Virgo Stellium @virgostelliumrepository - Tumblr Blog

VIRGO STELLIUM

Welcome to Virgo Stellium's repository!

This page hosts images of every card in the Rider-Waite deck with illustrations by Pamela Coleman-Smith. Each post is tagged with specific visual elements to assist with visual research.

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Tags Directory

Cards

Essays

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External Links:

Annotated Bibliography

Instagram

Booking Page

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ABOUT VIRGO STELLIUM’S REPOSITORY

Welcome to the repository—I hope you make yourself at home here.

I created Virgo Stellium’s Repository in tandem with an Instagram page where I draw connections between cards in order to better understand the tarot.

What does ‘Virgo Stellium’ mean?

J. Wilson, writer of Complete Dictionary of Astrology written in 1819, describes a stellium as

“a crowd of planets in an angle,” (x).

To be a stellium is to have at least three of the ten planets in one chart appear in one sign. David Odyssey writes in Nylon that one can think of a stellium as a supermajority or dominating party in a parliament (x). Stelliums indicate a compounding of the archetypal qualities of a sign.

Paired with the qualities of a Virgo: a stereotypically discerning, organized, and observant beast which also knows the wails of a body left untended to. Mercurial in nature, I identify a virgo stellium’s main concern on this earth as communication. But, communication requires both the exactitude of the tarot’s airy swords as it does the physicality of the earthly pentacles (see #suits_swords and #suit_pentacles). A voice cannot speak without a throat. A virgo stellium’s approach to tarot, to me, means an analytical, detail-oriented approach with an emphasis on the earthly body.

In readings, I emphasize material change in order to face life’s turbulence and exaltations. I lead with the body before all else. Readings are led with questions like:

Where are you with your routines? How are you nourishing yourself and others; is it sustainable? Can you identify where in your body discomfort, joy, and satisfaction live in your body?

As a person saturated in earth signs, Virgo Stellium seeks to ground you while also bearing witness to one’s daily, lived experience.

WHAT IS TAROT?

Tarot consists of a long, winding, and deeply political history. Tarot began as Tarocchi, a card game for the Italian elites. The earliest references to tarot are from the mid-1400s which was the same time Romani people left India and faced ruthless persecution. Romani fortune-tellers transformed the Tarocchi into a cartomantic practice. Thus, tarot became inherently tied to Romani prosecution and has, to this day, been a survival trade (x).

Discourse surrounding tarot as an open or closed practice continues to this day. Like all discourse which circulates through and around marginalized communities, there is not an official or monolithic answer to the question of if non-Romani people should practice tarot.

I come from a family of fortune-tellers and card-readers. I picked up tarot as a way to connect with this aspect of my lineage. In addition to tarot, I practice classic cartomancy using playing cards and my family’s wisdom as Vietnamese refugees. We also utilized divination (as well as crafts like tailoring) as a survival trade.

I value the addition of the twenty-two Major Arcana cards in addition to the classic fifty-six cards. Because of this, I primarily practice tarot.

My understanding of tarot is shaped by my experience as the child of second-wave Vietnamese refugees, my childhood which was surrounded by divination, and my work as an artist. I began reading cards when I was twelve years old as a method of communication. I sought the centuries-old wisdom of the cards, as well as the relationships which grew out of readings.

Tarot is relational. Tarot is connective. A tarot reading hinges on many things—who’s coming to the cards, the land which the cards are spread out upon, the position of the stars above them, among about a million other factors. Tarot, like art, is relational.

I borrow the term relational from Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics written in 1996. He wrote that relational aesthetics are

a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.

Virgo Stellium’s tarot prioritizes the creation of microtopias (micro + utopia). A microutopia is necessarily temporary and untraceable. You cannot locate a reading on a map—especially with the evolution of virtual interfacing. Because of this, tarot readings are better understood as performances. They are events with a clear start and end. For a moment, we may adopt, trade, and invent roles. The reader is not necessarily bound to the role of active interpreter or translator; the client is not necessarily a passive listener.

For instance, what happens when the reader becomes the listener, and the client becomes the interpreter? What happens when the most tender, you-shaped trouble is allowed to take center-stage? To invite the trouble to stand before the cards and identify itself within the centuries-old stories?

Readings are practice. How can we collaboratively practice how we may behave in the world we want to live in? What does communication look like? Where do we situate the body in these discussions?

Artmaking does not stop when an artwork leaves the studio. Instead, art is made every time someone thinks of or rambles on about an artwork. Each act of recollection is an act of building and undoing. We build new schemas. We undo the ties which bind us to the burdensome expressions of deadly systems. Tarot, like art, is an opportunity to call ourselves out, call our friends in, and hold a mirror to the parts of us which desperately wish to be witnessed.

I created the repository as a resource for anyone who feels called to the cards. For some, this repository is useful when creating their own custom tarot decks. For others, it’s a way to maintain agency when others read our cards. Let it be known that just because a reader offers one interpretation does not mean that it is right. Even the best ones get it wrong sometimes.

I believe that the best readings we receive are a hybrid of two kinds of conversations :: the ones we have with ourselves, and the ones we have with others. I created Virgo Stellium for all—not just my clients—in their search for meaning and witness.

A GUIDE TO USING VIRGO STELLIUM’S REPOSITORY ::

Virgo Stellium’s repository is different from places like Biddy Tarot, Labrinthos, or any paper-guide which accompanies most decks.

The repository is divided into two types of content ::

All of the Rider-Waite cards with illustrations by Pamela Coleman-Smith accompanied by a tagging system based on visual attributes.

Essays which go in-depth into history, meaning, and connection-making.

Virgo Stellium’s Repository introduces the cards as images and the tagging system is based on visual attributes because tarot is inherently ocularcentric. Meaning-making hinges on one’s ability to interpret the cards (more specifically, one’s physical access to the cards and the amount of time one can spend studying them).

***Please note that the number of tags will grow as time passes

Each post which includes a high-resolution image also includes three fields: links to essays, notes (which will soon include alt-text versions of the cards), and tags. If you’re looking for a specific card, you can either search for the card using key words (e.g. ‘temperance’ or ‘xiv’), or you can visit the #card_directory.

If you’re looking for specific patterns (numerology, the number of figures in a scene, the color of the sky, etc.), you can either search by using keywords (e.g. ‘wings_red‘ or ‘water’) or visit the #tags_directory.

Look around! You never know what connections you’ll find.

WHY USE VIRGO STELLIUM’S REPOSITORY?

Cards are small. Details get lost. When one pulls a spread of ten cards, it’s easy to forget what was in front of oneself. Most of my clients are not tarot readers themselves, nor do they have decks accessible at any given time.

As a tarot reader, it is exceptionally important to me that my clients are able to access the cards from anywhere, as well as being able to zoom in to see details. Readings which last thirty-minutes are useful for broad-strokes of insight—however, post-reading meditations alone with the cards can be equally as insightful.

As a tarot practitioner, the best way to read cards is by applying our own systems of meaning-making. Sometimes we cannot share all of the details of a situation with a reader. Other times, a reading doesn’t land for a couple of days. Virgo Stellium’s Repository offers an alternative way to view the cards which leads with images rather than words.

For tarot practitioners, new connections are made every time we read someone’s cards. The act of cataloging each card has been the most insightful process in understanding the tarot. I find myself straying from the scripted, linguistic path of my long-lost, little paper-book. I delight in this departure.

I also delight in the fact that this page is intended to change. Virgo Stellium’s Repository is an expansive, living index. It is as much a research project as a reference. Mistakes, edits, and strikethroughs are bound to happen. In fact, they’re bound to happen frequently.

I am excited to share my findings. I hope this page offers accessible images of the tarot, insights which may enrich your understanding of the cards, and gives you the courage to witness yourself.

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