Radiant Comics

One of the many ongoing projects that I have is a set of fortune telling cards. I have a fascination with fortune telling or, more accurately, fortune telling systems. I certainly don’t believe anyone can predict the future besides in a “tomorrow it will be partly cloudy with showers towards evening” kind of way but I find systems for trying to to pierce the veil of time interesting.

Through science and observation we can predict the future in a basic and macro prediction way. I predict the sun will rise tomorrow morning. I can even give you the time it will rise by referencing a chart. Not much of a stretch but it’s predicting the future none the less. Phases of the moon, the changing of the seasons, and when the birds will migrate are all predicting the future. They’re just so simple to us that people usually don’t even consider them to be special in any way.

But it’s predicting the future in a micro “you will meet a tall handsome stranger” kind of way that I have an interest in. That’s because I have a fascination with systems that are based on nothing. Astrology, palm reading, phrenology, Tarot cards, throwing runes, rolling bones, reading the livers of sheep, and countless other ways to predict famine or fortune all have their own distinct way of looking at the universe and peering into the future. And all of them are based on nothing but imagination.

Predicting the sun will come up tomorrow is based on seeing the sun rise morning after morning. A long time ago someone started taking note of when the sun rose and set and noticed it happened in a repeated pattern. Then someone came up with a way to keep track of that pattern. Hence you can predict when the sun will rise tomorrow. Same with the moon, same with eclipses, and same with a lot of the natural world.

In contrast fortune telling systems are not made that way. Someone had to make them up from scratch. They could not be made up from observation. The basic tarot card system has to be in place before any observations could be made. No one made up all the cards, dealt them out to people, and then followed those people around observing what happened to them all the while taking notes. No, someone made the system out of thin air and then applied it to people. Someone rolled the bones and then just made stuff up. And people believed them. And still do.

So I’ve been working on my own deck of cards and a fortune telling system based on nothing. It’s not as easy as it sounds because there really does need to be a system. A flexible system capable of adapting itself to all sorts of aspects of life. I’m also trying to make my system unique and modern. There is no sense in recreating the Tarot. That already exists. No old fashioned king, queen, and knave stuff either. It’s kind of a tall order. Fun though.

I’ve already done all the illustrations (48 of them) and have the names of each card and some meanings for them. I even came up with a layout for how the cards should be dealt. Now I have to work out how the cards work in conjunction with each other. That’s a tough part. A lot of B.S. is required. I also need to make a good new prototype deck. I haven’t pulled out that project in a while but I think I will. The last thing I did was come up with a name for it. “The Tourmaline” and the instruction book for it is called “The Tourmaline Mystique”. Pretty mysterious, no? I’ve got a future ahead of me as a guru.