The Gothic Tarot

The Gothic Tarot
In 2002, Joseph Vargo decided to create a Tarot deck of his own. He was familiar with decks from other notable artists, but realized that most of those consisted of random licensed artwork that the publisher seemingly gave little if any thought to in relation to the actual card meanings. For Vargo's Gothic Tarot, each of the 78 images was chosen or specifically created to symbolize the traditional meaning of each individual card. In some cases the images were altered slightly (the addition of wands, pentacles, cups or swords), but the bulk of Vargo's portfolio already lent itself perfectly for a dark, brooding Tarot deck.

The Gothic Tarot Compendium details the symbolic and mythological references for each of the 78 cards, offers insights from the artist about the symbolism hidden in his artwork, and outlines several tarot spreads.

For example, it was a given that Vargo's "Dracula" would represent the Emperor card and "Vampire's Kiss" the Lovers, "Born of the Night" the Moon, "Eclispe" the Sun. A less obvious but no less appropriate choice included the image chosen for Strength—the painting "Possesed"—depicting a beautiful woman standing alongside a fierce-looking gargoyle. The image radiates femine power. The Chariot was created especially for the deck, and depicts Dracula's coach pulled by a team of black stallions as it races through the Borgo pass. The Death card represents the end of the harvest season with a skeletal scarecrow, and the Devil is a strange hybrid of demon-satyr and greenman.
The Magician card features an adaptation of a painting entitled "Seventh Son," which Joseph Vargo explains: "The original painting actually depicts the central magus figure (the father) presiding over a mystical ceremony to indoctrinate and endow the seventh son of a seventh son with six gifts. A male child was suspended in the flame and six hooded figures (the elder sons), each presenting a gift, flanked the sides of the staircase. The six gifts were: a crown, a sword, a book, a chalice, a scale, and a crystal ball, representing power, strength, wisdom, healing, justice, and clairvoyance. For The Gothic Tarot, we removed two of the six hooded figures and changed the remaining four offerings to coincide with the four suits of the Tarot. The child was replaced with an oroboros to signify rebirth, and the magician's hand is held high to summon forth the forces of Nature. The altered image represents a powerful magician who has been bestowed with a sword, chalice, wand, and pentacle. He has these mystical objects at his command, and the ritual fire enables him to clearly see into their governing realms.
The inscription on the staircase of the Magician has a much more elaborate history and meaning. The inscriptions in the stairs beneath the hooded figure's feet originally told what each of the six symbolic gifts represented. The symmetrical symbols are actually stylized letters of the English alphabet, vertically mirrored in order to disguise them. Though the symbols are virtually unintelligible at the size the tarot cards were printed, I left the original inscriptions in the steps because I felt they were very appropriate for the Magician."

A year after the release of The Gothic Tarot, Joseph encouraged Christine Filipak to show off some of her own artwork, and the two created Madame Endora's Fortune Cards together. They developed the oracle based on the popular fortune-telling feature that was included in each issue of Dark Realms Magazine. His contributions (24 of the 48 cards) were not credited on the packaging due mostly to his desire for Christine to be spotlighted. Nonetheless, his style should be apparent to his fans. The cards that were illustrated by Joseph began as a series of black and white drawings, which Christine colored and texturized using her computer wizardry.

See the Gallery section for more images from these decks.