
V	Early Sketches for The Numerical Tarot

The greatest thing about collaborating with my mother was her lack of bias, due to her lack of acquaintance with existing tarot decks. So many people reject the design of my decks because they object to the increased number of dark, evil, scary looking cards that results from using a balanced approach (see The Spine of Tarot elsewhere on this site). My mother had no objections. I simply described, or sketched out, my own notions of what I wanted each card to say, and let her imagine her own illustration. If I wanted something dark and scary, that's what she would do. She would not mitigate for the sake of being "fluffy" and wanting to appeal to those who want decks that have the scariness removed or watered down. Like a good actor being given direction, she would find that dark side and illustrate it.

This deck of Majors was created from various sketches influenced by keywords and general discussion of ideas. I've numbered them 1 through 18 so that people can connect them to traditional tarot ideas. Below each card are the current names for each card as seen in The Numerical Tarot. Some of these illustrations are designed around this idea of "Influencer" interacting with an "Influenced" character, and how each describes the same archetypal ideas, but in different ways.