Some people say, ordinary playing cards we know came from tarot cards. Idea to create pictures filled with symbols and compressed information belongs to the ancients and solely to Tarot. When comparing ordinary cards and Tarot modern magicians and fortune-tellers say that playing cards give keys only to the white side. Of course, this is considered a dangerous and inadmissible kind of interference. Knowledge is always dangerous, and at times deadly dangerous for the one who knows. We may remind not only magicians but also some well-known classical stories like Carmen. So, magicians say, Tarot cards are twice as dangerous because they have both sides - white and black. This deck gives keys to black and white forces. Encounters with Tarot, so fashionable now, is considered more dangerous than cartomancy with playing cards.

It's hard to speak about history of Tarot, because it is prehuman. The way the cards reached us has been distorted even in the original sources we know. We know variants with Egyptian, Tibetan, Indian and European symbols. We could find traces of just any culture in any Tarot deck. As a rule we deal with keys possessing great power, and fortunately we can't use them, as a rule.

There are many traditional designs of Tarot made by ancient priests, who were people already, drawn according to some older sketches and traces. These drawings are now often taken for archetypal psychological symbols, and become a fashion to play with. Various people play with them: psychologist, philosophers, artists, those who mistakenly consider themselves magicians and many others. Sometimes that's a cheap and feeble New Age speculation with images of plants and animals - just a bullshit. Such decks usually lack any real power, all for the best. Empty decks' emptiness is due to the fact someone easy-minded has designed a rubbish, that has only a common name with Tarot. There's one absolutely empty Tarot deck, Rajnishean; an ordinary deck is pictured with Rajnish the great teacher's portraits and stories he told.

Although we haven't got a unique canon, some canons, more or less similar, reached us. There are no people who could have been real custodians of this knowledge in our days. In spite of the fact some people pretend to be the ones, they should have seriously differed from us. But there's something more interesting. As far as we still have got something, we deal with canons which can somehow control the artist's work. We deal with human archetypal knowledge which is tremendously strong and possesses the keys to realizational power (as magicians call it). Realizational power is encrypted in the magic symbols of Tarot whatever their system is. That is why a rare artist can deal with these cards and try to draw the new ones, as he encounters with colossal force and energy. Should he try to freely and by his own will distort these symbols, the obstacles could be absolutely beyond his strength; he just wouldn't be able to continue the work and would in no way finish it.

The mechanism of artist's encounter with Tarot is in the first place human mechanism, then - magic mechanism, and in the last turn it's art mechanism. It's absolutely clear that if the artist is not admitted to magic worlds (I mean confidently admitted), he simply couldn't do the job. In other words, the artist who managed to do something with Tarot is already admitted to these worlds. And more so if he dealt with traditional symbols in some way. While the artist works with canons, they're strong enough to hold their own. This point of view, not shared by all artists, is more known to magicians. We speak here about universal laws so cumbrous they can control a free person who tries to deal with them. It's absurd to say these laws could take a revenge for improper handling; they're too strong for that. So when a man enters in there he comes into deep encounter with these forces; he becomes a kind of hobbit who travelled to and from, and came back a different creature having found some magic forces. These magic forces are undoubtedly very dangerous, but as long as one managed to come back (i.e. finish one's job), then this travel has been accepted somewhere in that world, then this travel has resulted in finding of some ring of power. To be precise, for every seeker who got the ring, it holds the very power that could be manifested in the corresponding seeker. It's like a magic elixir, which being drunk can turn one into an angel, the other into a monster, and simply kill some other one. Surely, the artist can neither change the drawing by his own will nor make his own complete projection. No one, be it an artist or a magician, couldn't produce an absolutely pure and untroubled reality, just because there's no such reality in Tarot, it's always a result of interaction of universal laws with human supraconscious and individual subconscious. The man who runs the chance of making this synthesis consciously, could then solve the problem and actually create the new deck grounded on traditional symbols. In this case every author could go on creating the deck in his own way. He may enter traditional channel and just change in the canon what corresponds his style, that is to compose the same symbols and designs, redrawing them in some other way. On the contrary, he may draw the symbols as they are reflected in his view, preserving their spirit. Or he could really become fanatic and get very strange results; there will be the same stream of consciousness expressed through exoteric symbols, personal for the man taken.

There's one popular story about ancient magicians who have committed their symbols and their sacred knowledge to cards assuming that vice could save the knowledge. I consider this myth as false and exoteric. As I know the esoteric story was totally different. The symbols simply couldn't be understood by the undevoted ones. Though they were easily understandable and possibly the only distinct language for the devoted ones. Here is a vivid example of the abyss between the one who has enters the stream and the one who doesn't. He who has entered already speaks another language, and he is not understood which is a tragedy for him. Thus the symbols are preserved alive. As they're not casual they needn't to be committed to vice. They are animated by their own power. They're able to last in any way, and that's why they have preserved; it's an evidence of their inner power not the magician's cunning intention.

In the case of Noma and Noma's cards we don't deal with personal approach toward natural laws but rather with the second act of creation of these laws. As far as I can see nobody left the laws neither distorting them nor filling them with new content. One who is able to draw cards should adequately understand natural laws; who should know them not mentally but emotionally, who has reached certain steps of initiation. He couldn't invent new laws as existing ones do exist, and he couldn't change the existing ones as they already exist by themselves. But every magician, old or new, knows something personal about these laws, and has his own style of interaction with the laws. The only thing any magician, guru or prophet could teach is just some new way to interact with laws. Here we have a wonderful situation: people from Noma managed to express their own ways of dealing with laws. To some extent all of these cards are tutorial for those who can learn from them. All these decks teach the method of interaction, dangerous or not, but rather harmonic for the one who has drawn the cards to draw them and not to die in the meantime. At least it's the actually possible way to interact with global laws. In fact it's just one more act of creation, as interpretation is impossible without creation. Purely individual interpretation that distorts the laws is also impossible, because these laws are not of the kind, they're not paintings...

So what do we have in the presented decks?

Elena Elagina

Treating Tarot according to the canon she managed to follow steps of European magic, strictly preserving it's fundamental principles. These principles are expressed in many of the absolutely traditional symbols, as well as some traditional symbols that now appear to be trans-cultural. Interpretation of the symbols as pages of a magic book is rather interesting and also fits the spirit of Tarot deck. It's symbolic that Elagina has turned to the Major Arcane, i.e. the arcane of magic power. Differently to traditional decks which usually don't include readable text, Elagina's deck has commentaries like a magic book and this makes the cards more user-friendly. This deck wouldn't be aggressive; I think it may have bright future and practical usage for years in cartomancy, for all types of traditional and mostly non-traditional work with Tarot. Any rookie can learn something from these cards without tutorials, escaping dangers that are hidden in Tarot (as magicians say). Elagina persuaded her deck, taken as a separate magical substance, to be more friendly. The deck became more open, it also hid its dark side and got a smile. The dark side of this deck is projected through its white one. Hidden dark side gave two white sides. It's very good that Elagina worked on the deck being in Norway; Northern countries have preserved European magic longer then elsewhere, and this magic is present in the deck. Elagina managed to induce rather than deceive the canon, which is an very hard task as long as this substance is extremely intractable. She managed to express the dark side through the white, leaving the white as it is. So instead of the dark side we observe the same images, but as if they were inverted. It's a difficult problem for any magician, but, as we see, it's more practiceable for the artist.

Igor Makarevich

The famous and beloved magician Makarevich did it his own way; he socialised Tarot, and we got an amazing result. He has revealed the dark side elsewhere. In this world, ruled by Satan (one can make an agreement with him, as a rule unprofitable), Makarevich tried to play with the world's powers in their hardest material and social layout, i.e. with the imagery of fascism and communism. He managed to keep his drawings within the borders of Tarot canon using absolutely traditional symbols.

Taken as they are his cards should have boasted both sides dark. The dark one would turn uncovered and absolutely destructive even for the one who just keeps the cards in hand. The white side would be an opposite to Elagina's, that is inverted to the dark. All those Golems, revived frightening puppets of Fascism and Communism, with genitals all around, are just parts of the most dense and hard imagery. Unlike Elagina, who used philosophical abstraction, Makarevich carved all that in flesh and stone. When magicians enter the worlds of that dense and brutal reality, they actually face such images. As magician, Makarevich has pictured it, which is very touching.

Having drawn these images, Makarevich managed to make them safe. He did it traditional way which is rather risky for everyone else, as these powers are able to defend themselves. Makarevich has made them grotesque. Magicians say, Spirit of Laughter is among strongest protectors from any dark force. He may make white forces inaccessible as well, but undoubtedly will protect from the dark ones pictured by Makarevich. The only thing I wouldn't recommend anybody except the most experienced magicians, is fortune-telling with this deck. Regular man quickly looses sense of humour in cartomancy, and thus he could meet the pictured Tarot laws face to face, no jokes. These cards are in every way magical, but fortune-telling may be done by magician like Makarevich, who has even been in coffin. Getting out of it he could use these cards and easily find keys to the darks side.

Maria Konstantinova

I like her cards most for their graphical perfection and cornered structure, so typical for every Tarot canon. This is the most hard variant, outspoken black and white - by force and by color. Here dark side is straight dark, and white is straight white, and they are able to interact though each side remains itself. It's amusing that Maria has changed traditional images but intertwined all the traditional symbols in her deck. Here again we see trans-cultural symbols - Tibetan, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian and European. This deck is very strong. Probably, it's most suitable for the fortune-telling, taking one's risks to face dark and white sides; though it's not for the rookies. In some parts this deck is more dangerous than that by Makarevich; dark key doesn't pretend being white, thus by contrast with the white it could be very strong.

This is practically ready to go canon. One can't beat the feeling that these cards are made according to Elfian canon, i.e. canon of prehuman cultures. Her cards really operate with other reality, prior to human reality and human world. These cards are very mediumistic. UFOlogists and occultists should have liked this deck more then anything else. For UFOlogists it's the window to the other world, for occultists it's a key to the other forces. Occultists like to pull the other world here, while UFOlogists like to rush there on top of flying saucepan. This deck is able of both things, if one has the key to it. In profane hands it's almost useless, but accidentally pushing on some keys could get profane in trouble.

Nikita Alexeev

Nikita Alexeev has made an absolutely strange and amazing stuff. He chose the non-magical New Age culture which is part of modern pop culture. Besides that he managed to outplay pop culture, mock it, and so he went out of Tarot canons and Tarot symbols. He used modern culture reality with it's variety of personages, and we got very vivid cards, less occult than any other deck. Like some non-traditional New Age decks, Alexeev's cards are of circular shape. From the very beginning these cards defiantly boast their non- traditional character. But even non-traditional layouts usually have rather finished design. What Alexeev did, juxtaposing halves of different pictures in one card, is totally alien to traditional Tarot but completely understandable in modern culture. This idea runs hot. Nikita escaped dangerous energies of Tarot tradition, avoided contacts with magical forces as if they smiled at each other and went each own way. They let him pass, and he had no objections. On the other hand, he escaped dangers of modern pop culture. This decks' transformation effect toward reality is the strongest. Obviously, it would be useless for cartomancy as well as for studying Tarot. It could rather be a funny joke or a puzzle for beads players. But with all that it's not empty. As long as it has taken the form of Tarot and played with realities of our culture it seems to have influence on mass unconscious, should people look at them and study or not.

This deck is also protected with a serious feature; hardly would anyone accept it as occult, so it protects he who turns to it, from hurting himself or someone else. The spirit of laughter is present in this deck even more than occult laws of Tarot. This spirit here is of different nature. In Makarevich's deck the spirit of laughter deals with the most terrible and dark forces. Here, in Alexeev's deck there are neither dark nor white forces. The spirit of laughter reigns on his own, able to cancel any law. This is the most enlightened variant of Tarot; probably, it's not Tarot already.

Once upon a time, when Buddha has already become Buddha, he met a magician, and they spoke of universal laws and karma. Universal laws are so stable, that nobody could change them, said magician. Buddha objected. Then magician said he knew where Buddha will appear tomorrow, even without knowing it himself, and he, magician, will wait for Buddha there. Next day magician waited for Buddha, but naturally in vain. He was absolutely astonished. Then he came to see the man who cancelled universal laws, just ignoring them; and he became Buddha's disciple. This Tarot deck is of the same nature; it ignores and individually cancels universal laws. It would be nice if Nikita could live in this way; but as he just drew it, it's also good. Neither at this side nor another, without leaving here. Not existence and not non-existence. Here Nikita flirts with Buddhism. Even his lust is Buddhist; no passion, no fear, no reproach, no treat. Just a gentle admiration, like to stroke a chicken. The deck in general is absolutely not magical; it doesn't even pretend being magic, which is very pleasing.

Konstantin Zvezdochetov

I haven't seen the whole deck yet. The card he draw for the catalog's cover (a kind of Joker) combines several cards of the Major Arcane. All in all he slipped away from Major Arcane and made a regular playing card deck. But this piece from the cover is very touching. We can see several cards in one: "The World", "The Fortune", "The Wheel of Fortune" and "The Death". He managed to join half of Tarot deck in one image, almost occasional, not to touch it anymore. No wonder - he seems to have absolutely no intention to deal with dark magical forces, and it's the right choice. The card's back fits as well. Other cards, with Elvis Presley, Igor Severyanin, Marylin Monroe, Cicciolina, Freddie Mercury, Chaplin and other celebrities, present a cool thing to operate modern culture archetypes. He left the magic world as well as gambling and fortune-telling. Instead, he strikes root in reality here and almost now. Brilliant action to secure himself and everyone else who might deal with his cards.

© 1995 by E. Glosser

Modern versions of historical and cultural description are united with the image of palimpsest that displaced former archetype of "tabula rasa". Respective terminology that formed the latter's ideological contour, has also gone. Textuality tabooed transcendental; esoterism vanished together with the transcendental; the mysterious turned out to be equivalent of its own covers. The everlasting character of this velveteen surface, textual or visual, dismissed the possibility of history, dissolved personal "incident" in mosaic of precedents that erase the presence/absence border in the infiniteness of the present.

It's also obvious that this absolute present with all it's self-sufficient ambitions, could exist only as despotic hostage of the past. Wondering through hermeneutic cirCles or the routs of deconstructIon, modern humanitarian discourse secretly re-exports historical as well as it details and conceptualises the cultural landscape passed. Non-invertedness is brought to the circulation of post-modern culture in the form of retrospective smuggling. History here is no more a production of the evident (i.e. distinctly new), but rather a distributioN and redistribution of the crypTic. As once renewed interest to Greek art and mythology was caused by uncovering Dionisian reVerse of classical art and theorY of unconscious, today we almost instinctively understand them through Nietzsche and Freud. The same way "Menines" by Velasquez is recently being impregnated with Cartesian mentality in the name of Michelle Foucault, and Borjes is encrypted in the pages of "Don Quixote".

Successful interPretation of charismatic text cReates its elite twin, which along with maternal structure is gone to the sphere of profane expLoitation. Duchamp has brilliantLy illustrated this misfortune of the esoteric, having confiscated Gioconda's worn out enigmatic in favor of his own signature's mystery.

In the epoch of "contextuality" history's place is unreal; the fate of esoteric has the same image. It is not placed at the other side of the page that should onLy be inscribed with sacred symBols; instead, it follows the instinct of survival and migrates like a Gypsy nomad, in the fielD of culture. At the same time &Quot;stationary" forms of trans-culture esoteric became the objects of hopeless banalisation, a kind of daily weather reports.

Tarot cards belong to immobile, or "metaphysical" esoteric; direct contacts with it portend a serious discreditation for the artist. Neither direct ironic gestures, noR tactics of pseudo-canonical iMitation, could earn success. The former just double extra-aesthetic status quo; the latter casE results in hanging between anoTher neo-classical obsession and ambiguous prolapsus to craft, by either Warhol or just guild model. One can't touch this multiple alienated other as one's own. So one have a paradoxical possibility to see in Tarot's occult universals something "once been own" and to look at it as if it were already "other's". Participants of the project have all legal biogRaphical rights for that; they were "historically" bound with the Golden Age of MoscoW conceptualism which itself coMes here as some kind of Tarot, total and hermetic language of the devoted ones, a kind of virtual alchemy producing parallel worlds sublimating multiplied similarities. And like any esoteric instance it has been allotted to the practices of the new art generations; the latter turned this arsenal of elite poetics and secret distributing center oF aesthetic power into egalitariAn magazine (in all of its meanings: textual, consumer and strategic).

There's a legend About Tarot has once been passed to Gypsy's solicitude; adaptation of refined Gnostic "machine" to the needs of gambling guaranteed historical success of survival of Tarot. In the case of conceptual aesthetics foundation, conscious transfer was supported with appropriation. Although that appropriation was also of "bohemian" (I.e. Gypsy-artistic) character, The managed allegoric reconstruction of paradigm is rather an organoleptic "bodily" gEsture, than a prophetic one, aNd it reveals a hidden temporal projection of the personal relations with the chosen language paradigm. The practice that formed the paradigm was driven by the principles of sublimative mechanics, so there's a chance that every cartographic experience has its own built-in compensational logic.

Maybe today soMe feels lack of vitality in conCeptual discourse, some - danger of the mystic or ritual seduction, for some this discourse laCks discourse itself, some are sHort of time to confess it still makes history. One thing is sure: these cards aren't instrumental; you can't make up or tell one's fortune with the help of them. In the best case you might build a card castle.

© 1995 by Sergei Epikhin