Like many things, the origin of the Langustl Tarot was a result of coincidence. A friend of mine, whom I had met through the chat of a Tarot forum, saw the pictures on my website and asked if I would be interested in painting a tarot card for a thread that she had started. Other than herself, nobody had posted on the thread. The feedback to my card was extremely positive and motivated me to turn it into a project: Between 2006 and 2008 I created the Langustl Tarot.
These two years were marked with much intellectual work. The two decks - Waite/Smith and Crowley/Harris - were my guides. I wanted to understand the quintessence of these decks and additionally create my own interpretation. I discovered the returning spiral structure and the mirroring of the cards. A simple model of this can be seen on the back of the decks. I checked whether the intrepretations by Crowley and Waite supported my own interpretation. This theoretical work on the structure of the cards occured simultaneously with the work on the first card, which had to be reworked a few cards later due to new insights into the structure of the tarot.
With some of the cards I consciously cited aspects of the Waite and Crowley decks: other pictures take a new approach. I renamed the jacks and knights of the facecards to princesses and princes and inverted Crowley's distribution of elements. The size of the cards accentuates the pictures. When you know the cards better, you can cut off the white borders. |
