Late last year I mentioned a very cool collection of digital images (created by Benjamin Mackey) that fused David Lynch’s seminal Twin Peaks series with the cards of the Tarot. At the time I wished this Tarot deck was an actual thing that could be purchased…and now, happy days, it is!
For those interested (me, me!), there is now an IndieGoGo crowd-funding campaign to create a production version of the deck, officially titled “The Magician Longs to See Tarot”. For a more than reasonable price of $US20 you can get your very own deck, shrink-wrapped in plastic no less…
The Magician Longs to See Tarot is a complete 78-card deck with 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana in full color. The deck combines the mystical world of Twin Peaks with visual evocations of Pamela Coleman Smith’s iconic tarot illustrations. The Major Arcana have manifested as some of the primary movers and shakers in Twin Peaks, while the Minor Arcana tend towards depicting infamous scenes and moments in the series. My goal is to strike a delicate balance between accurately representing the respective characters while still maintaining readability as a deck.
I’m super excited to announce that John Thorne, co-creator of Wrapped In Plastic (a magazine devoted to the study of Twin Peaks) and author of the book The Essential Wrapped In Plastic: Pathways to Twin Peaks, is contributing an original introduction to the deck. This will be featured in the booklet at the $30 and $50 levels!
View the entire collection of 78 cards here.
As mentioned in my previous post, in the embedded podcast below Mackey is asked whether he thinks the way in which many Twin Peaks characters seem to fit so well with the cards of the Tarot was by conscious design of David Lynch, or if it’s simply down to the archetypal nature of story characters:
I think there are certain characters that David Lynch was purposefully basing off Tarot archetypes. There’s one scene where Major Garland Briggs, he’s talking about his experiences in the White Lodge, and there’s a scene where he’s sitting on this stone throne and he’s surrounded by this lush greenery, and the pose he’s striking is almost exactly the pose that the hierophant strikes. Then there’s also a scene with Blackie at One-Eyed Jack’s, she’s at her table and she’s playing the Tarot Cards. And it’s a really small thing, you don’t see her doing it a lot and they don’t make a lot of direct references to it…but something like that, makes me think that maybe David Lynch has more of a conscious connection to the Tarot.
Check out the full list of rewards at various pledge amounts at IndieGoGo. Get in!
Link: IndieGoGo Campaign for The Magician Longs to See Tarot
