How a Tarot Card Begins

Notes on impulse, unexpected combinations, and the moment an image becomes a card.

By Zane Moss

In my world, a Tarot card usually doesn’t begin with an image.

It begins with an impulse.

A sudden thought.

A realization about life.

A feeling that stays in my mind longer than expected.

An idea that simply appears out of nowhere.

Sometimes I immediately understand what it is about.

Sometimes I don’t.

And then one of my favorite parts of the creative process begins.

An image starts to form from the idea

I begin to see separate elements.

A person.

A room.

A color.

An object.

An animal.

A flower.

A mask.

A door.

A pair of shoes.

A certain kind of light.

Sometimes these elements seem perfectly logical together.

But very often, it is the opposite.

I may want to place things together that seemingly have no reason to exist in the same image.

Something beautiful with something slightly unsettling.

Luxury with vulnerability.

Softness with control.

Love with danger.

Light with something that remains hidden in shadow.

And somewhere inside that contradiction, a story begins to appear.

I love unexpected combinations

Perhaps this is what fascinates me most about creating Tarot.

Two completely ordinary things, placed beside each other, can suddenly begin to mean something entirely different.

Red shoes on their own are simply red shoes.

A mask is just a mask.

A snake is just a snake.

But the moment they enter the same world, a relationship begins to form between them.

And questions appear.

What is happening here?

What is being hidden?

What is tempting us?

What is warning us?

What looks beautiful only at first glance?

That is the moment when the image stops being simply beautiful.

It begins to speak.

Sometimes the card tells me what it needs

I don’t always plan every detail in advance.

Very often, one idea leads to another.

I add one element and suddenly realize that something else is missing.

I change the background.

Remove a symbol.

Move an object.

Change a color.

And at some point, the composition finally seems to find its balance.

Not necessarily a perfect balance.

Sometimes a little discomfort or contradiction is exactly what the card needs.

Because life itself is rarely perfectly arranged.

I don’t create only beautiful images

Of course, I want a card to be visually beautiful.

But beauty alone is not enough.

I want there to be something that makes the eye stop.

Something slightly unexpected.

Maybe a detail that is only noticed after a while.

Maybe a symbol that changes the meaning of the entire image.

Maybe a feeling that cannot immediately be put into words.

I like it when a card does not reveal everything at once.

When you can return to it and discover something else.

Sometimes it begins in life

Many ideas come simply from living.

From relationships.

From conversations.

From people I meet.

From emotions.

From places.

From something I notice while traveling or in everyday life.

From a sudden realization about a situation I saw completely differently only yesterday.

I may not be searching for anything at all, and suddenly the idea is there.

Sometimes it is just one sentence.

Sometimes one image.

Sometimes the combination of two completely different things.

And then I want to see what might grow from it.

And somewhere in the process, a card appears

I don’t have one exact formula.

And perhaps that is exactly why I still love this process.

An impulse.

Then an idea.

Then one element.

And another.

Sometimes something completely opposite to the first.

They begin to communicate with each other.

A mood begins to form.

A story begins to form.

And at some point, I no longer see separate objects.

I see a card.

Maybe this is how Tarot begins for me.

Not with an attempt to illustrate a meaning that already exists.

But with one idea and a sense of curiosity: