Over centuries tarot cards and their interpretations have been updated many times. The examples above are from Rider-Waite-Smith, Aleister Crowley & Lady Frieda Harris, the surrealist Leonora Carrington, and myself. I wanted to reimagine the cards with more Ballardian themes.
For the card images I used some of the excellent illustrations for Ballard's book covers. I chose twenty-two that seemed to match the major arcana. For the interpretations, I turned to Ballard's beautiful prose poem What I Believe, which split almost magically into forty-four sections, one each for the upright and reversed presentations of the major arcana. The original lines of What I Believe all begin 'I believe'; I felt this was inappropriate in a series of recommendations so I changed the openings, but otherwise the text is substantially Ballard's.
Click the link below for your own free online reading. Instead of the traditional three-card reading of Past, Present and Future, I have suggested a more Ballardian interpretation in which:
- the first card represents A Message from Deep Time
- the second card represents News from an Exhausted Present
- the third card represents The Possibilities of the Next Five Minutes
Mike Bonsall - May 2024 (copyright for all images remains with the original holders)