4 of Disks - Seven years would be insufficient...

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.” ― Jane Austen

The natural inclination of a 4 of Disks (Sun in Capricorn) type person is to choose to protect himself from intimacy. This is a card of strict personal boundaries and walls for self-protection that have been fortified many times over.

3 of Cups - A river of joy

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” ― Rumi

The 8 of Swords - How we screw ourselves over

“To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

The Evil Queen from Snow White makes a perfect 8 of Swords archetype because she is someone who screws herself over by allowing negativity and reactive behaviour to blind her to the truth.

The Tower - Thunder and Lightning, Very Very Frightening

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” ― Oscar Wilde

It could be argued that sex is about love but if the Tower spoke about sex, it would be in terms of Power. This is a purely, 100% male perspective, speaking from a place of too much testosterone rather than from the heart.

Ace of Swords - New thought

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ― Albert Einstein

The Ace of Swords represents the potential, or seed form, of the Element of Air. The essence of this card is not easy to capture in an image and the card you see here is my second attempt. The overlay is an image of the Archangel Michael, holding the scales of judgment.

9 of Disks - Not a damsel in distress

“I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone.” ― Katharine Hepburn 

For the 9 of Disks (Venus in Virgo), I went with rather traditional imagery, minus the bird of prey. I wanted to show abundance but also someone in the process of achieving it. The young lady is preparing a meal in her kitchen. For someone doing the cooking, she's wearing quite fanciful clothes - as if to make the point that every day is a feast.

10 of Cups - Communion

“In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.” ― Vincent van Gogh


For the 10 of Cups (Mars in Pisces), I have chosen communion as the theme. This card can represent family, both in a physical and spiritual sense. Having Mars in Pisces myself and being very familiar with this energy from a life force point of view, communion seemed an obvious choice rather than traditional 'happy family' scene portrayed in Rider Waite style decks.

2 of Swords - Balancing the Scales

“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”   

~ Warren W. Wiersbe

I chose this quote to illustrate the tension inherent in the 2 of Swords. Not knowing how to stay centred in both truth and love and not wanting to rock the boat often leads to perpetual fence sitting or endless diplomatic negotiations (in one's mind if nowhere else).

The 2 of Swords corresponds to Moon in Libra. When I stumbled across the image of Euclides, I knew I had struck gold in terms of the perfect match. Euclides is the father of the Euclidean algorithm:

6 of Flames - Transient Glory

Showing off is the fool's idea of glory. ~ Bruce Lee

A victory parade is a common enough theme for the 6 of Flames/Wands (Jupiter in Leo). For this card, it felt right to go with a moment in human history to illustrate the transient nature of Victory. This transience is indicated by association with the sixth sephira on the middle pillar of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

6 of Disks - Energy Exchange

The 6 of Disks in the Arcturian Tarot has the same backdrop as The Fool - a town at nightfall, anywhere in the world. Overlaid, we have a line drawing: A woman approaches a heavily laden merchant about a possible exchange of goods for... not sure what. She's not holding any money in her hands... In fact, the image is ambiguous enough that it could imply begging... Or is she trying to sell a bowl that she has made?

A huge part of the reason why we are here on earth is to learn how to manage the exchange of energy with other aspects of the Divine... And the 6 of Disks teaches us that we can do better than to just 'get by.' When we master the concept of energy exchange, we can create abundance, not only for ourselves but for others too.

Because, quite contrary to what the ego would have us believe, there is more than enough to go around.

It felt right to depict the human condition in this card. Most of us are still learning about transactions and managing our energy. I like how the top halves of the figures in the card are connected to Stars... to hopefully remind us that there is nothing mundane about life or even the smallest shop transaction. All is energy - All is divine.

5 of Swords - Laika the Space Dog

Laika (Russian for 'barker') was a stray dog that the Russian space scientists put into orbit around earth in 1957. They knowingly sent her to a certain death and the most likely cause of death overheating only hours after launch.

I chose Laika for the 5 of Swords because the experiment which involved sacrificing another sentient being in the name of scientific progress is a very 5 of Swords sort of thing to do.