Saturday, September 23, 2006

Flickr Tarot

Inspired by Joey's post on someone who made a Google Images Periodic Table, I did text searches on Flickr and came up with this version of the Tarot (Major Arcana and Ace cards of the suits only). Each card image is derived from the top "most relevant" match that I came up with.

The Fool The Magician
The High Priestess The Empress
The Emperor The High Priest
The Lovers The Chariot
Justice The Hermit
Wheel of Fortune Strength
The Hanged Man Death
Temperance The Devil
The Tower The Star
The Moon The Sun
Judgement The World
Ace of Swords Ace of Rods
Ace of Pentacles Ace of Cups

All the images are used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

Yes, the images for The World and The Star are the same. Also, I used the alternative designation of The High Priest instead of The Hierophant because, amazingly, there are no images matching the text Hierophant in Flickr at this time.

I could imagine a Flickr toy which would automate the process of image picking using the most up-to-date search results. Maybe for the King in each suit we could have it take the second search result for the suit name, third for the Queen, and so forth. It could put the cards into a tableau, and the pictures could be used in the reading itself.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

were you not tempted to upload an image yourself and name it Hierophant?

RichM said...

Actually no. I don't really have a good picture of the Pope.

Roswila said...

Hi Rich,

What fun! Some are "right on" IMHO. I love those that are "found" Tarot cards, like the hotel names and the pentacle-like design on the building. The Tarot archetypes really are all around us, both explicit and implicit, and within us.

RichM said...

Hi Roswila/Patricia!

I go back and forth, and The Tower might be my favorite one of these. I just like the idea of tourists posing in front of the Rider-Waite tower struck by lightning that it brings up.

Or maybe the Ace of Rods. I guess the guy's name is Rod.

Anonymous said...

This is great! I'm glad i can inspire. Here is a link to a high res version of the periodic table i made and a better jpg of it.

http://www.rarzorz.com/atomic

Cheers,
Tim

RichM said...

Nice, Tim. Are you going to have these printed on T-shirts too?