt.II

Water is the symbol and element of cups. The cups hold water and the cards offer a way to comprehend the Mercurial element but in my depiction the water is free to understand itself, contained perhaps only by surface tension. The subconscious of course can only really be understood through a translation of the most primal communion. Before intent and long before action. Any words or images which may appear are merely shadows cast by the intellect. Turning to look at them eclipses the message with the self… damn that’s ether pretty deep or just complete waffle.. Anyway the shape is a circle or sphere. I decided not to use a downward pointing triangle in order to keep the shapes more visually diverse. I wanted a curved edge for the water element as this is intuitively more receptive and sensual. It’s the shape of a single droplet in a vacuum. A circle has infinite degrees of symmetry and its edge is an irrational number with infinite digits and yet it has only one center and a finite radius which define these infinities. What better shape to contemplate the ever comprehensive but ultimately unknowable depth of the human subconscious?

Stone is the symbol I’ve used for the court cards of the pentacles, the arcane currency, governed by the earth element. Stone is the body of the earth, the mother of us all, the chapel and the tomb, the mountain and the cave. At all stages of life we use it as if it is our own flesh, as if we have complete dominion over it but we are merely a secretion over its eternal surface. Like metal stone appears constant but is really always in transition and exists in many states. The earth element, in the tarot, is often used to depict the practical matters of life, the things we regard as solid and constant but which carry a perceived emotional benefit. These are passed among us as currency, wealth, gifts and possessions. It is the external world which can be regarded or disregarded. I like to see it as an organism we are all part of, we form its internal systems but we can never hope to comprehend its intentions. In that regard could be called God and it is always both alive and dead.

In many traditional tarot decks the Emperor sits on a cube which represents the ordered universe. A solid, comprehensible structure. A cube will always land flat and ready for another cube to be placed on top.

By connecting the center of each face of a cube you can create its dual polyhedron, a regular octahedron which is a 3D representation of the shape I’ve used for the metal court cards. Connecting the vertices of a cube across the diagonals of each face and combining these lines with the edges of the octahedron creates two intersecting tetrahedra, the 3D representation of fire and water elements combined and of the star of David.  

In tarot the devil perches on a rectangular solid, the universe halved, incomplete, but in that state dynamic. Circles do not tessellate, they must be overlapped in order to cover a plane but squares do so perfectly without overlapping. In this way our internal worlds cannot be brought together without them merging and losing something of themselves, becoming a new region. But our external worlds are always perfectly connected, whether or not we chose to be aware of it, while remaining entirely separate. We cannot live without affecting those around us and we cannot live without the support of the structure as a whole. If you think this may not be true then you are only including humans in your mental picture! The blocks can stack perfectly.. but then that leaves little room to move. Its human nature to upset the balance sometimes.

In the court of the Mercurial King

I’ll start with the Court cards or Royals since someone asked me about them recently and they are possibly the most obtuse re-imagining of the traditional imagery of tarot. Though some purely geometric and abstract decks have been created, since my cards are monochrome, they may appear quite stark to some. The forms I’ve used are based on a synthesis of thought from many different sources over many years. Many rivers dabbled in but nothing too scholarly really. According to my holistic leaning on human psychology, as much as I find any doctrine fascinating, I always jump ship before the hooks sink too deep. Sacred geometry, kabbalistic symbols, the i’ching, modern psychological theory (vaguely), prehistoric cave paintings and pre-Judeo-christian sacred architecture were all buzzing around my head as I attempted to create diagrammatic stories which were intuitive for me.

So let's break it down. The central or dominant shape represents the traditional element for that suit. I chose each shape based on the properties of its construction and its historical context. That shape then undergoes a transformation and interaction with the other elements through the four stages represented by the Page, Knight, Queen and King.

An alchemical symbol chosen for each suit is incorporated into the design as well and is repeated according to the sequence 1-4 showing how at each stage of the transformation the pure element remains intact, though no single phase should be considered representative of that element primus.

I’ll go into an overview of each suit now and tackle each card individually and the narrative between them later.

Wood is the symbol I've chosen for the suit of fire, the wands. In many ways the creative "fire" represented by this suit is experienced through its fuel. If this force is a primal energy as described by many scholars of tarot then we only experience it AS its fuel. It consumes us as we draw light and warmth from it. The shape is an upward pointing equilateral triangle; also the alchemical symbol for the element of fire and one half of the star of David which represents this primal creative energy. As the shape of the great pyramids it stands as a monument to the ultimate transition of energy from life into death. As a three sided shape resting on one edge it is incredibly stable though intuitively dynamic as it has an odd number of rotational symmetries. I see this as a neat analogue for the creative force as I understand it, something like the the geometrical equivalent of the phrase “The only constant is change”. Of course there are many other shapes that could say that but they don’t have the other historical baggage.

Steel is the symbol I've used for the swords governed by the element "air". A counter intuitive pairing at first but the intellect which this suit exemplifies is rife with contradictions. Certainly, swords in the tarot are more often held aloft than thrust into flesh but I think the relevance of this pairing is better understood through the chemistry of metal, especially an alloy like steel. As hard and heavy as it often appears it is really a malleable and transitional material. It can exist in many states but it takes force and energy to change between them. When we're young the fire element is high and the metal of the mind is basically molten and changing quickly. But as we age it gradually cools and hardens into set patterns and habits. It requires more energy to get it flowing again. Depending on events in your life and your own perspective your mind can anneal gradually into a flexible state, one that can bend to cope with impact, or it can be quenched quickly onto a sharp but brittle edge.. anyway thats probably about as far as I can stretch that metaphor! The shape I've used on these court cards is a diamond constructed from two equilateral triangles. This references the alchemical symbols for fire and for water and combines them but does not overlap them. Air is the element of the intellect. In my interpretation much of eastern philosophy depicts a smart person as drawing from the creative, spontaneous parts of their personality as well as the introspective and deeper emotions while letting neither fully govern their will and allowing a greater logic to take the upper hand in any altercation. The center of the diamond on the join between the fire and water elements so is contained by nether. It is a very rigid shape also and reminiscent of the kind of crystal structures contained by hardened metal. It rests on one vertex however so is not stabilized by contact with the earth, only by its own rigidity. I could see this character forming from the shape, rolling up onto its point in order to gain height and superiority at the cost of some stability.

.. now, in the interest of me not getting fed up with this blog before its even started I'll leave water and stone 'till later. Thanks for reading. TBC