Tarot deck : Major arcana, the four virtues

Designing the Justice, Temperance, Popess and Force cards for my tarot deck
alpha_rats - 2024-10-11

I haven't posted updates about the tarot in a while, but I actually made quite a lot of progress on the major arcana in the meantime!

I'll start by introducing four cards I decided to work on in tandem : Justice, Temperance, the Force, and the Popess/High Priestess/Prudence. Those always were some of the major arcana cards I was the less familiar with...

I was a bit stuck on how to tackle them... until I found during my research sources linking them to historical allegories of the four cardinal virtues in greek philosophy, which later got included in christian lore. All four share a strong moral component, and represent a form of control over our instincts, impulses and emotions.

They help us achieve our goals and equilibrium and are often a very welcome presence in any reading... I needed a bit of reflection before understanding them fully, and this framework got really useful to help me conceptualise them.

In the deck, they are represented standing in a similar cubic room, like four pillars at the corner of a larger square.

As those four cards are allegories (people disguised as concepts), I decided to get inspiration from some of my friends and collaborators who reminded me of those cards, asking their impressions on them, or sometimes just trying to channel what they evoke to me. Those four cards are designed as a subset within the major arcana : I like thinking about the tarot as a series of sequences and subsets, and try to make my personal systems visible in the design. These kind of relationships, in my opinion, contribute to richer readings and spreads.

Temperance

Temperance is a card of regulation, adaptation, and transformation - it symbolises our ability to maintain a form of equilibrium, a middle way among the chaos. It encourages humility and a form of surrender to things outside of our control, all the while managing our emotions and desires. Temperance is regulation through transmutation and sublimation. From the four cardinal virtues, it is the one which creates the conditions for the other three to act : it stands for exchanges and links between us and others. Temperance acts with ease and fluidity, it soothes and reconforts.

For Temperance, I contacted my friend Jira who has a special liking for angels, to get her input on the card. If you have a look at her work, you will probably easily understand where I drew the primary colors and geometric shapes from for this design! She also nurtures online and IRL communities and events, fist as part of AAA, and now as part of Fantasia Malware, so I think this card is a perfect fit for her. She left me a voice note about the card, transcribed here :

Jira's voice note on the Temperance card :

I think I've maybe recently have started to get my life together in a certain way, but I think it was like a fucking mess for a long time. And I think an aspect of that was accepting, or stop trying to kind of like... Okay, I guess what I mean to me this is relevant to temperance, cause it's like I was, before, In trying to manage myself, or my life, or anything - I think I was trying to follow productivity advice.

Or also, you know, when people struggle with things we always think it's about willpower as well ... You know, I think you're like : I need more willpower, I need more self control I need to try harder, this kind of thing. And I think what's changed is actually embracing your own chaos or the ways in which you're just dysfunctional but trying to find ways that can work for you. this to me is kind of like this. Especially the icon of an angel is very, like, you know ... the fucking boring Christian shit of, everything's very guilt driven and sanctimonious and rigid or something, but then I would think of an angel that's kind of about embracing or intensifying an absolute fucking mess, but it's about harnessing or embracing this and realizing it's more like water or something, and it's something that you kind of have to go with ... or like the flow of it, you know, it's not something you can kind of punch holes into or something ... it's like a much more shapeless thing

kind of like a constantly exploding mess of nonsense that you have to channel into something that can be morphed into something else ... and then sometimes not. You know, sometimes you also have to lose control, it's also accepting as part of this moderation - that moderation comes in moderation, do you know what I mean? Sometimes you also need to just, like, explode again into a thousand pieces.

Here is a video by Jira, showing an angel of her own design:

Prudence (Popess/High Priestess)

The double-faced design is inspired by the statue of Prudence in the Nantes Cathedral, symbolizing the need to be aware of the past in order to make wise choices.Similarly, the mirrors allow Prudence to see the past all while looking forward, similarly to the retro visors of a car.

This card is inspired by my friend Cécile, who draws calligrams like a copist monk, copying texts into very intricate designs with a lot of patience and dedication. I was subletting her room when I drew this card, which was all full of crimson red items and fabrics, skulls and bones, incense, and books (a lot of them about death and religion). The ambivalence I have towards organized religion (or the idea of a Pope, even a Popess!) mirrors the one I might have towards this card, and she was the perfect vehicle to help me bring this design to life, as I enjoyed the privacy and retreat of her room.

When looking at the greek roots of Prudence as a virtue (also Sophia, wisdom), it expresses the ability to discern the appropriate course of action to be taken in a given situation at the appropriate time, with consideration of potential consequences. It encourages us to consider our values and the deeper meaning of the choices we make, overlooking superficial concerns.

Force

Force (or Fortitude) obviously a card of strengh, but more of a strengh of temper and character than brutal force. It's authority allows to tame and guide, and is not used for destruction : it is often represented as a woman crushing the neck of snake or getting a beast to open it's mouth, with gentle but unwavering confidence. This card is encouraging and vigourous.

I was inspired by my friend Staffie, a former firefighter and now pole dancer who got the Force card tattooed on her arm by one of our common friends. (I'm blessed with many friends). She told me about how, when her mood or energy is low, she thinks of her body as a pony you have to take out and train, whatever happens - this is the kind of beast taming we are talking about, the strength which allows us to be kind and do what needs to be done, and get to the other end of the tunnel with our own strong, shiny haired, little pony of a flesh and mind vessel. It's the ability to put our negative emotions aside and power through.

I also drew inspiration from the Legion Commander character from DOTA2 for it's overall design, that's where I got the two crossed flags in their back from. The symbol of the dragon/snake coming from the house and being trampled is a reference to medieval depictions of this allegory I found during my research : sometimes the tower is replaced by a column, but here I just made it a stripper pole.

Justice

This card features Nok Baby, a character created with GLOR1A for our video game project SWARM : inspired by nigerian Nok figurines, she guides the players through the game. Justice defines a clear cut between right and wrong, and is maybe the most self-explanatory of all of the four virtue cards, as it's symbolism persisted well onto our age from the Renaissance times when it was first drafted. Justice appeals to our intellect and moral abilities and clears the path for what is right - it also represents a form of acceptance and surrender to internal or external sets of rules.

The inspiration for this card actually comes from two distinct people : While designing the card I kept thinking about GLOR1A and the incredible energy and passion she puts in her projects such as Nine Nights, and how this drive is fed by a need for social justice and fairness. When working together, GLOR1A's strategic and grounded mindset became an inspiration for the Justice card as well. I also got some input from my friend Magali, who likes tarot and shared with me how this card reminds her of themes of social and reparative justice - she is also the person who made me discover Michelle Tea, for which I'm really thankful - I even read the book Michelle Tea wrote about Tarot in the meantime, which was definitely a good read, even though it's quite new agey and I don't care much about crystals and such. But I loved how Michelle shared bits of her life while talking about the cards, making it all very personal, sincere and direct.

References :

These are the two main books I sampled into when working on those four cards :

Thank you for reading!

If you are interested in this tarot project, you can subscribe to my newsletter to be informed when it comes out! You can also check the articles linked below to read more about the deck.

related articles : work on the deck

📄 Research : the minor arcana [11.2020]
📄 Design : minor arcana - from Ace to Four [11.2020]
📄 Design : minor arcana - from Five to Eight [03.2021]
📄 Design : minor arcana - Nine and Ten [08.2021]
📄 Design : minor arcana - Court cards [06.2022]
📄 Design : major arcana - The four virtues [09.2024]

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