teaching in each image and its reading, but wanted to find a way that would make this more accessible to a 21st Jewish mystic.
Fascinated with the Major Arcana, I started reading and discovered how many wonderful interpretations of the cards there were. Most meaningful to me was discovering the Major Arcana as the map of the hero’s journey, with 22 steps along the way. Knowing that many writers have suggested the Tree of Life with its 10 sefirot (energy centers) as a layout for the cards, I wondered how each reading would be affected by associating one card with each of the 22 pathways that connect the sefirot and, instead of laying the cards from top to bottom as others had done, what would unfold if I placed the cards on a circular path, returning the reader back to the point of origin—as kabbalah’s Tree of Life teaches?
Creating the illustrations
Some of the decisions made about the cards were conscious, others revealing an intuitive serendipity that made me smile— for example, in designing the card to replace the one entitled ‘The Devil’ I wanted to center the scene at the crossroads in honor of the archetype Hecate. It was only at a later stage that I realized the Hebrew letter associated with the card was Ayin, whose intrinsic shape suggests the crossroads.