The whole deck
as one structure.
This mandala comes from The Way of Tarot by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa, from the chapter “The Ten Stages for Constructing the Mandala”. Laid out their way, every card of the Tarot de Marseille finds its place in a single pattern. They call building it by hand the best way to get to know the deck as a whole.
- The centre
- The Fool lies across the middle, looking up, and The World rests on him. The four Aces sit on The World’s four corners.
- The suits
- Cups, Swords, Wands and Pentacles grow out from their Aces in pairs. Each 10 steps out to the side, so the four arms turn like a swastika.
- The horizon
- The court cards lie on the horizontal line, Page to Knight from the centre out.
- The axis
- The Major Arcana run straight through: I to VIIII rising above The World, XI to XVIIII going down below it, X and XX at the two ends.
- Three dimensions
- Stand it up, and the Major Arcana become a vertical axis with the four suits turning around it.
Like a reading, the mandala is laid out as a mirror. The quotes in the ten stages are Jodorowsky and Costa’s own words; the short notes beside them are summaries.
Want to shuffle and draw instead? The card table has the same deck.
Card images: CBD Tarot de Marseille by Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov, www.cbdtarot.com, used under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.