The Tarot Arcana

This project was suggested and voted by our subscribers.

The series brings to sculpture the Major Arcana in two specular readings : upright on one side, reversed on the other.

Fair warning: these are not “the classical” Tarot Arcana, these are my personal interpretation of the Arcana.

Instead of a reconstruction, think of it as a symbolic translation.

In this project I deliberately moved away from conventions.

These cards borrow meaning from multiple cultures (sometimes faithfully, sometimes freely) using their symbolic vocabulary to express an idea rather than to recreate a myth.

Temperance (XIV)

The alchemist angel, blending two cups of water: the union of the opposites, spirit and matter, conscious and unconscious.

The figure's dynamic is a choreography of restraint—motion that never spills into excess.

Flowing ribbons breathe life forces in motion, transformation through continuity.

The structure of the composition follows the guide of yin and yang lines, the East Asian emblem of complementary forces held in mutual shape.

A foot in water and a foot on land balances symbolically the body of the figure between intuition and reason.

Behind her, a mandala anchors the scene in a cosmological order of eternal balance.

Turn the card and proportion breaks.

The reverse replaces water with fire and turns moderation into tempest.

The figure is caught in a composition that reads like a whirlwind, tightening toward an “eye of the storm” — the center of chaos.

The work borrows its symbols from the myth of Kali unleashed as the archetype of unleashed force: not a literal religious depiction, but a mythological inspiration for power that abandons restraint.

The battlefield debris behind her seals the reversal—temperance undone, leaving ruin as its only consequence.