Major Arcana: XIV Temperance

Major Arcana: XIV Temperance

My sketch on a science lab table

Meaning of the card facing you: balance, moderation, patience, purpose, meaning
Meaning of the card facing away from you: imbalance, excess, lack of long term vision

So I've been trying to figure out how to write why I think Dumbledore fits this Tarot card, and he does and I will explain it soon, but I just want to mention that I do not like Dumbledore. I wanted him to go with other cards, but honestly, other people fit them better and this was probably the best for him if I was going to have him in the deck at all. I haven't always not liked Dumbledore, in fact, he was one of my favorites, but after the fifth book I just couldn't. I started to see the way he treated Harry like a child and didn't let him know things that were important. The seventh book kind of solidified my dislike for him because we find out about how he treated Snape and led him and Harry on, how he never told whole truths and kept details that were essential to himself. I don't really want to go into detail about it because this card is not about lies and manipulation, but I just needed to say it. Now on with the show!

Dumbledore represents balance and moderation because he is level headed, makes good decisions, and understands what needs to be done, even if it's unpleasant. In the fifth book, he allows himself to be kicked out of Hogwarts because he knows Harry needs to stay there and not get in trouble with the ministry. He takes some pressure off of Harry's back, balancing out the anger that the minister has for him and takes it onto himself. Of course, Umbridge is still unbalanced and unfair towards Harry but Dumbledore takes the whole Dumbledore Army's thing away from Harry so that he doesn't get punished. Dumbledore also tries very hard to balance out the hate between Snape and Harry. When Harry comes and blames things on Snape, Dumbledore always gives him reasons why it is not. He tries to make him see that Snape is not as bad as Harry thinks he is. He is unsuccessful, but it is the thought that counts. Dumbledore has been a balance for Snape as well. He gave Snape a safe place to be- both at Hogwarts and with Voldemort. He helped Snape see all the things he could be doing for the order and still remain a spy- gaining Voldemort's respect along with the Order's.

Dumbledore can represent patience as well. Harry shouts at him for a long long time after the ordeal at the ministry in the fifth book and he just sits there and lets him. He already feels horrible and sad and guilty for everything that has happened, but he allows Harry to get everything he is feeling out in the open. In the fourth book he is the calm, patient one when Harry's name is pulled out of the goblet (though in the movie, he is IN A RAGE but in this case the movies don't count). He is patient and is able to calm the other school leaders down. In general Dumbledore is a pretty patient guy. He is very old (J.K.R. said he was 150 in an interview, though the dates she gives us in the books point to him being about 120 when he died) and has seen a lot-from Grindlewald and the Deathly Hallows to Harry pulling a sword out of the Sorting Hat. Not to mention a few crazy kids running around the school (the Marauders, the Weasley twins), incompetent ministers of magic, and Tom Riddle/Voldemort infecting the world with his hate.

Dumbledore gives meaning and purpose to a great many things. I think he helps give purpose and meaning to magic for Harry, Hagrid, Dobby and many other students and people who have found themselves in tough situations. He is trusting and kind and people respect him. He also give purpose and meaning to the books themselves. Even if I don't particularly like him, Dumbledore still holds a lot of meaning to me and I'm sure thousands of other people.

He could represent excess because his experience with the Deathly Hallows showed how he allowed the idea of the Greater Good to get to his head because he was able bodied and very smart- it was in excess as he was bored  until he found the DHs. He also experienced and excess amount of traumatizing experiences like watching his sister die possibly at his own magic, Voldemort, Grindelwald, and things we don't know about but can imagine.

Instead of representing a lack of long term vision, he is the opposite. He had a plan, possibly from the moment James and Lily died or when he heard the prophecy. He planned ahead for the horcruxes- destroying them and preparing Harry to destroy them as well- and the DHs and his own death. It is unclear exactly how much he knew would happen or that he planned out, but he seemed to know what he was doing and often found ways to make things better went they went a way he didn't exactly want them to (like Sirius' death). He had a lot of resources- spys, memories, knowledge, etc. and he made good use of all of them, even if it meant sacrificing a few people along the way.

Major Arcana: I Magician

Major Arcana: I Magician

Sketch I made before
sharpie-ing it to the
card

I traced this onto the card

When the card is facing you: power, skill, concentration, action, resourcefulness

When the card is facing away from you: manipulation, poor planning, latent talent

I chose Harry as the Magician because he has all of these traits, both the good and the bad. Harry is a powerful and skilled wizard. He defeated Voldemort when he was a baby and continued to do so until he finally killed him. In the end, he becomes the master of the Elder Wand, a very powerful wand that people kill for (literally). While defeating Voldemort sounds like regular hero over throwing the bad guy kind of stuff, there is more to it. Harry lived through Voldemort penetrating his mind and planting horrible things there, killing many people that he cares about, being crucio-ed, being cut, possessed, screamed at, cursed, and manipulated. He actually has to kill Voldemort seven times, and has to die himself in order to get rid of him. Harry was able to produce a Patronus at age 13 and take on 100 Dementors. He lived through the Chamber of Secrets (and got help from the Sorting Hat- which only happens to the most brave, most worthy of people), the attack at the ministry, and a few full on battles. I honestly don't think I can list everything that Harry has done because there is so much. To summarize, Harry is a very strong and powerful wizard.

He is also resourceful. When he and his class mates needed a place to study Defense in his fifth year, he used resources (Dobby) to help find a safe place for them. he was able to teach his peers things that a teacher should have been able to without the help of any adults or anyone but his friends and the Room of Requirement itself (the place Dobby helped Harry find). In stressful situations, Harry has managed to use the things he has to get himself out and alive. He was resourceful when he used Feliz Felicis to get the memory he needed from Slughorn, and also when he got Griphook to help him infiltrate Gringotts.

I don't think I need to explain that he can also be action-full. Everything above kind of proves that he is. :)

Harry is like the definition of poor planning and manipulation. Everything that he does, with the exception of a few things in the seventh book are rash and without premeditation. He's headstrong and stubborn and is more of a act first, think later than a planner, but it comes with the being a Gryffindor thing. He is manipulative because even if he doesn't like it, he is, to quote A Very Potter Musical, Harry freaking Potter, and everyone (or almost everyone) wants to please him. He is famous. He easily gets out of trouble and usually gets his way. If he wants to, he can get students and adults to listen to him. He also has many people who have his back, love him, and believe in him to back him up and get things done.

Harry Potter is a wizard (the wizard) and therefore is the Magician. (Dumbledore and Snape were also considered for this role in the cards, but they have other characteristics and stories that make them who they are and I have different cards for them to represent)

Major Arcana: XIII Death

Major Arcana XIII Death

This is the first card of the Major Arcana that I drew. It is the 8th out of 22. When I was working to figure out which Harry Potter person or thing that I wanted to represent Death, I came up with four different things that I wanted to use. As I am just beginning this deck and I wanted to get used to drawing in such tiny areas with ultra thin sharpies and not much room for making mistakes (though I do have a few hundred blank cards, so if I do mess up badly, I can easy replace it), I went with the simplest of the four: The Deathly Hallows. (the others are: The Veil, Kings Cross, and Death [from the Deathly Hallows story])

When the card is facing towards you it means: endings, beginnings, change, transformation, transition
When the card is facing away from you it means: resistance to change, inability to move

The Deathly Hallows are made up of three parts: the wand, the resurrection stone, and the invisibility cloak. They can each represent both sides of Death.

The Elder Wand is a wand that was transferred from hand to hand by ending the life that controlled it. It brought many strength and power that lead more often than not to a very bloody end. It is endings because it ended people's lives; it is beginnings because it allowed its new masters the power to do things that they had never done before; it is transformation and transition because the new masters often became arrogant and boastful as well as powerful, they became different versions of themselves; it is the resistance to change or inability to move because for years and years this wand caused bloodshed, wars, hunts, fights, etc. and no one bothered to stop because the idea of a wand that made you the most powerful wizard in the world was too strong.

The Resurrection Stone is a stone that can bring the dead back to life. It created new life for those who had passed. It also brought endings however. When the second brother- the one who asked for this stone from Death- turned it three times in his hands and got his dead wife back, she was hallow and sad and cold and he committed suicide so that he could join her in death rather than see her suffer with the living. It is inability to move and resistance to change because when the second brother uses the stone, it is because he is unable to move on from the death of the woman he loved. Harry uses the stone when he thinks that he has no room to move because he needs to die to save the people he is fighting for. He calls his parents, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black to accompany on his way to meet his death. They are all people whose death he can't move on from and that haunt him.

The Invisibility Cloak is a cloak that turned the wearer invisible. It was of better quality than any invisibility cloak in the world because it was made by Death himself. It belonged to Harry's dad before he was murdered by Voldemort but it could have had the potential to save him had it not been in Dumbledore's possession at the time. This is how it can represent endings. It can represent beginnings because Harry receives it from Dumbledore in his first year and it gives him the ability to travel around the school at night, when and where he shouldn't but ultimately giving him the power to find a way to defeat Voldemort. It is the beginning of much adventure and discovery for Harry and his friends. It is transformation or transition because well it changes you from being able to be seen to being unable to be seen. It has also been passed down through from generation to generation which is how it ends up being Harry's. It can resist change because even though it is very very very very very old and has been through a lot, it never stopped being useful. Once, in fourth year Harry was using the cloak to get back to the Gryffindor tower and he got stuck in one of the trip stairs. If it hadn't been for the Invisibility Cloak, he would have been in a lot of trouble.

6 of Gryffindor: Victory

The 6 of Gryffindor [Victory*]

This is the first card I made. I had been sketching out different ideas for symbols and characters and it was the one I was the most confident about.

Sketches that I've made

When the card is pointing at you, it represents public recognition, victory, progress, self confidence. When it is facing away from you, it represents egotism, lack or confidence, fall from grace.

I chose the Golden Snitch (or Quidditch in general)  to represent these things. In the Harry Potter world, Quidditch is a sport that everyone knows (in fact, it is really the only sport we hear about, except maybe chess). Every wizard child loves or knows about Quidditch enough to get excited about it. It's a game of skill, speed, and strategy that comes with recognition when you win.

The first time Quiddtich becomes important is in the first book. Draco Malfoy took a Remembrall that Neville had dropped and threw, goading Harry into flying even though he was told not to. When Professor McGonagall sees how easy Harry catches the ball out of the air, she takes him to see Oliver Wood, the Gryffindor Quidditch captain and Harry is made Seeker of the team. At this time, Quidditch is made important not only by the fact that Harry is the youngest to join a house team in a 100 years or that everyone gets excited by that fact that Harry did but also because it is a victory for Harry over Draco. It shows Draco that making fun of people is not a good thing to do and that there are consequences to being nasty.

The Snitch is also one of the sure ways for a Quidditch team to win a game. When they catch it, they receive 150 points. We find out in the fourth book that there are circumstances where the Snitch does not win the game, but as a general rule for the Hogwarts games, the team that catches it, wins the game.

Quidditch also can represent victory from Ron's perspective. At first he was doubtful of his abilities as a Keeper and often fumbled, causing his team to lose. The Slytherins made fun of him for it, which brings down his confidence even more. (This is an example of the cards meaning when it is facing away from you) In the sixth book, Harry pretends to slip Ron a potion to make him luck (Felix Felicis) and this causes Ron to think that he will get lucky when in the game. Because Ron did not actually take the potion, he was running on self confidence and was able to save all the goals that the opposing side was trying to make against him. Without confidence, Ron failed, but with it, he was unstoppable and victorious. 

*One of the inspirations that I took (a rather strong word here, but I can't really think of another in it's place) from Ellygator. All of her card 2-10 of each suit have a name that is associated with it. Based on the descriptions that I found of each card, I agree with her titles. The other places I looked did not have titles like this for their cards, so I'm not sure if other decks have them, but I really liked them so that is why "took" them. 

Designing the Back of the Card

After figuring out Harry Potter related characters and events for each tarot card, I ordered a box of blank (front and back) cards from amazon.com. Even though the cards I got aren't the size that most tarot cards are, I like them. They're kind of perfect for me because they're small and I have small hands. These cards will be easy to shuffle and not too much oh a hassle for me to carry around.

Next I designed a back for the card. I wanted it to be intricate  and pretty but representative of Harry Potter as well. I can't post a picture of the original drawing that I made because my dad and I chopped it up in order to scan it into the computer correctly. 

I drew it during an art lesson that I have with one of my friends, who has been really helpful with this whole thing so far (helping me figure out color schemes to make the cards look nice). 

These are all the sharpies/permanent markers that I have that I will be/ have been using to complete this project. I have acquired them over the years and the picture next to this caption is of the sharpies I bought for this project to go along with the rest of them because the ultra thin ones that I already had were either used up or not the colors I wanted.

I wanted the same back for each of the cards, but I didn't want to draw it over and over again for each card, so I printed the picture onto sticker paper and cut it out to stick onto the back of each card.

1/2 of the first page we printed

My dad and I made a template so that the size of the sticker would match the card exactly and so that I could make the most of each sheet of sticker paper. Each card will now have this design on the back of them.

The first card that I fitted a sticker to (it was very scary because I didn't want to mess up, but as you can see, it worked out ok in the end)

Figuring it out

Once I was done researching the meanings behind the different tarot cards, I made a list of the cards and which Harry Potter characters and events seemed to matched up with the meaning of each one. Tarot decks have 22 Major Arcana cards, 4 Aces, 4 Princesses, 4 Princes, 4 Queens, 4 Kings, and 4 of cards 2 through 10 in each suit (wands, cups, swords, disks/pentacle). In total there are 78 cards.
Because this is a Harry Potter tarot deck, I changed the names a bit:
Aces to The Founders of Hogwarts, Princess to the Ghosts of the four houses, Prince to the animal that represents each of the four houses, Queen to the Quidditch captain of each house, and the Kings to the head of each house. Wands are Gryffindor, Cups are Slytherin, Swords are Ravenclaw, and Disks/Pentacles are Hufflepuff.

The meanings/symbols/things behind each suit are (that I found in a few different places online)*:
Wands: diamond, fire, South, Summer, noon, raw energy, peasants/serfs
Cups: heart, water, West, Autumn, sunset, emotions and psyche, clergy
Swords: spade, air, East, Spring, sunrise, intellectuals
Disks/Pentacles: club, Earth, North, Winter, midnight, physical and material, merchant/artisans

I'll explain the meaning behind each of the other cards with the pictures of the cards themselves when I post them (after I complete them).

Here is what my list of cards looks like:

I consulted a lot of my friends as well as my parents and my brothers about almost each card, explaining to them why I thought the Harry Potter thing fit and asking if they agreed with me or had other ideas that I could think about. (My math teacher, who is very nice, asked us to be quiet a bunch of times when we talked about it during class so I had to talk to people outside of class or during my frees)

In the end, there are more than a few cards that I will have more than one card for, mostly because I couldn't decide between two things that could fit. An example of this is that I am going to end up making about four different cards for is the card Death (the XIII Major Arcana card) because there are many things in Harry Potter that fit the meaning behind that card.

*Any card can mean different things to different people depending on how they look at them. Based on the research that I did and the meanings that I found, this list is what I have decided these suits mean for me and my Harry Potter card deck. This goes for all of the cards I post on here.

How it all started

After seeing my friend's Homestuck tarot card deck in Math class, I decided I wanted my own Harry Potter version. I've always been interested in tarot like things (seeing into the past, present, future  palm readings, tea leaves, crystal balls, Divination- Professor Trelawney is one of my favorite Hogwarts teachers - oracles, myths, etc.).
When I first entered 'Harry Potter tarot cards' into Google, I didn't have much success. I couldn't find a deck that I could purchase anywhere. But then I saw a link to a gallery on deviantart.com which led me to Ellygator. She had created and posted her own tarot card deck on the site detailing each picture with the meanings behind each card and why she chose the Harry Potter symbol, person, place, or thing to represent it. The printed out version of her deck was between $80-100 whether you wanted the cards just printed or actually cut out (which is pretty awesome). Being who I am and how much money I have in my bank account (which isn't very much since I'm in high school), I didn't think I could purchase it. So I decided to make my own deck. I sent Ellygator a message before doing so, asking if it was ok if I used some of the interpretations that she had for some of the cards and asked her if it was ok with her that I was doing this, since I was taking this idea of a creating a Harry Potter tarot deck from her. She was very nice and even asked me to send her pictures of my deck.

And so I began researching tarot cards and their meanings. I recorded the places, people, things, etc. that Ellygator had chosen for her deck as well as others that I found later.

And these three pages were the result (as well as dry eyes and cramped fingers)

Hello.

Hi
So this is blog which I made so that I could document and share my process for making Harry Potter Tarot Cards. I got the idea from a friend when he came into school with Homestuck Tarot Cards. Being the Harry Potter fan that I am, I searched for a tarot deck that was Harry Potter themed, but sadly, I don't have that much money so I decided that I would try to make my own. I got my inspiration for some of the cards from Ellygator at deviantart.com and other Harry Potter tarot related forums that I found.
So what I'll be doing in this blog:
- Posting pictures of the cards that I make as I make them and the reasons and meanings behind them.
- Posting my thoughts and feelings about the whole thing in general
- Hopefully I won't be posting anything too personal, but it might slip in from time to time
So yeah :)