The Major Arcana

Follow along with your Liminal Space Tarot Cards (link to Etsy).

The Fool

A malformed teddy bear sits in an 80s style bath/poolroom, at the edge of some sort of strange foam tub. An uncanny plush sun juts out of the wall and ceiling in the corner above his head. The sun’s smile is blank and its eyes have a dead expression. The bear teeters on the edge of the cliff (tub), but the journey out of his corner is even more precarious than where he currently sits.

I. The Magician

This looks like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but more sinister. A dark river winds symmetrically through a plastic floor, reflecting the surrounding structures lined with pipes, and the unlit ceiling. Where do the pipes lead and what are they pumping? You must be the only source of light because the darkness shrouds everything beyond your field of vision in the vast room ahead. A strange, oblong, headless figure dressed in what looks like a trench coat creeps around at the edge of darkness.

II. The High Priestess

This room is almost grand enough to be a throne room, with high ceilings, tall windows, and light cast against the inner wall. We don’t know what’s outside those windows (other than light), but our main focus is drawn to the enormous tapestry/painting covering the wall on the far side of the room. A vaguely female-shaped entity dwells within the image. The High Priestess has little discernable form and no face. She appears to emerge from the earth below her.

III. The Empress

The Empress loves water, and she sits - forever as a statue in the nude – in her ancient bath. Her red color and nude appearance may suggest a powerful carnal state reflecting her fertility. What looks like an accurately painted statue of a servant girl stands in a shadowy nook at the edge of the bath. A strange, inaccessible stairway ascends from the wall into the ceiling, spiraling into mysterious darkness. Why are they frozen in time? Because nothing is alive in Liminal Space.

IV. The Emperor

An uncanny crowned figure sits on an oddly proportioned floral throne with a lack of depth that pushes the laws of physics to the breaking point. He is seated within some sort of caged structure resembling a highchair with a tray. Each side of his vast, unfurnished throne room is lined by yellow arches and columns. The only source of light is natural light. The light shines upon the emperor from his right side and his front, while everything behind him and to his left is shrouded in shadow, except for a few windows in the distance. If the emperor is still here, why is the rest of his palace empty?

V. The Hierophant

This looks like a church, but is it really? You’d think a church with exquisite arches and ceilings like this would at least have pews instead of chairs. It also reminds me of a courtroom, but where is the judge sitting? Perhaps we are sitting in the judges seat, or near him. It may also be an improvised college classroom, and we stand with the professor. The large area of wooden floor facing the chairs almost suggests a stage. But none of these explanations quite make sense because the stage is down a step from the audience, and there are large wooden slabs that help to block the view of the audience/class. There is something mysterious about the shadowy statue in the upper left corner. And if you look out the windows, you’ll see a liminal time of day. Why would we be meeting with the hierophant at this time? Perhaps you are meeting in secret to be taught something society doesn’t want you to know.

VI. The Lovers

There are no visible windows in this room – only doors to dark places. The inanimate “Lovers” (there is no gender in tarot) sit side by side on the couch, forever together until something living comes to move them. But are you even living or are you just an eye looking through an invisible window into this uncanny liminal universe? There, nothing ever changes. Beyond the lovers are two main doors providing two main options for the wandering fool. Since nothing makes sense in liminal space, and the rooms beyond the doors are quite dim, it’s fair to imagine that both doors open up into the same room. But you don’t know until you check.

VII. The Chariot

You can see the motion blur in the movement of the train cars before you. Is the chariot/train moving, or is it The Fool who is running? We don’t know, because in liminal space, there is only stillness forever, frozen in time. Outside of time. It looks like the melting snow has revealed tracks partially buried in sediment. Was there a flood? Regardless of poor maintenance, the Chariot still runs on time, with a single oddly placed window on the carriage nearest to the Fool. Twilight is the most liminal time of neither day nor night. Is it AM or PM? Does it even matter anymore? Time never changes here.

VIII. Strength

This square gym room has no windows and the aqua blue healing light beams down from asymmetrically arranged bulbs in the ceiling. Even so, there doesn’t seem to be enough light for you to work out 100% safely. And even if you could, there is something off about these “workout” machines. Look closely.

IX. The Hermit

Looks like a gas station? Look closer. It’s not. It could be an ATM, but why would they invest so much into building the pillar and overhanging infrastructure just for a single lonely ATM in the middle of a parking lot, where it’s vulnerable to being hit by cars? It truly is a mystery. Maybe this image is from the future? “Canpdring” appears to be jibberish, so no help there. The Hermit stands as a light in the bleak loneliness of liminal twilight. Or could this be in the arctic circle, where winter days never progress past liminal time.

X. The Wheel of Fortune

This appears to be a casino, only it’s one where most of the machines have no physical buttons and they are played standing up. Sort of counterintuitive to the profit incentive most casinos have of wanting people as comfortable as possible so they play the games for longer. The stools look uncomfortable too. This empty casino looks like something someone took during the Covid lockdowns. It is a strange time indeed when cathedral-sized rooms full of lights and games is kept running when no one is around. In liminal space, the lights that are on never turn off, and the lights that are off never turn on. No one knows who pays for the upkeep or who does the maintenance. Perhaps, outside of time, there is no need. Nothing ever decays in liminal spaces. It’s a time capsule.

XI. Justice

At first glance, we see a courtroom, but there are some indiscrepancies. Like in other cards, the lights don’t cover the ceiling evenly. Even the nature of this “courtroom” could be called into question. I see what looks like a witness-stand to the right of the judge’s chair, but it seems that the entire judges platform looks like an extended witness stand. Judges usually sit on an elevated platform and have a visible desk and gavel. Not here though. On the far left, you see part of another chair. Could there be two judges? Interesting concept. Maybe if courtrooms had multiple judges, it would help balance outcomes and make justice fairer. Lastly, it appears that the chairs lined up on the floor make little sense. None are facing the judge, and most are just facing the wall. The room is mostly empty of furniture. For those who had the unpleasant experience of defending oneself in a courtroom, the sight of this card can leave you shaken with an anxious, melancholy nostalgia.

XII. The Hanged Man

The Fool finds themself in the realm of the hanged man, whose domain (from the limited view we have) appears somewhat like a public monument. The kind of thing you might find near a veteran’s cemetery. The hanged man appears to have no arms or legs, and is made of stone. He hangs from a chain in a stone archway between two different zones. The Hanged man can only look in one direction at a time, but unlike those dwelling on either side of the barrier, he has the ability to view both of them. There is something about that well-mown grass visible beyond the archway that calls to me. It looks inviting. No one knows who mows it, or if it ever grows at all.

XIII. Death

Instead of the liminal times of dusk or dawn, the Death card’s image is taken in the dead of night. The liminality of this card relies on the space more than the time. The Fools Journey has taken them to a graveyard, looking out over grass that seems to fade out forever into an abyss of darkness. It’s so dark, that even with the light of our camera, we can barely see the tree-branch over the grave. The grave itself is the Crucifix, and it stands beside what looks like a tomb. In Christianity, Christ died, was taken a tomb, and then rose from the dead. That makes it the perfect symbol for the death card.

XIV. Temperance

This man-made watery cavern looks like a faux-archaic underground aquifer, only we can clearly see sunlight glowing in from the right. My best guess is they have a hole to the surface to collect rainwater, but knowing liminal space, it could be there for no reason at all. It could even be artificial light for all we know, streaming in from an underground base of some sort. Moving our attention to the center of our vision, we see what looks like a horizontal ladder that comes up from the water and extends, for an unknown distance, into the black void. On closer inspection, what appeared to be a ladder, looks more like some kind of open aqueduct for underground water transfer (cheaper than pipes?). Or maybe it’s just a walkway. The Fool can only guess.

XV. The Devil  

The Devil’s four prison cells are sad, lonely, and dirty. The walls around them are cakes with layers of soot, smut, and possible mold. There is a distinct absence of light coming through the thin bars of these dank cells. Though there seems to be a small, opaque window above each cell door to let in a meager amount of artificial light from the fluorescent glow of the hall. How cruel…

XVI. The Tower

The Fool finds The Tower in the form of a solo oil tanker in a vast, empty ocean. The light of dusk/dawn dramatizes the horizon. The reflection of the tower on the water is far larger than the tower itself, shining for miles across calm water, towards wherever the Fool’s vision rests.

XVII. The Star

The Star is confusing for multiple reasons. Are we in outer space, or are we on water? A lamp seems to hang from a flimsy fabric ceiling with a distorted presentation of depth. It floats weightlessly like something in outer space, yet there is perfectly still water below us. And to point out the elephant in the room… Why is the sky perfectly divided into 2 shades of light? Maybe this structure isn’t even sitting on water, and that the mirror image on the water isn’t just a reflection. Perhaps we are floating through space. The Fool floating between solar sales, in a flimsy satellite, connected with thin cables, facing a rare Lovecraftian deep-space phenomenon.

XVIII. The Moon

The light of this underwater streetlamp is cool and dreamlike, much like the moon. It casts an eerie glow onto the mysterious space below it. If we are underwater, then the Fool wonders why there is what appears to be a puddle of water at the deep end of this strange pool/shower-like tile enclosure. We could guess that it’s a liquid with a higher density than water (or whatever this liquid is) and different chemical properties. But it could only have settled like this in a place that is perfectly still, with no current or life of any kind. We don’t know why there is what looks like a mix between wood stairs or drawer tables on the far right, by the shore of the puddle. The stairs seem to have little purpose, other than to maybe let swimmers into the water… that never sees any life. The abyss beyond makes us want to stay by the light. Perhaps we’re at the abyss of a perfectly still ocean, and above our heads is another, less dense liquid, like the one below us. Either way, this could be the only light for thousands of miles in all directions. But even it’s reflection in the waterline above it makes little sense. Maybe there is water above us and below. And we are only somewhere in-between.

IXX. The Sun

Unlike most of the other planes of liminal space tarot, the Sun appears less photo-realistic and more abstract. We can only speculate on how far from shore this bizarre structure is found, nor how it might fare in a heavy storm. Given the stillness of the water, it’s unlikely to be near shore, where waves crest. It has no apparent purpose, which is a running theme here in liminal space.

XX. Judgement

This derelict open-air holding tank looks fetid with polluted water, and has clearly seen better days. The outflow pipes are probably clogged from neglect and vegetation is beginning to encroach from the fog-shrouded forest beyond. The rusted infrastructure and lush greenery of Judgement is something you might see when urban exploring. The only uncanny part of this scene are the two strange concrete protrusions jutting from the wall to the right of the Fool. I’m no expert, but they don’t appear to have a function. Again, we see a pattern of absurdity.

XXI. The World

The shady green slope before us is soft and inviting, and the trees ahead to our left appear lush and vibrant under a bright blue sky. In the distance the suns rays shine bright over the fields bordering the river as well as the vast woodland beyond. There must be a cloud above where we are, but if the Fool keeps walking, they will imminently be bathed in the warm light of an exciting new world to explore, beyond the confines of the dark and unsettling – and occasionally terrifying – liminal spaces we have encountered along the way.