Illustrating a Tarot Deck

Can the turning of the tarot cards really reveal a person’s future? 

 That’s the question I pondered for months, as I was hired by one of the most popular tarot readers on YouTube, Mary Jo Cranmore of Soulful Revolution TV, to create a brand-new custom deck for her followers.

 I have to admit when I told some of my friends what I was doing they were skeptics.  How could a shuffled deck of cards reveal anything?

 I came to find out through my work that the power of tarot wasn’t exactly what they thought. It’s not really about some mystical power to read the future or determine it. 

 Tarot is about symbols, message and (this is the important part) self-determination and empowerment.

 As you know my work is all about women feeling free to be themselves and to create their own world. And that’s what the tarot is about, too.

 Mary Jo gave me the opportunity to work with her to redefine tarot.  In our hands the empress changed from a stoic fertility goddess rooted in the past to a contemporary powerhouse.  

 Our modern-day empress is offset in hot-pink, her pregnant belly peeking through the bottom of her shirt and bulging from her leggings.  She wears a glittering gold crown.

 Our empress is the maternal influence, but also more broadly a creator of all things…art, romance, and opportunity.  She is the wellspring for the goals and accomplishments that not only change the woman but all womankind.

 We reinterpreted the entire deck in this fashion.

 What I learned along the way is that the deck simultaneously holds no special power AND enormous power.  It is all about the hands that shuffle it and the mind that interprets it.

 The tarot cannot determine the future but it can awaken and unlock the creative power of each woman to make her own destiny more apparent, and then have the courage to demand that every little bit of it happens.

 Check out the new deck and Mary Jo here, at Soulful Revolution:

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUrkOmXvcHOX4A1ratGe5Wg