3 Cards

The Emperor, The Sun, The High Priestess
sprouting in my yard 

For this particular project I use B.P Grimaud's Grand Etteilla Tarot, a predecessor of more popular Victorian-era decks, such as Pamela Coleman Smith's exquisitely illustrated (yet pop as fuck) Rider-Waite series.  Grand Etteilla's packaging celbrates the occult origins of the Tarot, citing that the game was "created and played by the Ancients, Egyptians, and Gypsies" and that it is "referred to in that great book the Cabala".  In actuality, this deck is an 18th century design crafted by the learned occultist Jean-Francois Alliette (aka Etteilla).   It is a strangely deviant deck, radical in many respects, that reinterprets traditional names and numerological orders to correspond to it's own code.  Unlike most tarot decks, Grand Etteilla wears on its sleeve esoteric nuances that include astrology, masonic allegories and symbolic references to The Great Work (ala alchemy).  While the Tarot of Marseilles is closer to the true origins of this mystic tradition, I chose to use the Grand Etteilla because of it's uniqueness in character, high quality illustrations, and vision of modernity.   Through practice, conversation, and study I have become at least adequate at reading tarot cards, although there are many deeper understandings I have yet to ascertain.  Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Way of the Tarot has helped me develop my relationship with the cards, as have the lectures and books of C.G. Jung, Hakim Bey, and Joseph Campbell.