This is the first in a series of Tarot readings that I am using to determine the order for drawing my own tarot deck. It was a three card past, present, future draw and was:

1. The Empress

The past was the empress. I recently read that a common reading of the Empress is as an important woman in your life and that the mother is the obvious choice. This yields a clear past as birth. My first thought was to use a vulgar anatomical design like the Nirvana In Utero cover. I also like the nipple spraying milk as in and the general Christian depictions of Mary as a universal mother. Pregnancy and babies were other obvious possibilities. When framed as maternal the card becomes almost too inspirational. The whole cannon of western and indeed world art opens up and one is in danger of becoming overwhelmed. As the first card to draw I am torn between a bold simple style and more ornate and complex design. This card births the whole set! The number three is also significant as the third card it has a very high rank and importance. The Trinity is an obvious reference and perhaps my favourite the impossible triangle should make an appearance. The science of reproduction and DNA is also a possible element. The Empress is also a figure of a powerful woman and somebody like Angela Merkel or Margaret Thatcher could be a reference. Can I resist the most obvious symbol of all, the vagina, as per Gustav Courbet’s L’Origine du monde?

2. King of Pentacles

The King seems in direct contrast to the preceding Empress. It occurs to me that it would be an interesting idea for my deck to have an idiosyncratic logic based on the random draw order. So that this becomes card two in the Gesamtkomödiewerke deck. I have largely reproduced the Rider Waite image as a minor arcana I didn’t feel I had much to add. I misspelt pentacles.

3. Temperance

Temperance is a clear indication of balance. Again I have largely reproduced the Ryder Waite image. There are many elements that I struggled to reframe in a new form. Actually by being less busy than The Empress I think the card has greater impact.

The read

Zero: the reading of readings. We begin in the primordial nothing and contradictorily the zero spits out a three that is the mother of the world. The three generates the first three. The obscene threesome of creation yields a coin. The abstraction of value is grasped by the King and made the King of abstraction. The abstract King stumbles out of balance and produces balance in turn.