This thesis has the potential to financially, medically, and interior-decoratively ruin me. The remaining packages have arrived. I think I’m becoming a card hoarder. The Shakespeare cards and the Ocean cards are so beautiful that I absolutely have to have more card decks. The Art Magick cards are unfortunately a bit disappointing. I’m heading for pizza poisoning because I’m putting every free minute into figuring out my cards. There’s no time left for shopping or cooking. And if I were to pull out my favorite pen now, I would be buried under an already precariously wobbly stack of books, papers, cards, card boxes, and kiwis.

Or, to put it another way: I have arrived in my project. I look at my phone screen, four new WhatsApp messages … Four … in the communicative area. The 4 of Swords. Definitely. In one of my favorite shows in the media library, HIP – High Intellectual Potential, tarot cards suddenly appear. And when the boys next door asked yesterday evening if I was coming over to play cards, I almost burst into hysterical laughter. I haven’t played cards in years. And now, of all times, you want to play cards? The evening before my wonderful new card decks arrive?

Besides the packages, the feedback from the shaman and the fellow student also arrived. Both found the target audience description coherent and found themselves in it. The fellow student noted that it would be nice to be more specific with the projects; the shaman pointed out that the age range is too narrow, both at the lower and upper ends. Yes, basically she is right. I would have certainly bought a tarot like this in my early 20s. But I have experienced again and again that a narrow target audience makes more sense. Then I know who I’m addressing and have narrowed the circle of people I absolutely want to please somehow. It’s the same as with the number of personas. If you speak to everyone, you ultimately speak to no one. If I now also try to weave in career choice and menopause, the project becomes too washed out. And not explicitly addressing Gen Y or Z and active pre-retirees doesn’t mean excluding them. Not at all. But I have to remind myself of this with every project.

Men. Men have not appeared in the target audience so far. They are not my core target audience. I love working with men, and there are plenty of creative men. There are even men with an interest in tarot. I’m not excluding them. But I don’t have them in mind when I imagine someone doing a card reading. But maybe they’ll use them for a game of Poker. That’s fine too.

In the last few days, I have tried to get the card content in order. The Minor Arcana remain, as planned, representatives of their original elements. The division of the tarot into the worlds of will, feeling, mind, and material is simply coherent and can be excellently transferred to the topic of creativity. The court cards were tweaked a bit, and a few genders were swapped. But basically, the first draft fit quite well.

The goal was initially to describe all the cards with a single, apt term. As with the personas and the target audience. No seven terms, no novel. Rule of One. One word. To do this, I skim-read my existing and newly ordered tarot books. Skim-read because the authors surprisingly say very little about the numbers, about the system. Only Rachel Pollack really goes into it. But basically, each card is considered one by one. The story disappears. Yet every tarot book and every accompanying booklet (I’ve had quite a few in my hands over the years) contains the platitude that, roughly speaking, the Ace depicts the element in its origin, and the quality of the element increases up to the 10. Yes. I was already that far without research in the introduction of this thesis. Pollack (2007) lists which number stands for which state, which phase in development (p. 158). A good starting point. Now, as I said, I went through the books. Ace of Wands. Book 1, Book 2, Book 3 … Ace of Cups. Book 1, Book 2, Book 3 … 2 of Wands … 2 of Cups … and so on. This was made even more difficult by the fact that the authors can’t even agree on an order. There is a book titled Tarot by Numbers. I deliberately did not order it, because I fear it would drift too far into questionable numerology; even in the non-number-based books, sums of digits and the like are already being formed. That’s beyond me.

Wildly flipping through pages, underlining, making notes. Which of the statements align? What falls outside the framework? What does this mean in combination? … What is the quintessence for the card and for the number? And what does that mean for the creativity tarot?

The process was exciting. First of all, the question arises why no book author seems to have had the idea to create a table, as I instinctively and primitively created in Numbers, to see the big picture?! In the back of my mind, I’m keeping the idea of including a kind of poster with such an overview table instead of a booklet/flyer with the card deck. Something like this would have not only helped me now in creating the deck but also in my earlier attempts to interpret the cards and memorise the meanings.

Then it dawned on me that the card meanings are sometimes frighteningly illogical or simply unclear. I think a large part of this is due to the fact that over the years, many cooks have added to the broth. Everyone brought and still brings their wisdom and perspective. That’s nice, but it also means that a card can stand for everything and nothing. Just like with target audiences. In addition, it is already in the nature of tarot cards that they are everything and nothing. Archetypes. Symbols. Nothing tangible, nothing concrete. But something to interpret. But let’s take the 3 of Swords, for example. In the Swords suit, there is a disproportionately large number of horror cards – on the 10, someone is pretty much stone-dead on the floor. Stabbed in the back and head with ten swords. I’m a total head person and have never understood why so much negativity clings to the element of the mind in tarot. Of course, one element must always be balanced by another. Just using your head leads nowhere. It also needs heart, action, passion. But without a head, without a mind, the rest doesn’t do too much either. Like Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.

But let’s stick with the 3 of Swords. In the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, pretty much the standard tarot deck, three swords pierce a heart, with clouds crying in the background. It is a card of worry, sadness, and heartbreak. That’s what every book says, and that’s how you interpret the card even if you’ve never heard of tarot. Swords in the heart? The meaning is clear. In the Crowley tarot, you see a gloomy picture; here, too, the card stands for grief and sadness.

But … didn’t Swords stand for the mind, thinking, the rational? And not for the heart? Anyone who has ever had real heartbreak knows that it can hurt endlessly, but by no means is it a question of the mind. On the contrary. In our mind, we know (or at least suspect) that the whole world doesn’t collapse just because of a separation and that our life doesn’t lose its meaning. We know people who have survived it and became happy again at some point. But the heart cannot believe it. It continues to hurt.

Okay, maybe the heart only pumps blood, but the question remains what a faulty heart has to do with the Swords. The heartbreak card would clearly belong to the Cups, to the world of feelings, for me.

I have provisionally named my 3 of Swords Doubt. In my opinion, with the 2, when I have two thoughts, a decision is made. With Crowley, the 2 is called Peace (why?); with Rider-Waite-Smith, you see a blindfolded woman with two crossed swords, reminiscent of Justice (the antique goddess). She appears again on the 8 of Swords. Maybe Mr. Waite just liked women with blindfolds.

Fine. So for me, the 2 is the decision. And if it’s supposed to become negative after that, the 3 in the world of the mind is at most doubt. »Did I make the right decision? Shouldn’t I rather have …? But maybe I could also …?« This is acceptable in this logic, because ultimately, growth (the 3) in the mind always also means doubting and questioning. That’s very, very far from a heart pierced by swords.

Until a little while ago, when I submitted my concept draft for feedback, I was okay with Doubt, but now, while writing, it has driven me crazy (Aha, that’s the stage of doubt after the decision …). A quick search on Google actually reveals that the 3 of Swords may not have been so negative in pre-Waite times. It must be noted here that the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was the first, at least to my knowledge, to depict people on the numbered cards. Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris followed the tradition of only depicting the number of symbols.

To end this interlude of doubt, I have now ordered a Tarot de Marseille, two books on it, and a Visconti-Sforza deck with an accompanying book. Card hoarder. I have to find out what exactly came before Rider, Waite, and Smith. And I won’t find the answer in dubious tarot forums.

All of this shows, even if this chapter was planned differently, quite well the discovery and research process and the problems that arise. During the research, I caught myself with the grandiose idea that my tarot might be the better tarot. The more accessible and at the same time more practical one. The more logical one. As I said, my interim goal was to summarise the quintessence of each number and each card in one word. I succeeded with that for the time being. And in this process, connections have already emerged that make perfect sense to me and that the classic tarot doesn’t have:

The Aces are the origin of their element, the potential, the beginning. In the creativity deck, they are provisionally called Idea, Feeling, Thought, and Project. This is the first thing a person actually perceives on the respective level. We all know it; suddenly, a thought or a feeling is there, you have an idea or start a project. The latter is a bit of a stretch – although I have definitely found myself in the middle of projects out of the blue and had to ask myself, scratching my head, how the hell that could have happened.

As mentioned, the Queens and Kings were swapped so that the Queens conclude the suit. They were renamed Goddesses and are currently called Inspiration, Intuition, Intelligence, and Identity. They come after the curious Apprentices (Pages), the Free Sprits (Knights), and the quite perfect Luminaries (Kings). The Goddesses are the inner drive, which we humans have given a name to, which we are also able to define – but at the same time can only grasp with great difficulty. What is my intuition? Where is my intelligence? And yet we use the words because we understand what is meant. These divine inspirations or gifts, which stand above the perfect Luminaries (because even the luminaries don’t fully grasp them – even if they have learned to use them very well), manifest in everyday life in the form of the Aces. For example, as insights seemingly out of the blue. Glowing ideas that demand immediate implementation.

They then go through stages 2 to 9. The 10 is not just an end as in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (with the Cups, it’s peace, joy, and sunshine; with the Swords, it’s the figure struck down with ten swords). In the creativity deck, it is a real goal that the respective element strives for. Freedom for the will, Joy for the heart, Serenity for the mind, and Fulfillment for the material and physical. The assignment and naming made sense so far.

Some name ideas for the Major Arcana could then be dropped because there were overlaps. Not surprising, because even in a normal tarot, some cards are difficult to differentiate in their meaning, for example, the High Priestess and the Queen of Cups. Two highly intuitive, mystical women. Healers. Seers. Archetypically the mystery of the feminine … In my tarot, the boundaries should be clearer, and so, based on my card names and my target audience, I’m first dedicating myself to the concept draft to be able to book Ticket 3.

While writing the concept, I have again gained more clarity for myself. Yes, the card deck is essentially a self-coaching tool. Even if I don’t like the term »coaching«. It was very important to me to work out the difference between fortune-telling and what the creativity deck does instead. I’ve become aware that fortune-telling is at its core something externally determined, which manoeuvres people into a victim role.

So, what does my tarot want to do, instead of predicting good or bad luck in the future, so that a person can arm themselves and go to confession? Quite simply: it wants to empower the person. Let’s take the 3 of Swords again. Instead of »Heartbreak is coming your way!« my tarot might ask »Why are you doubting your decisions?«. The person can now reflect on this and process their doubts, which they may not have even perceived as such before. With the next card, they might go even deeper. Where do the doubts come from? They pull the Wild Child (= Page of Wands; I call it the Pippi Longstocking card). The description might remind them of their impetuous nature as a child and their mother, who always urged them to be more cautious and careful. Ergo: The doubts have nothing to do with the actual decision; they are a long-practised pattern. If I understand this, I can deal with it better and, above all, more consciously, instead of reacting blindly and being at the mercy of my thoughts. I can act in a self-determined way. Empowerment.