I thought it would be fun to document my progress on the Tarot of the Classical Mythos. So here goes:

After having thought up the idea, I started by collecting information about other myth based decks. I do not own any of the Greek myth decks myself so, I had to rely on third party knowledge and reviews. Convinced that my idea was different I layed out my plan: A book and deck set, the majors representing the divine and the minors representing heroes.

Then I started going through my references. I decided to start with Robert Graves and his “Greek Mythology”. I took the meanings that I used for my own readings as a basis. They came from my own experiences with the cards, various books I’ve read and discussions with others. As I read through the myths I matched characters up by the meanings.

I soon realized that I would have to change my game-plan.

I found that if I wanted to use just hero stories for the minors than I would hard pressed to keep the meanings that I wanted to use. There was just too much depression, and too much violence. So I choose to expand my minors to each cover people, gods and myths that best represented what I felt the cards meant.

It took me three months to get through Graves and have a working list for each of the 78 cards. Each day I would read, match up characters, record author and page numbers on little sheets. Each sheet would then be filed in my copy of “The Inspiration Tarot” by Gaylene Carr. I used this book to record notes and sketches of the cards. This gave me a semi-complete list at the beginning of September 2002. Some of the cards had been solidified in my mind and I already have beginning sketches. Others have two or three choices attached which I have yet to make. But I do have a list which is a start.

At this point I took about a week break. I wanted some time to think about ideas I had, layout of the book and to catch upon “outside” reading. I had worked on this every day for about an hour during my lunch break. Usually this came with people asking me what I was going to college for. When I told them I had a degree, their next question was along the lines of “Then what are you reading that for?”. So for now it is on hold. I have been working on the card essays on and off for awhile now(April 2003). The name is slightly changed to Classical Mythos Tarot.