Arcana de Facture

In creating a deck of the Marseilles Tarot's Major Arcana, I am seeking the same unbounded creative forces that the Surrealists sought in dreams. Each card is a deep well that connects to an endless watershed of creative energy. Each card is a reminder that such wells exist. Tarot cards, however, only remind us of the dream world - they work as a kind of welcome sign to the user - throughout time and culture, they must be interpreted ad infinitum. Ultimately, the user must engage with the images and their historical connections for them to reveal their creative potential. The cards are a technology for accessing the dream world, not the dream world itself. In this way they are Kerouac's Smith-Corona typewriter, David Lynch's Bob's Big Boy diner napkins, or Kahlo's diary (Mahon, 46).