Stone Riley's Magic Mirror Tarot Set
About This Tarot Set

==> Well, actually, about the Spirit Hill deck.

(August 2002)

Now here's an interesting story from my life in art.

The initial concept for this project was really just to paint maybe half a dozen of the Major Arcana for a particular show.    An acquaintance of ours was hoping to do a Pagan oriented art show and benefit sale  --  the first occasion of that sort in our immediate area  --  and it would be good to do a little something special in support of the event.    This idea sounded pretty easy if I mainly worked from the old pencil treatments in The Simple Tarot.    Tarot paintings would certainly be a good bet to sell at such a venue if they were reasonably cheap;  i.e.    if moderate size canvases were used and not much time and effort were invested.    Also if,  whenever puzzled,  I would seek advice from my aesthetic consultant immediately.    That's how we had it figured.    The show is actually tomorrow by the way.

Well,  I ripped through the Major Arcana in fifteen weeks.

Along the way we gave the public an early peek at the first seven canvasses,  at a nearby city's Main Street show,  and the public raved.    I actually did successful readings for passersby all afternoon by having them choose a picture.    I got this bright idea as a hot wire test with a kind of Druidic savor and tacked up a small hand-lettered paper sign among these seven canvasses to make the offer.    "These paintings are Tarot cards;" the little sign announced;  "tell me which one really strikes you and I'll tell your fortune." I even gave the sign my signature.    Some of the customers would actually tiptoe up and whisper in my ear "The Star!" and such as that.    We would stand there in the street before their painting and discuss their lives while spirits whispered.    At times there was  --  I swear to any god  --  a veritable little mob of rubberneckers milling about our folding tent and card table and chairs there in the green shade of a big locust tree on that city sidewalk corner.    One lady came from Europe.    So I was optimistic.

So,  three weeks ago I've got these twenty-two canvases finally hung up chock-a-block two-high all across a wall in our studio's home computer business office,  some of them really good in my opinion,  and the collection lapping around the corners of the smallish room somewhat.    Till now these keys to wisdom,  as they're often rightly called,  have been accumulating in growing stacks in safe corners of the place so you can understand how hungry I am to study them en masse,  bold,  complete and in numerical order.    The first six pieces off the easel have been professionally photographed and come back to our home,  and their photographic slides were scanned to make computer files  --  a normal bit of business for any pieces which look good enough to justify the extra cost  --  and I have even (on a rather idle whim,  I thought) printed out those first six pictures in little card size and cut them out and spread these few slips of paper on a three-drawer bureau's top against that wall there as if they were intended to be real Tarot cards,  you see,  and when you approach this conveniently located table-like surface of a convenient height you find there is a divination reading which appears to be in progress,  surrounded by this overhanging cloud of the Major Arcana,  you see.    It is a damn fine fine art installation in the highest sense in my opinion,  thank you very much.    Quite affecting to the higher senses.    It's Saturday.    I had rather scurried,  moving furniture and all,  to get this private world premiere ready for my private advisor's arrival on her accustomed weekend spiritual retreat to Spirit Hill.    And no one but me has seen these twenty-two pictures exhibited together ever,  and for me it's only been about an hour since the final hook went in the wall.    I keep wandering in to stare.

She's gonna love it.

She took a look around at everything then shook her head and said;  "You've got to get these commercially published."

Right.

"Well .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . "  sez I;  ".    .    .    nobody's going to publish the Major Arcana by itself.    There are fifty-six more cards,  my darling."

She shrugs and sez:  "How long will that take?"

Right.

Three loathsome options had suddenly arisen to confront me:

1:  Paint fifty-six more pictures on a theme on which I had already painted the longest series of my career so far.
2:  Paint only the portraits and aces (just 20 more canvases) then gin up the rest as mute pip cards (the Three Of Coins would be a decorative display of three coins,  et cetera,  which is a cowardly dodge despised by connoisseurs) through easy computer editing.
Or 3:  Find a different girlfriend.

I pondered deeply.

On Tuesday evening I slapped my forehead like the Stooges used to do.    There was also,  quite obviously:

===>  Option 4:::::  Use existing art work for the Minor Arcana.
!!!!!!!

All of the aces and some of the portraits leapt immediately to mind as perfect fits.    Several obvious choices stared down from the walls around me with a distinctly grumbling attitude as though they had been quite impatiently awaiting this cosmic revelation.    I walked about the place and sorted through the stacks.    After all,  I always ponder Tarot deeply while painting,  even for the most slapdash piece that's really nothing but a scribbled diary entry.    After all,  this seems to be my inmost native mode of self-expression and I had been living Tarot thoroughly for more than twenty years.    So,  now,  how much of a Minor Arcana could I easily assemble from stuff on hand?

Gee Mister Wizard,  let's find out.

Now here's the interesting bit:

Tuesday evening into the wee hours,  then Wednesday and Thursday (dragging off to the day gig or crawling to the rack betimes) I sat bleary eyed at this little old virtually obsolete computer with its cobbled up tool kit of very cheap software tossing bits and bytes around  --  with a summer landscape in flaming green spinning through sunlight and night outside the tall wide windows which stand beyond that makeshift desk of wooden planks  --  and the wonderful breezes up here on the hill  --  and all of the Trumps towering beside me  --  to gin up the initial proof-of-concept version of a revolutionary treatment of one of the Western World's great ongoing works of art and thought from whatever picture files had landed there at hand.    I had the old Simple Tarot there to hand as well of course,  sorted out by suits,  the four piles of unassigned cards dwindling steadily,  me frequently sorting through the convenient sayings hand-lettered on it twenty-two years before while pictures of the last eight seasons of my life paraded in a very interesting and supposedly random fashion for perusal behind the computer's vision screen.

It worked perfectly.

The pieces all fit.

With many of these canvases,  I had wondered why I made them.    Some had leaned in dusty corners since the moment when they left the easel where I'd snapped a camera shot from habit more or less.    Some of these pictures were a total mystery to me until the moment when I hit the rotate button and the blessed thing suddenly took shape precisely as the puzzling aphorism on one of the remaining cards.

I must confess,  however,  that I really wanted "Poppy" for the Nine of Fire (.    .    .    life,  subtle and vigorous,  denies all obstacles .    .    .)   but did not have a file for it.    So Saturday afternoon my bosom friend and I hung "Poppy" up on the dining room wall where the light was good and screwed my cheap amateur digital camera to its tripod and took some shots with various settings.    It deserved better treatment but I think it came out pretty good.

And that's how Spirit Hill Tarot came into existence.


(Summer 2006)
What you see now is the second edition with better software, better camera and more work.

-- Stone Riley