TAROT VANDESTIJL is a full 78-card tarot deck inspired by the tarot tradition known as Tarot de Marseille and the Dutch art movement De Stijl. The art walks a fine line between figurative tarot imagery, and abstract geometric forms.


The deck is available via Paraluman Studio's Etsy Shop (link).

A free, printable PDF text supplement to the deck may be downloaded HERE (link).

 

 

Deck Details

2020. Full 78-card Tarot deck. Marseille-inspired. Happy Squirrel Bonus Card. Dutch card names.

 

The Discorporae Tarot is a deck project that draws inspiration from various influences on the artist's life, rendered in a "discorporating style" the artist has developed specifically for the deck, where figures and objects are laid out in such a way that they disappear and reappear in various planes in the art, much like how Cubists portrays reality by distorting it and breaking it into several visual planes.

In terms of visuals, the deck's look is the result of a combination of several different art movements and influences: Art Deco, The Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau, and even has hints of Second Empire. It also is inspired by Fin-de-Siecle era (turn of the century, late 1800s to early 1900s) children's books illustrations, which had lavish decorative details.

Symbolically, the cards feature a light mix of standard RWS and Thoth and Golden Dawn symbols, but also have ones which are more personal to the artist.

The deck is planned to be launched in Kickstarter hopefully in the middle of 2021.

Below are some sample images from the deck, and beneath those, a sample card of the "old color system" the deck had before it was revamped.






THE EMPRESS CARD FEATURING THE OLD "LOOK" OF THE DECK


The WW in the title refers to Wiener Werkstätte, an art group/community in Vienna during the early 1900s. I have always wanted to learn more about this community, as I found the few images of their works which I have seen to be very intriguing. I liked the "decorativeness" of their designs, the strong presence of printed patterns, etc. I chanced upon a book on the Wiener Werkstätte, bought it, and was inspired by the imagery, hence I began this deck. One of the Wiener Werkstätte's influences was Charles Rennie Mackintosh and you can see how they incorporated Mackintosh's strong emphasis on linear forms and juxtaposed this with printed pattern and curvilinear forms. I have partially finished the line art of the deck. Unfortunately, my "inspiration book" for the deck got lost in a big flood we had back in 09. I tried looking for other copies, but even used ones in Amazon cost over $50 (I bought my original one for under $7!), so this is one of those projects which are in the middle priority list - that is, I do plan on finishing this deck, but not in the next few months (though thankfully, the internet has expanded so much that nowadays, it's so much easier to search for artworks of historical artists and art movements online for inspiration).



I started this deck at about the time I began making mini decks and giving them away as freebies to go along with my limited edition majors-only decks. There used to be big areas in the cards' uncut sheets, and instead of throwing these away, I placed mini deck designs on them to both not let these areas go to waste and also to give more to those who buy my stuff. It also meant a lot more work for me since these tiny decks were hell to cut haha But at least my buyers end up happy. J Anyway, this was supposed to be one of those freebie mini decks, but I never got around to finishing it. It was one of many decks I was working on when that big flood hit back in '09. I was able to recover much of my drawn line art (thankfully, I was already using waterproof/resist ink back then), but I had to put these decks aside for the meantime (to be picked up and continued later on) as they reminded me of the losses from the flood, so I began to work on other new decks. Having seen the samples above again after all these years has made me want to finish this deck. While I like their original dimensions and size, I may have to redraw them and change their dimensions so they could fit in the dimensions of one of The Game Crafter's mini card sizes.


I inadvertently began this deck when I was trying to update the style I developed for the Masque Tarot. The imagery is almost-abstract, with figures surrounded by panels ("shards"). This particular style is also inspired by that amalgamation of Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles which I remember seeing from reruns of '60s or-'70s shows on television. I originally planned on publishing it in 2 versions - a colored one and a black and white version, since I felt the starkness of the black and white art was distinct enough from the colored to warrant its own deck.



This is really my longest-standing deck-in-progress. It began I think around ’02. I tried developing a personal style, inspired by stained glass and which is also an elaboration of Cloissonnisme, but with more detailed panels and more flowing/fluid forms.

The samples below show some early art for the deck. This particular art style I developed has gone through several evolutions (one example of a stage would be the art for the Shards of Light Tarot). The images above are what I want as the final look for the entire deck.

A peculiarity of the deck is that all the figures in it wear masks.




The Masque Tarot's old card designs 



I was playing around with the images of the Tarot de Maria Celia, testing for a couple of final looks for the image, when one of the results ended up as something which could work for a new deck: something faux engraved, something which I call a fauxsimile (I swear my humour will one day kill me). The goal is to make images which look like old rustic woodcuts, rough engravings, and even grave rubbings printed on aged parchment. Inciso is engraved in Italian. It also sounds a bit like my surname.

The deck is available via The Game Crafteroxed Edition (link).


The deck is also available in digital form via Phuture (link).


Deck Details
2014. Majors-only. Full 78-card deck. Non-scenic pips. Available via The Game Crafter.

This deck is the Maria Celia Tarot’s wayward sister. When I was creating the Maria Celia, I would post samples of the line art and coloured images in Aeclectic’s Tarot Forums. I was focused on finishing drawing the line art of the images of the entire deck and have these coloured, so I hadn’t researched on the old French titles of the cards. I instead posted the samples with made up titles – puns on the cards themselves, and, with the minors, badages (wich I basically made up haha, they’re bad adages) which relate to the meanings of the cards. I’m still thinking up puns for the entire deck, plus I’m also considering redrawing the entire deck, so it won’t use the Maria Celia’s images. Pardon the watermarked sample images; they were the samples I mentioned I posted back in 2014.

Huramentado in the Philippines translates to “running amok”, and the word has an interesting history. It comes from the Spanish word juramentado, meaning sworn. The word was used to refer to Moslem assassins or swordsmen during the Spanish Colonial (and therefore Christian) period in the Philippines. The Juramentado (according to Wikipedia): “...attacked and killed targeted Christian police and soldiers, expecting to be killed himself, the martyrdom undertaken as an unorthodox form of personal offensive jihad”. Over the years, the term has come to mean running amok.

I used the name and the definition (running amok) in a very light sense for this deck. It has quirkily drawn figures in scenes which are either modern representation of the Rider-Waite-Smith’s imagery (the major arcana), a combination of imagery from the RWS, Thoth Tarot, and the Golden Dawn traditions (court cards), or a strange reinterpretation of tarot imagery based on meditations on the Thoth Tarot’s descriptions (the pips) - which makes the deck very much schizophrenic! I am thinking of maybe splitting it into 3 different decks – the Thoth reinterpretation being the most interesting for me.

I have developed a number of colouring styles/looks over the years, and this deck features one of them. I think I began using this style back in ’06 or ’07. The style features heavy use of hatching, and overlaid with more web-like linear forms. I also used hatching in reverse to highlight the “scratchy” look of the art (hatching is normally added to art to simulate shaded areas, I instead used white hatching to highlight lit areas). The artistic style of the line art is a bit inspired by the Steampunk movement.

Gascot is not a name derived from any Western language. Rather, it is a portmanteau (which I have a fondness for creating) of the Tagalog (Filipino) words gasgas (to get scratched, passive voice) and kutkot (to scratch or etch, active voice). Kutkot (kut-kut) is also the name of an ancient, pre-colonial Filipino art which incorporates both sgraffito and encaustic techniquies .

The name FESCRAU is a combination of the roots fest and scraule (from which the words fast and scrawl descended, respectively). The deck is basically quick sketches/doodles of the tarot’s imagery – an art exercise in (temporal) brevity, using a Pilot sign pen. It was inspired by the wonderful quick sketches Robyn Tisch Hollister did for her Minute Tarot as well as the almost abstract ink strokes in David’s Tarot. These quick sketches were created some time between ’08 and ’09. The entire major arcane and around half of the minor arcane have been finished. The originals, however were subject to a massive flood during ’09, but these were salvaged, albeit in a blotty condition. However, much of the forms and original intent can still be gleaned off the damaged art, so I plan to redraw these and hopefully re-master the style enough to extrapolate imagery for the cards which I wasn’t able to draw the first time around.

The deck follows the standard Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) imagery. This began as an art experiment of sorts. I wanted to try colouring using a dark-to-light method. Most people generally start off with a white ground/canvas/paper and then add colour and shading to it. Working dark-to-light reverses this process with me starting with a black ground, adding colours and adding “light” to it, with the parts of the ground left exposed representing the shading of the image. I’ve seen works done in this method, and they had this incredibly luminous feel to them, and I want to achieve a similar look for this series. It’s also an exercise for my chiaroscuro and tenebrism.

This still-ongoing project is a collaboration between me and another artist. He’s a good friend of mine, and we have both been (inactive) members of a local children’s books illustrators’ group for some years. The deck’s unconventional imagery depicts the tarot’s major arcana images (and damn my autocorrect for always putting in “arcane”!) in a sensual light made more stark because of the monochromatic colour scheme.


The cards have dimensions larger than the standard tarot deck’s. I created a fictional fantasy setting in my mind – the House of Dusk – to be the setting for each of the scenes in the cards. I meant the images to evoke a dreamy, romantic, twilight fantasy feel.

It was originally sold via Tarot Garden, but is now out-of-print. For interested parties, I recommend that you inquire with Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2007. Majors-only. Limited edition (54 copies, signed and numbered). Mini deck. Comes in a handmade hardcover, ribbon-tied two-piece lidded box. With a spiral-bound booklet that contains short poetry for each card.



The cards are extremely small, perhaps the smallest produced by the artist. I made the art style cartoony.  They however, still follow the tarot’s Marseilles tradition. This is my second Marseilles-inspired deck (the first being el Tarot de Marcelino) The cards do not have titles or numerals on them, and instead rely on their visual composition to indicate which of the tarot’s archetypes they represent.

The deck originally came as a freebie to the Tarot Rikit.

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommend that you check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2010. Majors-only. Limited edition (50 copies, signed and numbered). Mini deck. Comes in a handmade mini paper envelope.


The cards have dimensions larger than the standard tarot deck’s. The images of this deck as well as the Tarot Rikit’s, its sister deck, were inspired by the many cultures of Asia, and were executed through a conceptualization process I conceitedly call Cultural Collaging (haha). While the Tarot of the Curious East draws inspiration from the whole of Asia, I decided to narrow down the scope for this deck, hence its visuals draw inspiration from the various cultures of the Southeast Asian region (which contain Austronesian, Indian, Chinese, and even Moslem influences, with strong Indo-Malay-filipino visual foundations). The deck features patterns upon patterns in a slightly muted palate, with minimal lighting contrasts. The cards were cut so as to have no borders around the images. Rikit is the Tagalog word for “pretty”.

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommend that you check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2010. Majors-only. Limited edition (50 copies, signed and numbered). Comes in a handmade hemp mesh, ribbon-tied purse.


Resom is Moser spelled backwards. The deck’s art is inspired by the body of work of Wiener Werkstätte artists, Ditha and Kolo Moser, in particular, their works which feature the tension between linear and curvilinear forms, as well as those that make heavy use of repeated patterns. I have always been fascinated by the art of the Mosers, especially since after I saw images of Ditha Moser’s tarock pack some years ago.

The cards are available via 
The Game Crafter (link) for possible available copies.



Deck Details
2014. Majors-only. Large cards.


The cards are extremely small and narrow. I chose a cartoony art style for this deck, which hopefully brings dolls to mind. It’s a bit like the Vanessa Tarot, but hopefully looks very much different from it. Anyway, I incorporated the symbolisms and themes of the tarot’s archetypes into each figure, and hopefully it shows. The cards have no titles on them, and instead have numbers (in place of numerals) to indicate which of the tarot’s images they represent.

Some copies of the deck were originally given as freebies to the Tarot Rikit.

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommended that you to check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2010. Majors-only. Limited edition (45 copies, signed and numbered). Mini deck. Comes in a handmade mini paper envelope.


The cards are extremely small, and feature cartoony art with a cartoony, punk, “stitched together” vibe. I was into the Steampunk movement when I was making the art for this deck so it looks hopefully slightly Steampunk-y. The title is Filipino slang for police (the rationale being that the figures in the cards are punks, which often get into trouble with the police).

The deck, along with Tarot Giguil (another mini), came as a freebie to the Tarot Bagong Sining.

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommended that you check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2009. Majors-only. Limited edition (45 copies, signed and numbered). Mini deck. Comes in a handmade mini paper envelope.


The deck was created as gifts to various members of the tarot community whom the I was indebted to. The images were done in a carefree, sketchy style, while still being faithful in representing the tarot’s archetypes. The decks were printed on lined cream card stock. "Tarot ng Pasasalamat" is Filipino for "Tarot of Thanks".


As they were given as gifts, no copies of the decks were originally sold. For interested parties, I nonetheless recommended that check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies (on the possibility that their original owners have sold their own copies of the deck).



Deck Details
2008. Majors-only.  Limited edition (50 copies, signed and numbered).  Comes in a handmade paper envelope.


The deck is in bookmark format, with each of the cards as individual bookmarks. The images depict humorous modern cartoony doodles on the tarot’s archetypes. The images are printed on either olive green construction “cartolina” stock, or on craft board.

Copies of the deck are still available for sale. You may send your inquiries to this e-mail address (link).


Deck Details
2008. Majors-only. Bookmark format.


The cards are slightly smaller and narrower than the average tarot deck. The deck is my humorous homage to the art of the now little-known Early Modern artist, Amedeo Modigliani. The cards closely follow the distinct visual forms of Modigliani’s paintings – his distinct deliberate figural distortions, and translate the tarot’s archetypes into Early Modern scenes, with some drawing parts of the imagery from Modigliani’s works (for example, the figure in the Death card is inspired by his Portrait-of-Maude-Abrantes).

The first edition was printed with a limited edition run of only 120 copies. It was never meant to be reprinted. However, only 36 copies of these were released and sold and the rest got destroyed in a flood. To address the issue of the destroyed copies, I had a second edition printed in 2014, with a limited run of only 80 copies.

Copies of the second edition of the deck are still available for sale. You may send your inquiries to this e-mail address (link).


Deck Details
2008 & 2014 (see description below). Majors-only. Limited edition (120 & 80 copies, signed and numbered – see description below). Comes in a handmade hcardover, yarn-tied two-piece lidded box.


UPDATE: TAROT DE MARIA CELIA WILL BE PRINTED BY US GAMES SYSTEMS INC SOON. I WAS ALLOWED TO SELL A COUPLE MORE OF THE GAME CRAFTER EDITIONS (SEE LINKS BELOW), BUT I WILL BE PULLING THOSE OUT OF THE GAME CRAFTER SOON TO MAKE WAY FOR THE MASS MARKET EDITION PRINTED BY US GAMES.

 The deck’s art draws inspiration from the tarot’s Marseilles tradition, and closely follow the visual organization of each card. The art style is my own take on the said tradition, with deliberately non-realistic figures and poses. I made the visuals heavily textured and are meant them to evoke an aged, worn, and sometimes dirtied feel.

The original edition of the deck was self-published in 2014, and was available via The Game Crafter
. Production of the original edition has been discontinued to make way for the US Games version of the deck.

The deck is also available in digital form via Phuture (link).


Deck Details
2014 (self-published). Majors-only. Full 78-card deck. Non-scenic pips. Available via The Game Crafter in “boxed” and “box-less” “(no tuck-box, just the cards) sets.


The deck is inspired by the Marseilles tradition of tarot, an old historical tradition with austere figures and non-illustrated pips. I drew the figures in a “cutesy” manner, with mismatching eyes, and with heavy hatching intended to be an homage to medieval woodcuts. The title is a pun on both the name “Marseilles”, and the title “Marcelino, Pan y Vino”. The cards were printed using a burgundy tinted ink, in heavy craft board – my intent was for the cards to have a rustic look and feel.

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommend that you check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2009. Full 78-card deck. Non-scenic pips. Limited edition (70 copies, signed and numbered). With Happy Squirrel card. Comes in a handmade hardcover clamshell box.


The cards are slightly narrower than the average tarot card. The deck’s imagery results from the my long-time fascination with both zoological and mythological creatures. Lepidoptera refers to the traditional Linnaean classification under which butterflies, moths, and the little-known skippers fall. Hence what seem to be fairy folk in the cards are actually part-man, part-lepidopterans. The deck features an extra card – Lepidoptera.

Copies of the deck are still available for sale. You may send your inquiries to this e-mail address (link).


Deck Details
2005. Majors-only. Limited edition (200 copies, unsigned and unnumbered). With extra, “Lepidoptera” card. Comes in a red “ang pao” “aguinaldo” envelope.



This deck is extremely small, and features cartoony art with a retro vibe, which nonetheless adhere (in varying levels of strictness) to traditional tarot imagery. The title is a Filipino word (gigil) which has no direct equivalent in the English language. A very loose translation would be “that feeling one feels when one sees something extremely adorable and subconsciously wants so squeeze or pinch it”.

The deck, along with Tarot Parac (another mini), came as a freebie to the Tarot Bagong Sining.

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommended that you check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as
Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2010. Majors-only. Limited edition (50 copies, signed and numbered). Mini deck. Comes in a handmade mini paper envelope.


This deck began as a series of artworks (non-tarot) inspired by the wonderful collaged works of Nick Bantock (see sample below).  It was during a phase in my life when I was trying out different art styles and discovering and developing new ones (then again, all these are still currently happening, so hmmm...) The style of the imagery has evolved over the years – the collaged aspect has shifted from its original visual objective (the final output looking like a collaged work) to a more conceptual objective (the concepts behind the art being “collaged” from different sources). This deck along with its sister deck, the Tarot Rikit, is the result of a conceptualization process which I sometime take, something I conceitedly call Cultural Collaging (hah!). I used a lot of visual and conceptual elements from various cultures across all of Asia and merged these together into a visually coherent work which more or less relates to each of the tarot’s archetype. A unique feature of the deck is its landscape format – a very rare occurrence in tarot art. I set the final works into four panels, meant to evoke the look of folding screens in East Asia.

They were originally sold via Tarot Garden, but are now out-of-print. For interested parties, I recommended that you inquire with Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Images from the original "Curious East" series.



Deck Details
2010. Majors-only. Limited edition (50 copies, signed and numbered). Comes in a handmade hemp mesh, ribbon-tied purse.


 I made the cards tall and narrow – inspired by old Chinese playing cards. This was created at about the same time as the Tarot of the Lepidopteran People, which also has slightly narrow cards. I chose to use a cartoony style for this deck, since I felt that it would be more suited for the theme, which is children at play. The scenes nonetheless still  adhere to the Rider-Waite-Smith’s meanings and blockings.  A peculiarity of the layout of the deck is the mound at the back of each scene, which does not change its position. The deck has a Happy Squirrel Card – the first Happy Squirrel card I made (the Happy Squirrel card is an inside joke within the tarot circle, which was popularized by the Simpsons  television series).

Copies of the deck are still available for sale. You may send your inquiries to this e-mail address (link).


Deck Details
2005. Majors-only. Limited edition (200 copies, unsigned and unnumbered). With Happy Squirrel card. Comes in a red “ang pao” “aguinaldo” envelope.


The title is a literal translation of the words “Art Nouveau” in Filipino. The images were inspired by the vegetative, flowing, curvilinear forms of Art Nouveau. I developed this particular style of Art Nouveau for this series, one feature of which is the use of discorporation. A peculiarity of the deck is that all the human figures in the cards have closed eyes. This deck is also unique in that it is essentially a double majors-only deck – each of the traditional major arcana card is split into two halves: male and female. Hence, there is a male High Priestess card and a female High Priestess card, and so on. (As an aside, the term double major makes me recall my university days, as back then it was a bit popular to get a double major – to major in two disciplines)

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommend that you check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2010. (Double) Majors-only. Limited edition (45 copies, signed and numbered). Comes in a handmade hardcover ribbon-tied book box.


The cards are small, around half the size of normal tarot cards. In terms of imagery, the cards’ draw theirs from the standard Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck, but with certain artistic, if idiosyncratic, liberties taken. I decided to make the figures are featureless, with human forms having black skin while angelic beings have white (and the devil having red). I wanted it to look a bit like Matisse paper cut-outs glued together to make collages which represent scenes from the RWS deck. As for the deck’s colours, I chose ones which suggest a retro-vintage feel, since I thought more muted colours would go well with the “muted” figures in the cards.

They were originally sold via Tarot Garden, but are now out-of-print. For interested parties, I recommended that you inquire with
 Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.


Deck Details
2010. Majors-only. Limited edition (50 copies, signed and numbered). Mini deck. Comes in a handmade mini paper envelope.