Skill: Custom Arcana Tarot Builder

Applying Structural Transforms to the Tarot Arcana

This one is kinda out there, and perhaps a bit niche - but I’ve always been fascinated by the tarot, and given my sort of obsession with structural transformation it’s perhaps no surprise that one of my first creative projects with LLMs was to take apart Tarot as a concept to see how it works and to see if I could put it back together.

This skill is a complex multi-step workflow that teaches your LLM how to generate a completely new Tarot deck. By this I don’t just mean new images slapped on old structures - with this skill you provide a theme and the LLM will work with you to extract four suits from that theme. Then it’ll generate a new Major Arcana, based on the theme and following some abstract principles based on my own understanding of how Tarot works. Then it’ll generate some Minor Arcana, again using some abstractions that are derived from how I think about this stuff.

The result is a JSON object representing a new tarot deck. This skill doesn’t generate the art, but it does generate descriptions of the art (the art style is derived from the suit, the art content is derived from the rank) and if you install it as a Claude plugin it includes some interactive components that’ll let you generate SVG art for your cards and then deal and interpret spreads.

---

name: custom-tarot-designer

description: Design thematically coherent custom tarot decks by identifying dialectics, creating suits through dialectic cross-products, developing archetypal stories for Major Arcana, and projecting abstract narrative frameworks through suits for Minor Arcana. Use this skill when the user requests a custom tarot deck based on a specific theme (e.g., "Design a cyberpunk tarot deck" or "Create tarot for the theme of ocean mythology"). This tool generates a large JSON file representing a completed deck.

---

# Custom Tarot Designer v7

## Overview

This skill guides the creation of structurally sound, thematically rich custom tarot decks. It maintains the 78-card structure of traditional tarot while reimagining dialectics, suits, Major Arcana story, and Minor Arcana meanings to fit any given theme. The process is collaborative and iterative, with user feedback solicited at each major stage.

## Design Philosophy

Custom tarot design is fundamentally about **structural transposition**: taking the deep architecture of traditional tarot and mapping it onto new thematic territory. The goal is not novelty for its own sake, but rather archetypal resonance—creating decks where the structure amplifies the theme and the theme illuminates the structure.

Key principles:

- **Dialectics drive coherence**: The two dialectics should capture maximum semantic surface area of the theme

- **Suits emerge from structure**: Suits are the natural cross-product of dialectics, interpreted through thematic lens

- **Story before cards**: The Major Arcana story should be archetypal and structurally support 22 aspects

- **Abstraction enables projection**: Minor Arcana ranks represent abstract frameworks that refract through suits

- **Creative judgment over rigid rules**: Theme needs should guide decisions; these are guidelines, not constraints

## Workflow

The design process follows five sequential stages, each building on the previous:

### Stage 1: Theme and Dialectics

Begin by reading the traditional tarot reference to understand how dialectics function:

```bash

view references/tarot_structure.md

```

#### 1a: Defining the Theme

Work with the user to articulate their theme with depth and specificity:

**Theme Structure:**

- **Name**: A simple, canonical name (e.g., "Cyberpunk", "Ocean Mythology", "Creative Process")

- **Description**: A detailed description explaining what this theme encompasses, its key qualities, and how it's intended to be used for the purposes of deck generation.

**Example for "Cyberpunk":**

```

Name: "Cyberpunk"

Description: "A near-future dystopian aesthetic exploring the intersection of high technology and societal breakdown. Cyberpunk examines how digital enhancement, corporate power, and street-level survival create new forms of humanity, identity, and resistance. It asks what we gain and lose when technology becomes inseparable from consciousness itself, inspiring cards that allow the querent to bring to bear an implicit interrogation of power dynamics, structural conflicts and productive tensions in whatever subject they're asking about"

```

This rich foundation will inform suit generation and Major Arcana story development.

#### 1b: Identifying Dialectics

Given the articulated theme, identify 4-6 possible dialectics that capture important dimensions of tension. Present these as individual axes, not as pre-paired combinations.

**Dialectic Structure:**

- **Thesis**: First pole (e.g., "Individual")

- **Antithesis**: Opposing pole (e.g., "Collective")

- **Context**: How specifically does this dialectic relate to the theme? How might it inform a tarot deck?

**Dialectic selection criteria:**

- Each dialectic should represent a genuine axis of tension or difference within the theme

- Dialectics should cover different facets of the theme

- When combined in pairs, they should suggest natural, distinct quadrants

**Example for "Cyberpunk" theme:**

Possible dialectics:

1. **Individual ⟷ Collective**

- Tensions: "This dialectic explores concepts like personal agency vs social systems, which manifest in symbols like the lone hacker vs networked corporation. It might inspire a deck that asks us to consider the tensions between part and whole."

2. **Technology ⟷ Human**

- Tensions: "At the core of cyberpunk literature is a sort of complex tension between humanity and technology - are these poles in irreconcilable conflict, or is integration possible? What does authenticity mean when technological enhancement is the norm? How might we think about the value of things that can be upgraded vs those which can't?"

3. **Control ⟷ Chaos**

- Tensions: "Cyperpunk settings often include a backdrop where corporations and/or governments exert unilateral control over the infrastructure required for existence within society, and yet the protagonists frequently find clever if dangerous ways to subvert that control. This dialectic asks us to consider what can be controlled, and in what ways? It also invites speculation as to who gets to define chaos."

4. **Flesh ⟷ Digital**

- Tensions: "A more visceral take on the Technology/Human dialectic, this asks us to consider the organic vs the digital directly. This dialectic is more concerned with embodiment, substrate and ontology."

After presenting options with their tensions, optionally suggest particularly generative combinations (e.g., "Individual/Collective + Technology/Human would create suits around personal tech, social tech, personal humanity, and communal humanity"), but allow the user to choose any two dialectics or propose their own.

The **tensions** will be particularly useful when:

- Generating suit meanings (each suit embodies specific tensions)

- Developing the Major Arcana story (narrative can explore these tensions)

- Creating card interpretations (tensions suggest reading depth)

Finalize two dialectics before proceeding.

### Stage 2: Creating Suits

Using the finalized dialectics, create four suits by taking the cross-product of the dialectic poles. Each suit represents one quadrant of the two-dimensional space defined by the dialectics.

For each suit, develop:

1. **Name**: Creative interpretation of the dialectic combination, reflecting the theme

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