Inspired by the tarot's Heirophant card, "The Deceased" is a representation of traditional western ideas behind death. The image on the card is inspired by a photo of a monk's wake.
Upright:
This is an indication that societal pressures are deeply affecting your ability to be happy. The outside influences are not good for you and are causing you distress as they are based on who you are expected to be and not who you actually are.
Inverted:
You have broken free of the expectations of those around you. You are forging a path forward based on the comfort you feel in your own body and aren't willing to be told not to be happy as you are.
----------------------------------
For today's secondary discussion, I'd like to talk about stretch goals. One of the benefits of running this project through Kickstarter for funding is the presence of Stretch Goals.
Stretch goals are additional improvements that can be made to the product as more backers support the project with their preorder. Typically, production costs go down as higher quantities are ordered from manufacturers. In regards to this deck, I had a lot of ideas on improvements and additions that I wanted to include, should the finances allow.
The first of which was always a way to "charge" the deck.
I was exploring other decks on the Etsy pages and saw a lot of sellers providing crystals for the use of charging a Tarot or Oracle deck. I like the idea of creating some type of trinket that is intrinsically linked to the production of this deck specifically. And since this deck explores the human form in a variety of ways, I came to the conclusion that a coin would be a wonderful item, as it's inherent duality would provide two options on how you want the deck to be charged.
I wanted to have a heart on one side for questions of emotion, and a brain on the other for questions of logic and reason. I also decided to add a numbering system around the ends of the coin, as a clock face. While I didn't have a specific defined reason for the numbers, I knew that some enterprising readers would find a marvelous use for it.
My initial place holder art for this coin is this:
I didn't want it to just be a solid relief image, so I reached out to a friend of mine who is a marvelous 3d modeler. He's working on it now, and this is the latest of his WIP:
We have a way to go, but I am very excited about having a red metal coin in each deck.
Please let me know what you think!
