New Tarot themed tools for my arsenal

I got two new tarot tools to play with from Ollie's of all places!

Here’s a short summary of The History of Tarot Art: Demystifying the Art and Arcana, Deck by Deck by Esther Joy Archer & Holly Adams Easley:

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The History of Tarot Art is a beautifully crafted and richly illustrated book that takes readers through the evolution of Tarot imagery from its Renaissance origins to modern, expressive new decks. The authors strike a great balance between visual beauty and historical insight, making the complex story of Tarot art both accessible and inspiring.

Some highlights:

• It begins with early decks like the Visconti Tarot and the Sola-Busca, then moves through classic decks like the Tarot de Marseille, Rider-Waite-Smith, and Thoth. (Theosophical Society in America)

• The book pays attention not just to the art itself but to who made it, and why—including female artists whose contributions haven’t always been recognized. (The Quarto Group)

You get large, vivid illustrations, a timeline of Tarot’s development, removable cards (Sola-Busca Major Arcana), and even guidance for doing readings. These extras make it more than a mere history—it’s practical, engaging, and visually sumptuous. (The Quarto Group)

There’s also a strong sense of how Tarot art reflects its time: stylistic shifts, cultural changes, increasing attention to inclusivity (in terms of gender, race, identity). Readers get a sense that Tarot art is alive, evolving. (The Quarto Group)

 

Overall, it’s a rewarding read for anyone interested in both art and Tarot—whether you’re curious about the origins of Tarot, a collector of decks, or someone who uses Tarot in a spiritual or symbolic way. If you like, I can also pull out a few of my favorite quotes or cards from the book.

Virgo ♍ & Tarot

Drafted this and forgot to post it! So sorry guys!

Step into my season! I was born on the 24th. Tarot and Virgo share a deep, analytical, and earthy connection. When working with tarot during Virgo season (roughly August 23 – September 22), or if you’re reading for someone with Virgo placements, you’re tapping into themes of discernment, refinement, service, healing, and detail-oriented growth.

♍️ Virgo Energy in Tarot

Ruled by Mercury

Like Gemini, Virgo is ruled by Mercury, the planet of thought, communication, and intellect. But where Gemini spreads ideas widely, Virgo refines, edits, and applies knowledge with care.

Element: Earth

Virgo is grounded in reality. Practical. Somatic. Tarot readings during this time benefit from attention to the body, rituals, health, work routines, and self-care systems.

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🔮 Tarot Cards Associated with Virgo

The Hermit (Major Arcana IX)

• Directly ruled by Virgo.

• Represents solitude, inner wisdom, contemplation, and spiritual refinement.

• Virgo’s tendency to retreat, reflect, and perfect is mirrored in the Hermit’s lantern-lit path.

Eight of Pentacles

• Symbolizes mastery through repetition, diligent craft, and meticulous attention to detail—all Virgo hallmarks.

• A great card to meditate on when building skills or a healing practice.

Queen of Pentacles (sometimes connected)

• Embodies nurturing earth energy, focused on health, home, and practicality.

• When viewed through a Virgoan lens, she’s the herbalist, the healer, the grounded caretaker who keeps everything running.

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🕯️ Virgo Tarot Themes to Explore

• What needs organizing, refining, or cleaning in your life?

• How can you better serve others without self-sacrificing?

• Where can you apply more mindful discipline or sacred routine?

• What truths can you find in quietude and simplicity?

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🃏 Virgo Season Tarot Spread (5 Cards)

1. What am I being called to purify or edit?
2. What daily ritual will nourish me?
3. How can I better serve my community or loved ones?
4. What wisdom is emerging from solitude?
5. What part of me is ready to be revealed and refined?

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🖋 Artist’s Prompt

Create a collage or painting of the Hermit figure in a garden, study, or apothecary. Let Virgo’s energy shape your brushstrokes—careful, intentional, clean. Use dried herbs, pressed flowers, or old paper to symbolize study and growth. Write in the margins:

“I heal myself by tending to what is small and sacred.”

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The Lions Gate Portal August 8th

The Lion’s Gate Portal is a powerful energetic window that peaks each year on August 8th (8/8), when the Sun is in Leo, the star Sirius rises in the sky, and Earth aligns with the galactic center. This portal is revered in both astrological and metaphysical traditions as a time of awakening, abundance, transformation, and activation of higher consciousness.

When paired with tarot, the Lion’s Gate becomes a divination gateway—an ideal moment to access spiritual insight, purpose-alignment, ancestral memory, and soul evolution.

🦁 Lion’s Gate Portal x Tarot

Themes of the Portal:

* Heart-centered courage

* Manifestation of soul desires

* Past-life memory & DNA activation

* Spiritual abundance and divine purpose

* Solar empowerment and divine masculinity

This is not a gentle time—it’s **bold, radiant, and magnetic**. Tarot readings during Lion’s Gate should **invite expansion, burn away fear, and summon the truth of your soul**.

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🔮 Tarot Cards Resonating with Lion’s Gate Energy

💪🏿 Strength (Major Arcana VIII)

* Ruled by Leo, and often associated with the number 8.

* She tames the lion not with dominance but with inner power, compassion, and courage.

* This card is a portal itself—**from survival to sovereignty**.

🌞 The Sun

* The ruling planet of Leo.

* Celebrates joy, clarity, self-expression, and the divine child.

* It invites you to stand in your truth **without shame or armor**.

🪄  The Magician

* As Sirius rises, so does your ability to channel divine energy into form.

* The Magician asks: What tools are already in your hands? Are you ready to create?

Judgement

* Lion’s Gate is a spiritual activation. Judgement is a call to rise, to step into your higher calling.

* Think of this as a soul trumpet announcing your arrival into the next version of yourself.

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## 🃏 Lion’s Gate Tarot Spread (6 Cards)

1. What am I being called to step into?

2. What fear or limitation is ready to be burned away?

3. Where is my inner strength already thriving?

4. What divine gift am I ready to activate?

5. How can I shine more boldly in the world?

6. Message from Sirius / my star ancestors / higher self

Optional: Pull an oracle card or final tarot clarifier as a blessing or activation key.

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🖋 Artist's Prompt

Create a collage or painting of Strength with a lion made of stars and flame, and a woman woven from sunlight.

In her eyes: power without cruelty.

In her hands: keys, orbs, a mirror.

Write in gold ink:

“I remember who I was before the world told me to be small.”

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 Affirmation for Lion’s Gate

> I open the gate within.

> I step into my power.

> I speak the truth of my soul.

> I burn what no longer serves.

> I am divine creation in motion.

Lammas and Tarot

Lammas (or Lughnasadh) is a Celtic sabbat celebrated around August 1st, marking the first harvest of the season. It's a time to honor the fruits of our labor, both literally and metaphorically—what you've sown in spring begins to show up now, ripe and tangible.

Pairing Lammas with Tarot is a beautiful way to tap into the season’s themes: gratitude, sacrifice, culmination, and preparation.

 🌾 Lammas Themes in Tarot

Here’s how Lammas connects to the tarot, especially through the lens of seasonal symbolism:

1. Harvest & Fulfillment

Ten of Pentacles or Nine of Pentacles mirror abundance and legacy—fruits of long-term effort.

The Empress embodies fertility, fullness, and creative fruition.

Seven of Pentacles asks you to pause and assess the growth of your labor—are you harvesting what you intended?

2. Sacrifice & Release

Like grain that must be cut to feed others, Lammas reminds us that **letting go** is part of the cycle.

Hanged Man offers the perspective of self-sacrifice or surrender.

Death reminds us that every harvest eventually fades, and that endings are sacred.

 3. Gratitude & Reflection

The Star calls us to give thanks and renew hope.

Six of Cups invites remembrance and nostalgic gratitude.

Temperance teaches balance—what do you give, and what do you keep?

 4. Preparation for Darker Days

 Lammas also whispers of the waning year. Shadows lengthen. It's time to store, reflect, prepare.

Four of Pentacles may speak of conservation.

The Hermit invites solitude and introspection, guiding the journey into autumn.

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🃏 Lammas Tarot Spread (3 Cards)

1. What am I harvesting right now?

2. What must I release or sacrifice?

3. How can I prepare for the next phase of the cycle?

Optional: Add a fourth card for *Gratitude* — something to thank yourself or the universe for.

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 🖋 Artist's Prompt for Lammas

 Create a mixed-media piece using symbols of grain, the sun, or your personal harvest.

Paint or collage a golden field with a tarot figure in it—maybe the Empress with a sickle or the Hanged Man upside down from a tree of wheat.

 Write a poem or journal entry titled "What I've Reaped."

The Minor Arcana

🎨 The Minor Arcana: The Artist’s Process

If the Major Arcana is the myth—the grand narrative etched in sky and shadow—
then the Minor Arcana is the artist’s studio:
brushes drying in jars of clouded water,
failed sketches curled in corners,
the way morning light touches your spine as you begin again.

These 56 cards are not about destiny.
They are about discipline.
About the lived texture of making—
the small decisions, the heart-fractures, the quiet glories of process.

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🎭 Four Suits: The Mediums We Work In

Each suit is a form of expression, a gesture of the soul:

🏆 Cups — Art as Emotion 🎨 

Water | The inner wellspring, the longing behind the image.
Here is where the art bleeds, where it aches.
Love letters in watercolor. Melancholy tucked inside pigment.
The painting that made you cry and you didn’t know why.

🌿 Wands — Art as Flame 🔥 

Fire | The spark that begins it all.
Here is the impulse to create: wild, instinctual, raw.
Graffiti at midnight. The first page of a new sketchbook.
A dance so urgent it becomes prayer.

🗡 Swords — Art as Thought 💭 

Air | The critique, the concept, the slicing question.
This is the precision of the line, the sharpness of truth.
The essay that won't stop haunting you.
The cutting away of excess.
Art that confronts, questions, challenges.

🪙 Pentacles — Art as Craft 🌎 

Earth | The form, the frame, the physical labor.
This is where clay meets hand, canvas meets gesso.
The hours logged. The hands tired.
The part no one claps for, but that holds everything together.

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🔢 Numbered Cards: The Creative Cycle

• Aces are inspiration’s first breath—pure, electric, terrifying.

• Twos through Nines are the middle: resistance, joy, boredom, breakthroughs.

• Tens are saturation—completion, collapse, or a new beginning in disguise.

Every card is a brushstroke in the larger painting.
Every number a chapter in your current project’s life.

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👑 Court Cards: The Artist’s Archetypes

• Page – The Beginner: naive, playful, sacredly unskilled.

• Knight – The Devotee: restless, driven, seeking a style.

• Queen – The Channel: intuitive, in flow, creating from the deep.

• King – The Master: commanding form, taking up space, shaping the world through vision.

Sometimes these figures are you.
Sometimes they are your muses, your critics, your collaborators.

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✏️📖 In Practice: Reading the Minor Arcana Through Art

To draw a Minor card is to be reminded that art is a ritual of presence.
It is not just what you make,
but how you live through the making.

These cards whisper:

“What is your hand touching today?”
“Where does your desire burn?”
“What are you resisting in the work?”
“Where have you forgotten that process is holy?”

Because the Minor Arcana is the brush between visions.
The palette knife scraping clean.
The moment you nearly gave up—but didn’t.

This is where your art breathes.

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Pentacle Sketches

Just a few sketches I have for the Penracles suite. Doing my traditional two of each and trying to pick one. If you want to help me decide, please feel free to email me at Ceceliap@gmail.com!

The Major Arcana Visual Refrences (Emoji Key)

Here’s the Major Arcana again, this time with visual references (emojis) for each card—symbolic imagery you might see on the card or feel in meditation. These can guide your intuition, enrich your readings, or serve as prompts for your own art:

🌌 The Major Arcana – Symbolic Imagery for Each Archetype

0. The Fool – The Leap

🥀 A cliff’s edge, a white rose, a small dog leaping beside you. The sun behind you, not yet faced.

1. The Magician – The Channel

🜁 A table of tools (wand, cup, sword, pentacle), infinity above your head, one hand pointed to sky, one to earth.

2. The High Priestess – The Veil

🌙 A moon-crowned woman between two pillars (Boaz & Jachin), scroll half-hidden in her lap, waters flowing behind her.

3. The Empress – The Garden

🌾 A throne in a wheat field, a river, a crown of stars, her pregnant belly or abundant robes.

4. The Emperor – The Architect

🐏 🧭 A stone throne adorned with rams, red robes, a mountain behind him, scepter and globe in hand.

5. The Hierophant – The Key

🗝 Two acolytes kneeling, a triple crown, crossed keys at his feet, his hand raised in blessing.

6. The Lovers – The Mirror

🌄 Adam and Eve, an angel above, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, choice and consequence behind beauty.

7. The Chariot – The Drive

🛡 A warrior in armor, a chariot pulled by a black and white sphinx or horse, stars overhead, city behind.

8. Strength – The Quiet Lion

🦁 A woman calmly closing or opening a lion’s jaws, infinity above her head, a landscape of trust.

9. The Hermit – The Lantern

🔦 A lone figure in a cloak atop a snowy mountain, holding a lantern lit with a six-pointed star.

10. Wheel of Fortune – The Spin

🎡 A great golden wheel with Hebrew and alchemical symbols, sphinx above, snake descending, creatures turning with it.

11. Justice – The Blade

🗡️ ⚖ A sword and a scale, a red robe, eyes wide open, a stone throne flanked by pillars.

12. The Hanged Man – The Suspension

🪵 🪢 A man hanging upside-down from a wooden crossbeam (Tau cross), haloed, serene—his sacrifice is willing.

13. Death – The Door

🖤 🦴 👑 A white rose on a black flag, a skeleton on horseback, fallen kings, rising sun in the distance.

14. Temperance – The Alchemy

🏞 An angel pouring water between two cups, one foot in the water, one on land, an endless path in the background.

15. The Devil – The Chain

🪓 A horned beast on a black pedestal, two chained figures below—loose chains they could lift, but don’t.

16. The Tower – The Lightning

🌩 A stone tower struck by lightning, a crown falling, people mid-air—chaos, truth, raw exposure.

17. The Star – The Blessing

🌟 A naked figure kneeling at a pool, pouring water into water and earth, stars above, calm landscape.

18. The Moon – The Dream

🌕 A full moon with a face, a path winding between two towers, a dog and a wolf howling, a crayfish emerging from the water.

19. The Sun – The Radiance

🌻 A glowing sun, a child riding a white horse, sunflowers blooming—pure life force, innocence reborn.

20. Judgement – The Call

📯 An angel sounding a trumpet, the dead rising from coffins, hands lifted to sky, mountains in the distance.

21. The World – The Spiral

 🦁 🐂 🦅 🧕🏿A nude dancer in a laurel wreath, holding two batons, surrounded by the four living creatures (lion, bull, eagle, human).