my tarot - XV - the imp

xv - imp

Short for Impetus.  I do not believe in the devil.  Full stop.

Let's start with the devil.

I had an unconventional upbringing: consequently I possess a peculiarly personal conception of magic that needn't concern you in depth, suffice to say I do not believe in magick, Crowley or all the freaky racist gibberish baked into western occult traditions.  I don't believe in Ghod or the judeo-christian schema ruling every moment of our shitty little American microcosm like some weird judgmental micromanaging cuck, perched in the corner of everybody's lives, scornfully disapproving, dick in hand.

And I don't believe in the devil, either.

But I do believe in the material existence of spiritual evil.  Just not the way the rest of this frankly insane country does.  And I do believe in magic-- &, weirdly --I DO believe in god: as the organizational principle that keeps our atoms dancing to ever more complex arrangements of weird tunes.  So when I undertook re-creating & re-interpreting the Rider-Waite deck, I wanted to preserve the Spirit and overall composition of Pamela Coleman-Smith's work, with her intricately theatrical staging & all the little narrative suggestions which make tarot so compellingly suggestive, as a storytelling vehicle, constantly hinting, like panels in a comic strip cut up & re-ordered.

I saw a number of ways to address all these concern, here, in the Imp card.  

Because the Impetus is not the devil.  But he is.  I don't believe in Sssatan, but satanism, if treated like surrealism, or communism, any sticky -ism you can name, satanism illuminates some specific issues--  let's say, classical themes  --which even a novice tarot reader might find germane.  (Today, of all days!)

There are a few details to finish in the art, here.  The gradiants in the far background and the final touches of flame.  But otherwise, personally?  I think it's the devil to the tee.  The Imp looks nothing like Pamela-Smith's devil card, and is one of the only ones to have been so thoroughly & completely  retooled.  But I think it's honest to her intentions, and I like to believe she would have approved of my efforts.

This guy was designed the year before covid hit.  I borrowed from the loteria deck for the wardrobe on the gender archetypes, as well as the left-side devil face, hoof & chicken leg--  el catrin, la dama, & el diablito, respectively.  The right-facing mask of Lucifer (if that's how you choose to read that solar figure) is represented by the capering 'Angel of Hearth & Home' by Max Ernst.  The tails, the Fruit & the Flame are repurposed from Pamela Coleman-Smith's original Devil card, and re-contextualized; the imagery of the Fruit & Flame owes as much to Coleman-Smith as it does to Waite's instructions.

It took a while to figure out how to put these elements together, and if I'm entirely honest it was not an entirely conscious process, as I was principally concerned with Queering Symmetry, a recurring fixation throughout this series.  (You'll see what I mean soon enough.)

I did all the real groundwork on inking & tones during the covid shutdown.

I think that's all the stuff that matters.

On to the other cards.

Next:  o - fool