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Tarot for Creative Spirits

I worked with mentor, coach, and founder of Typewriter Tarot Cecily Sailer to illustrate her creative workbook Tarot for Creative Spirits.

Tarot for Creative Spirits is a workbook and playbook, a book of magic and creativity, a book of mystery and exploration.

The book contains journaling and creative prompts for all 78 archetypes in the Tarot.

Some will ask you to identify things that are important to you — desires, hesitations, stories, and values.

Others help you envision and imagine the future you want to create. Still others invite you to draw, collage, or create visual expressions. And others are playful, offering hypotheticals to help you channel your creativity and allow your soul to speak through your pen.

Cecily’s goal was to created an embodied study of the Tarot that connects with the reader’s lived experience.

Cecily had already created a more simplified version of the book and shared it with a small group. That first version contained text-only and had less room for journaling. With this edition, she wanted to bring in more visual elements to “brighten the space of the book” and offer readers a more evocative experience.” Tarot is a visual art form, one that I have always been drawn to because of the playfulness and depth of the illustrations, and Cecily wanted the book to reflect that in some way.

Cecily shared a list and descriptions for the kinds of illustrations she wanted. I created some 25 images, along with the cover and several other visual elements, like card backs for Tarot spreads and icons that appear at the bottom of pages to guide the reader to different sections exploring the different suits of the Tarot — cups, pentacles, swords, and wands.

Cecily’s a nature-lover and environmentalist, so a lot of the visual elements featured animals, plants, and earthy landscapes, subjects that I loved exploring stylistically. For The Lovers card, we came up with an image of a raccoon sitting atop a pile of hearts, eating his heart out, so to speak.

Cecily particularly loves this illustration because “it reminds me a little bit of Shel Silverstein illustrations from Where the Sidewalk Ends, which I read 10,000 times as a kid. And I love how it reminds people that The Lovers isn’t always about romance with someone else, but romancing the Self.” Shel Silverstein’s books were also a HUGE early inspiration for me and I realized we were really in sync on this project.

There are six sections to the book — one for the Major Arcana (cards like The Fool, The Tower, The Sun, The World), four for each of the suits, and one section at the back for Tarot spreads that help the reader get to know individual cards. For the beginning of each of these sections, I created a full-page illustration. This one begins the Tarot Spreads section, and comes from an image Cecily shared of her altar.

The squirrel atop the gravestone appears with the prompts for the Death card. The five icons (with two versions of the cups) appear in the lower, outer corner of the pages to guide readers to the different suits. The flaming owl appears with the prompts for The Chariot, which has a lot to do with pursuing your ambitions. And the forest ecosystem accompanies The High Priestess prompts.

“The High Priestess is about feeling a sense of knowing that comes from connections with the unseen… and unseen connections with the larger world,” Cecily says. “Just like mushrooms connect all the elements of a forest, The High Priestess connects us with all the energies that guide our intuition.”

An octopus is one of my favorite creatures, so I experienced a lot of joy exploring the illustration of the 8 of Swords, this proud cephalopod with their arms full. I then went down an interesting research rabbit hole of armament styles looking for inspiration for the cover page of the Swords section.

Below, I created a second inside cover, so when readers first open the book, they’re greeted with another work of art — a swirling vortex that invites them into the magic.

Cecily wanted to make sure that readers had ample to space both for journaling AND creating. Obviously, I’m always doodling and sketching, so I turned the inside of the front cover into a sketch page. Cecily also encourages readers to use the illustrations like coloring-book pages. “Sometimes, we don’t have all the spoons for journaling and self-reflection,” Cecily says. “Sometimes, we need to just grab some colors and fill in some lines and enjoy that meditative space of being attentive, being in the moment, and having a little supported and structured creativity.”

additional images I created for Tarot for Creative Spirits:

To order a copy of Tarot for Creative Spirits, click here. To explore more of Cecily’s work, visit the Typewriter Tarot website, or follow on Instagram or Substack. Check out my conversation with Cecily on her podcast, Your Creative & Magical Life. We explore the Wheel of Fortune, and I share more about my journey as an artist.

If you have an upcoming project where you think a body of customized illustration work would help express your message and tell your story, reach out and we can chat about it!