In the cards this week: Direction and Balance

And the story of how this deck came to be

Here are your cards for the week! You can find more card images and other info about my Minoan Tarot deck here.

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My deck offered up a couple of big hitters this morning, two Major Arcana cards. These two have special meaning for me because they’re two of the first three cards I designed. When they show up in readings, I pay special attention.

You may recognize The High Priest as looking very much like the Prince of the Lilies Minoan fresco from Knossos. Back in 2012, I happened to have a book about the ancient Minoans lying open on my desk one day as I was doing a Tarot reading with my favorite old Sacred Circle deck.

The book was open to a color plate image of the Prince of the Lilies fresco. I found myself looking back and forth between the fresco and the cards and thinking how very much the fresco image looked like a Tarot card. I figured that someone out there must have created a Minoan-themed Tarot deck, but no matter how I searched, there wasn’t a full Minoan deck on the market anywhere.

So I started looking through the color plates in that book. The Prince of the Lilies felt like it ought to the The High Priest - that one was obvious. But what about other frescoes and cards?

I flipped the page to find the Bull Leaping fresco, also from Knossos. It’s a horizontal (landscape orientation) image, so it wouldn’t fit easily on a vertically-oriented Tarot card. But the more I looked at it, the more I thought the leaper in the middle of the fresco needed to be on the Temperance card, which I chose to call Balance in this deck.

And when I looked at the leaper on the left side of the image, the one hanging bodily from the horns of a charging bull, I knew that one had to be Strength.

At that point, I simply couldn’t stop. I knew there was a Tarot deck to be found in the precious fragments of Minoan art that survived the millennia. So I started designing, testing out different art media, drawing, painting.

Honestly, if I’d realized what a huge project a whole Tarot deck is, I probably would have run screaming from the room. But my naivete was immense, so I plunged ahead.

Three years and 91 separate hand-painted works of art later, I had a completed deck ready to shop around to publishers.

Today’s cards speak to my process back then as well as to where you and I are going from here. Creating this deck was definitely a “you’re capable of more than you think” experience as well as a hard lesson in learning to balance work and rest.

It’s the delicate point between those two, between our dreams and our (bigger than we think) reasonable capabilities, that this pair of cards points to.

Here’s to dreaming big and achieving those dreams in a healthy, well-balanced, enjoyable way!

The High Priest: Where do you want to go in life? You have the power to envision and create the life you want (or something pretty close to it, given practical constraints). Pay attention to where your abilities lie, and let them direct you toward action you can take to manifest the life you want. The secret message of this card is that you're probably capable of far more than you think. You just have to take those steps.

Balance: Where do you need balance in your life? This bull leaper is balancing on the back of a galloping animal. Life can feel like that sometimes. This card is telling you that you have the ability to find the balance point in your life. Where is the equilibrium between rest and work, between quiet and activity, between alone time and conviviality? Only you know where the balance lies for you. And once you recognize that, you can take action to move into that balance point and stay there.

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About Laura Perry

I'm an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. I'm the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne's Tribe, an inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. My spiritual practice also includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist non-fiction and fiction across several different subjects and genres. I'm currently working on an illustrated book of modern Minoan myths. I’m also an avid gardener and living history demonstrator.

You can find my books and Tarot deck on my website, where you can also find my social media links.