Dante

So I made tarot cards. I apologize for this being late! I worked super hard on these and tried to combine the meaning behind the drawings for tarot and that from Inferno.

In the Fool card the character usually stands walking off the top of a cliff so I did something fairly similar but looking off at the mountain which represents the hill Dante tried to climb in the beginning with the three visible peaks representing his three foes. He holds a rock representing his burden of going through hell. The Fool represents beginnings, childhood, and overall lack of wisdom and Dante is embarking on a journey through the literal afterlife so I figured making him the Fool was warranted.

With Virgil, I chose the card Temperance. Temperance represents balance, ascension, and patience. I feel like Virgil kind of acts in that way through the story while guiding Dante through Hell. The two cups represent the conscious and unconscious mind so when the upward flowing water is poured it is like an expansion of the mind and intention being made. My main change to the card was making it look a little more greco-roman.

Beatrice was made into the Star. The card represents hope, blessings, and aspirations so when Beatrice came to help Dante I immediately thought of this card for her. The five stars (although hard to see) represent the senses and the awareness that they bring, with the largest representing a call to a new purpose. Her feet, one holding her wait pointing at the ground, and the other pointing at the water show Beatrice being grounded in reality and Dante having memories of her earthly self while the pointed foot represents emotional maturity. Her vase of water being poured in the lake represents her hope and knowledge being given to Dante.

Lastly is inferno itself. I made this card to represent more of Dante’s experience and the story itself than the place and that has a very large theme of “don’t trust what you knew because its all wrong” and there’s only one card that represents that… the Tower. The Tower represents fallacies being lifted, decrepit corner stones being taken away, and death of an old way of thinking. I combined the very famous art work of inferno and the general Tower lay out. The lightning represents a shock both emotionally and also metaphorically to the system and is seen as the catalyst for the destruction of the corner stone. The crown is representative of the corner stone, however beautiful it may be it is not gold, it’s bronze and we remove it in order to replace it with something better. As awful as this card is it is hopeful because of the positive change that comes after the catastrophe of this card.

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