The Spirit Vertigo Tarot Deck
The Spirit Vertigo Tarot deck is a labor of love in progress, currently under heavy revisions. This deck will follow after the Black Ink Tarot. These illustrations are concept pieces circa 2015-2016. I no longer work in this marker technique, so the finished deck will be reworked in ink. Follow updates and process notes on my tarot blog. As this is a work in progress, all images are subject to change. All images by Evvie Marin of Interrobang Tarot, 2015-2016.
Prints & Posters
Prints and posters of select Spirit Vertigo process illustrations are available now, made to order, in the shop.
The Big Picture
The Spirit Vertigo Tarot Deck is one of three interwoven decks in progress, moving from abstract, through symbolic, to pictorial modes. The Interrobang Tarot Deck, built around the Interrobang Tarot Journaling Glyphs, is minimalist and abstract. It focuses on the building blocks behind tarot symbolism and provides a tabula rasa prompt for generating creative and visionary text.
The Black Ink Tarot Deck blends minimalist and pictorial thinking through stark, intuitive, and folkloric symbolic ornaments. These first two decks blend Marseilles and Smith-Waite influences and should be of use to those who draw from multiple reading styles.
The Spirit Vertigo Deck is maximalist, highly figurative, and built of immersive, stream of consciousness scenes inspired by classic Smith-Waite symbolism. The settings are timeless spaces informed by New as Now American culture and Old as Dirt European folklore, cast with a diverse group of characters.
Diagram of parallels between decks in progress.
My aesthetics are somber, vintage, intricate, rustic, and liminal. These are not the (delightful, invaluable) loud, brash, rainbow-y queer decks some readers expect from queer and trans authors. That said, the imagery and forthcoming texts still aim to challenge and offer alternatives to gendered, ableist, and hierarchical thought patterns common to the tarot field, in both direct and subtle ways. Queering is not just a method of expression (far from codified at that!), but any number of ways of seeing the world. All three decks aim to include and speak to people of diverse backgrounds and wirings, with the understanding that no deck, as a finite text from a fallible author, can or should directly represent and speak to all possible stories. More voices all around, please!
The Library of Esoterica
Such warmth and gratitude to Jessica Hundley, Taschen, and their Library of Esoterica team for including the Black Ink Tarot and Spirit Vertigo Tarot decks in progress in their gorgeous volume, Tarot, released August 2020!
The Tower from The Black Ink Tarot deck, pictured opposite stunning album artwork for Halsey, illustrated by Sveta Dorosheva.
The Library of Esoterica's TAROT, written and edited by Jessica Hundley,
published by Taschen. Cover photograph by Taschen.