shatterstripes

Best Baphomet cleavage ever.

we have met. I happen to know Alicia and you might even recognize me. but anyway, I just posted to say how much I appreciated both your setting out to make a transhumanist tarot deck and how well you have managed to do it.

also, to comment on this particular card...

the floating in mid-air in lotus position image appears so often in sf and fantasy art and in comics. I noticed it turning up a few years ago. it fascinates me.

in case you did not know if it, giving you a link to the most comprehensive English tarot deck on the 'net...

http://www.aeclectic.net

I think you would really like this deck:

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/moonprincess-himiko/details.shtml

I happen to have an art book with all the card images printed large size.

My initial intent was for it to be a much more jokey xenofetish affair, but somewhere in the middle of the first drawing it turned into a fairly serious transhumanist deck. And all the idle research I'd done in the past came bubbling back up...

I think the floating lotus probably started appearing in Western fantasy imagery soon after Indian religions began to suffuse into our culture in the sixties; I bet you could find it if you started looking through psychedelic posters. In this particular image I sort of have this intent of her being possibly supported by her tail; I need to tweak it a little to make it look like it's bearing weight instead of just dropping straight down.

I'm aware of Aeclectic - if you go look in the forum, you'll find a thread in the 'deck creation' area where I've been posting these images as they come to see what the reactions are. But thanks! I hadn't seen that particular deck in my browsing; it's pretty nice-looking.

I figured you would have heard of Aeclectic, but you can never assume.

also, I hadn't thought of the Devil as female, more androgynous.

I've missed more prominent sites in my research before!

The Devil's ending up female in this mostly because the default gender in this deck is female. I like drawing girls; there isn't really a deeper reason than that. I could dig into myth and metaphor and find justification (temptation of eve/lilith/deliberate inversions/cross-reference to completely non-christian myth/etc) which I've done a little bit now and then - but mostly I just thought it would be fun to draw a serene, pretty figure who really has no interest in human-scale things!