Path and Sigil Elemental Tarot

I am very proud to announce that I have created a prototype tarot deck. This article will help define all the pieces of this tarot deck, and how I got to where I am now.

My tarot journey officially began in the fall of 2018. I was in a pivot point with my life and career. At that time I decided that I would start a blog about the topic of tarot and learn to read the cards. For all of 2019, I practised the tarot, read books, and experienced different tarot decks. In 2020 I did much of the same but more.

In January 2020 I started to learn the teaching of the Golden Dawn and experience their perspective of the tarot cards. I worked through the books Golden Dawn Magic: A Complete Guide to the High Magical Arts and Golden Dawn Magical Tarot both by Chic and Sandra Cicero. Using the resources I started the tarot deck in the summer of 2020. By late November I had finished the design and was ready to print the deck. I had it in hand by early January 2021.

The Tarot Deck

This is the first build of the Pathandtarot brand tarot deck. For now, this deck will be called the Path and Sigil Elemental tarot Deck, build 0.1.

I wanted to create a tarot deck that taps into the unconscious in a few different ways. The colours and sigils are the methods for this unconscious connection. The major arcana cards all have sigils on them along with their astrological and Hebrew associations.

The sigils are made with planetary magic squares. Each planet and zodiac have their own colour associations. Thus the connection of the magic squares harmonizes with the colour schemes of each card. My hope is that somehow the drives a unconscious connection to the cards. The deck is composed of various attributes that we will look at next.

Attributes

Golden Dawn Colours

Each tarot card has a special set of colour associations derived from the colour schemes found in the Golden Dawn teachings. These teachings have their roots in the kabbalah and astrology. When you work with all of these connections you will see there is a complex matrix of colours that are unique to each tarot card. These colours schemes have been used in previous tarot decks to great effect. You may know a few already.

The Border Design

The Golden Dawn colours card are embedded into the border design of each card to create a unique colour texture. The raw colours patterns reveal connections to other cards that may not have been obvious at first.

The Sigils

For the major arcana cards I chose to create sigils using planetary magic squares. These magic squares allow the user to harness the power of planetary magic. In this case, I was matching the planetary association of each tarot card with their matching planetary square. The Chaos tarot app was used in the creation of these sigils for proof of concept.

The Western Elements

The western elements are used in conjunction with the playing card suits. This is to help bridge the tradition of playing cards, the tarot, and the magick of the western elements. Spirit represents the major arcana cards with fire as clubs, water as hearts, spades as air, and diamonds as earth.

The Playing Card Connection

I see the playing cards in a few ways. One, the playing cards are in everyone’s collective unconscious. I mean the by the fact that we are all familiar with a deck of playing cards. Two, the playing cards are very much connected to the tarot. Older decks like the Tarot of Marseilles have a playing card-like design on the minor arcana pip cards. I felt that creating a tarot deck using playing cards would be a way to acknowledge the tarot decks of the past.

Magickal Word Associations

The Golden Dawn has atributed certain key words to each of the minor arcana cards and their court cards. I have chosen to use the word associations in the same way to unite the colours and their meaning. These associations are over a century old now, and deeply rooted in our collective unconscious.

This is a quick TL;DR break down of the attributes that define this tarot deck.

Golden Dawn Colour Associations

Astrological Associations

Sigils on the Major Arcana

Playing Card Design for the Minor Arcana and Court Cards

Elemental Associations For the Suits and Major Arcana

Golden Dawn Word Associations

Resources

This deck would not be possible without these resources. Here is a quick break down of everything that allowed me to create this deck.

Canva – We all know Canva. This is a powerful photo editing program that allows the user to easily manipulate images. This web application is the main tool I used to create this tarot deck. Everything was done inside of Canva.

Chaos Tarot – This is a web application that lets the user quickly generate sigils using a phrase as your intention. I used the site to quickly generate all the sigils that would become the images on the major arcana cards.

Google Docs – There are many word processors available, but this one contained all the astrological and Hebrew symbols needed to design the cards. Contained in it are also the templates for playing cards with four suits: jack, cavalier, queen, and king. These playing cards were then imported into Canva to make up the court cards and minor arcana pip cards.

Golden Dawn Books – The secret sauce to all of this. Without the knowledge of the colour associations to each of the tarot cards, this deck would be just a widget. Contained within these two texts are the blueprints for all of the colours associations of the tarot. This isn’t a secret by any means, but you do have to create your own matrix to realize all the associations.

Make Playing Cards – This website allowed me to print the tarot deck. The website makes it easy for creators to understand the dimensions of the images and create their order. Templates are available for tarot cards so you can make sure your dimensions are the best fit for the print.

This deck is still being worked out. It was created as a proof of concept. Currently I am trying to realize the relationship with the elemental deck. You may have seen this deck in action in videos on Youtube or my social media.

Another Set of Elements

I printed another elemental deck with the Sigil Elemental tarot deck. This was done so that I could match the exact colours of the tarot deck. My first few elemental decks had colours that were not exact. In this batch, I re-did the colours so they matched the tarot cards exactly. The tarot deck and the separate elemental deck will be used together. The method of the deck will grow and change. Be sure to look out for new developments on Pathandtarot.

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