This will be a walk-through of Keys 1 through 11 from the Major Arcana for the forthcoming third edition of the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot. Please note that I don’t anticipate the deck coming out any time sooner than 2021, and don’t be surprised if it doesn’t come out until 2022. I also won’t be doing pre-orders until the whole deck is done.
Continue reading “Walk-Through of Key 1 to Key 11 in SKT III”
Yeah, I’m going full-color (sorta– it’ll be a muted palette) for SKT the Third (I’ll be calling it something else, something fancy-shmancy, but for now it’s SKT the Third).
If you click into YouTube to watch the video on that platform, you’ll be able to skip around using the timestamps I’ve provided in the description box.
Continue reading “Inspiration and Process for Coloring SKT III; The Emperor Revisited”
I made a little video to showcase the evolution of my Lovers card from the SKT, laced with Bach’s Prelude in C Major. =) You can click on that YouTube logo along the bottom bar of the video to enlarge.
Please understand that nothing has been committed to just yet. This is nothing more than an experimental trial, though I’m sharing it with you as an entry in my SKT progress diary. Your honest feedback is welcomed!
Actually, it’s very welcomed. Like the previous shitty-Emperor-card post. You all gave me really good critiques that were specific, detailed, and because of the collective you, I had something tangible to work with as I continued trying to draw a good Emperor card. (It’s still in the works. We’ll revisit Key 4 at a later time.)
Continue reading “SKT the Third, Experimental Trials: Trying Out Full-Color”
Yeah. I needed the title in all-caps. Because I’m screaming at the top of my lungs and yanking at my own hair.
WHY IS DRAWING THE EMPEROR CARD SUCH A STRUGGLE?
For an irrational woo answer to that, I might say maybe it’s because our global collective culture is moving away from dominant-masculinity, and as a feminist I’m certainly not going to cry a river over that shift, but it does mean I’m really, really struggling with tapping in to that masculine energy.
New to this video lecture series?
The above-linked Introduction page will give you an overview of what this series is about and provide a course contents listing.
The Sevens is the ninth of seventeen videos in this series. This is the realm of choice, mental reasoning, and philosophical discernment, where:
To quell any confusion, yes, I’m at work on a third edition of the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot. No, not a new deck, but a new edition of an already existing one, the SKT.
I have not yet arrived at a decision on coloring. Do I want it in sepia? Grayscale with accents of colors? Full color via digital applications? I don’t have any answers. I’m going to give all of the above options a few tries, compare, and see which path is right for SKT the Third.
The images in this post are sepia-toned only because my first order of business is to produce both a black-and-white and also a sepia-toned set of base images to work from. That way I can tinker with both and see which I want to work with when creating the full deck.
I never had any issue with Baba Studio (BabaBarock) prior to learning of their anti-Chinese sentiments, and none of this is personal. In fact, I waited for three strikes, three separate incidences of public anti-Chinese statements before finally saying enough is enough, I need to speak up.
By way of some background, Baba Studio (aka BabaBarock World) is a tarot deck creator and publisher specializing in digital collage decks mashed from public domain images.
See also: 7/07/2020 Edits below
Deck piracy is a serious problem that creators face and as a collective have had to fight against. When you engage in that battle, however, don’t lose your humanity or compromise your principles against prejudice.
Call out specific bad actors by name and don’t make blanket statements such as “all Chinese…” If you are going to call out a specific culture, reread your statement carefully. Is it a micro-aggression? Be self-aware. Could the phrasing of your statement be revealing of subconscious antagonism toward a specific culture? Be thoughtful about how you can fight the good fight without resorting to xenophobia.
“My legal counsel advised me to never do business with Chinese companies, because all of them will rip off your intellectual property.”
Paraphrased, but an accurate representation of what was said by a very prominent deck creator in our community. She’ll tell you my paraphrase isn’t accurate and that I’ve misrepresented her. She takes issue with me saying she used the word “all.”
I can’t recall if that precise word “all” was ever used, so let’s believe her and say I’m mistaken. She never said “all.” It was me who read into what was absolutely, unequivocally implied in the subtext.
Oh, wait. The below was sent to me, after I started feeling pretty terrible about maybe misconstruing what she had said. I was beginning to second-guess myself, thinking, man, I now feel like crap for thinking she said “all” when she didn’t. Many of her friends were messaging me, privately and publicly, telling me I got her all wrong, I am remembering her words wrong, and she never, ever said “all.”
Some deck creators saw that same post I saw and immediately thought it was problematic and insensitive.
Other deck creators believe she means well, but perhaps she worded her sentiments wrong– let’s chalk this one up to poor word choice. Maybe. But what I’ve seen from her, she is one fine writer.
And still others think I am the one who is way out of line, being overly sensitive, probably because I’m Asian, and poor, poor Karen for getting misunderstood.
I’ll concede that the truth is probably somewhere in that middle “no man’s land” intersecting point of the Venn diagram. I’m not 100% right, but then neither is she.
Here’s the thing. That was not her first offense. From what I have personally witnessed, it was her third. If we consider what the entire community has witnessed, who knows how many times she has repeated this rhetoric.
Continue reading “Anti-Chinese Sentiments and Baba Studio (BabaBarock)”
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