The Eternal Dream Tarot

What is The Eternal Dream?

I’ve been reluctant to discuss much of anything about the deck over the years. I’d convinced myself discussing the vision and philosophy behind it would result in two things: create the very associations to the cards that I was attempting to sever, and betray my sense that it’s never been my place to say what my view of the world really is.

I guess I’m finally breaking these two guidelines. I’ve realized, there’s no controlling the associations people bring to open art, and that The Eternal Dream is just a viewpoint from which to see reality. It’s not really going to change anyone’s life or anything. (I had a great deal of self-importance in my ideas back when I created this.)

That said, The Eternal Dream isn’t exactly easy to explain because it’s more to do with our experience of reality. Before I envisioned this deck, I had what I’ll just call an illumination (in the Saint Augustine sense of the word).

The illumination: when we dream, we are much closer to what truly exists than when we are awake. Our waking life is actually the dream.

At the time, I was studying and practicing lucid dreaming, and I was fascinated how lucid dreaming doesn’t give you strict control of the dream, but of the wish fulfillment within a dream (if you’re with me on the Freudian concept of dream interpretation). You can call any wish into being in a lucid dream. Like an AI prompt today renders based off what it’s trained on.

Lucid dreaming is like the Christian Heaven. All your wishes are fulfilled. The only thing is you know what you’ve summoned is your wish, a part of you, and that you are alone in your dream, and aware of your body as you dream. If we have this awareness of the body without feeling in it, could we still lucid dream after our body dies?

Empirically, the answer would be no, but I’ll circle back to that. If we can get stuck in a lucid dream and no longer awaken our body, how long could we exist in a lucid dream before we could no longer take the loneliness? How long before you wished you could fall into another dream but with other dreamers? What would that dream look like?

This is where I felt shown that whatever we are when we lucid dream is what exists, not what we experience when we think we are awake. What we call dreaming is more like a lifeline to the reality we can’t experience because it’s beyond our perception, yet we all feel in our life. Christopher Bollas referred to a similar concept as the unthought known.

I like to conceptualize it more like a twist on Zeno’s paradox. Zeno was an ancient Greek philosopher who thought nothing moved because to get from point A to point B, you had to move halfway there. Getting halfway meant you had to move another half. So and so on for infinity making it impossible to move because you can’t move across infinity. Zeno thought this was just an issue with space, I felt it had to do with time.

The TL;DR version is, if you exist at point A now, you cannot also exist at B, unless somehow move at infinite speed which would put you everywhere at once. Spoiler alert: this is the ending of the movie Lucy, if you need this idea in film version. So it’s not that you can’t move through space, Zeno. It’s that you can’t exist anywhere except the present moment.

The trick with this is the present is not perceivable. Our perception is like a recording. We are experiencing our memories as instantly as we make them. If we posit that experience is a dream, we are dreaming our experiences as instantly as we make them.

Remember I was circling back to that empirical answer on whether we can still lucid dream after dying. If believe the dream only exists in the brain, then our conclusion would be no, we don’t dream after we die. But if the brain is something we can only perceive, and what we perceive is not existence, then it is entirely possible the lucid dream exists with or without a brain. It exists outside of our experience.

This would all beg the question except what brings it all home that where we truly exist is the present moment which must be our lonely, lucid dream state. Where we can wish into existence anything we’ve experienced. This dream state is infinite, everywhere at once, inescapable… eternal. The only time it appears finite is when we wish to seemingly leave it. When we dream into the collective of everyone else dreaming in order to not be alone.

That collective dream is more rigid perceptually. Individual dreams crash into each other or overlap. There’s a pervasive sense of powerlessness over the dreaming which we experience as a lack of self fulfillment because everyone’s wishes intertwine, yet not all are gratified. Beneath that sense is a notion of purpose, which for better or worse, is a longing to not be alone. Sounds a lot like our lives. Also like our lives, no matter how hard we try to dream the collective dream forever, we have to wake up. Not always by choice.

There you have it, the concept of The Eternal Dream. Upon meditation and practice of this concept, this tarot deck sprang forth and manifested itself. One of my only fulfilled wishes. I used to call myself The Eternal Dreamer, and the symbol I signed these works with represented The Eternal Dream. The infinite dream above; the crossing of dreams below.

I was pretty convinced I’d had it all figured out and had to tell everyone the only way I knew how. My art. I still don’t ‘know’ that The Eternal Dream is what is real, but I do believe what we experience as life is a collective dreaming. It’s like simulation theory, but with an actual reason for the simulation.

My Associations to the Images.

The Fool: Traditionally, The Fool is about innocence and fumbling into the unknown. I’ve always taken it to be the image of selflessness. The Fool is someone who does not “know thyself.” I drew a protohuman figure with urns to represent wisdom and inspiration. The figure must fill these urns from their own reflection in the ‘flow’ of water before them. When they do so, they will be a fool no more.

The Magician: My association with most decks is this card is a master of elements. I hold true to that by having the lightning (air), the hand (fire), the globe (earth), and the waterfall face (water) represented. However, I didn’t want these mastered elements wielded by a person, but rather the card itself. This card’s power is symbolic, not actually manifested. A potential rather than an actual.

The High Priestess: While I hope we understand that the essence of femininity isn’t housed in the body, I did choose the female form for this card. She is raw, exposed, and vulnerable in the moonlight over which she rules. I was aiming for a sacred, revered space for the feminine to bless. Cleansing water of purification. She clutches something in shadow to her heart, reminding us that she possesses secrets as well. She is guarded by the gargoyle spirits of this sacred space as well. This is the safe domain for all feminine energies.

The Empress: Unlike the sacred vision of The High Priestess, The Empress is our feminine turned mother. Not only the mother to the child in her womb, but the tree tattooed upon her. The nurturer of the earth. Although her demeanor is peaceful, we can see her darker reflection even though we cannot see the mirror. Just a reminder that there is a power to this mother not to be trifled with or trivialized. Her fingernails are sharpened as if they are claws with which she can defend herself with if need be.

The Emperor: I’ve almost always associated The Emperor with dominion and control, and I feel the ultimate form of this is to dominate one’s own physiology. It seems fitting to me that the masculine solution to controlling one’s aging biological entropy is to replace it with technology. It’s a theme I don’t see a lot in tarot, so I utilized it here with the man being slowly being replaced by his own inventions. Robotic limbs assembling him to live forever. A true ruler of all the ages.

The Hierophant: This is my soul card, and I’ve always had a troubled relationship to it. I think that’s why my Hierophant is troubled in the card. I have him bound and blinded by strips of fabric. He’s perched upon a pyramid of traditional religious and spiritual iconography. He has transparent wings and on the left wing is a false sun of his own design. The pyramid is shadowed by this false sun set above it by this Hierophant. The Hierophant himself is bathed in the true light coming from the right, however, he cannot see it. He can only feel it and is looking and reaching toward it.

The Lovers: I’m fairly traditional about this card representing the pursuit of knowledge and its consequences. The lovers bask in the warmth of a beautiful forest with full knowledge of their connection. They are one with everything but the shadow figure, who watches from afar ready to react. Is the figure a third lover? I left that association entirely up to the reader to determine.

The Chariot: This card reflects the manifested Fool from our first card. The jester who is defeated by the task of pleasing all the people all of the time. They walk down an alley pulling their shadow with them as a horse pulls a chariot. Their shadow lords its power over the Jester exhausting them from their role in life.

Strength: When the energy of The Chariot moves forward, the jester’s mask is cast aside. The shadow self is freed from overpowering our people pleaser, and stands exalted in the light. This is the true strength of putting down our mask and being authentic. I’ve also always thought of this card as a vulnerable card rather than an enduring card.

The Hermit: There is nothing that tells a greater story of wisdom than looking deeply into the face of a man who has lived a life of contemplation. Instead of the traditional lantern casting light into the unknown darkness, I felt it was stronger to have the hourglass glint in The Hermit’s deep eyes. A reminder that time has forged the face before us.

The Wheel of Fortune: I recall this card has always been a difficult one for me. I’ve never liked the wheel aspect. Something about the boundary a circle creates that doesn’t feel ‘fated’ to me. So I associate to a golden spiral ever expanding. Almost fractal. This card iterates The Magician’s hand no longer holding the globe, but the center of fate. In the demarcations of the golden spiral, there are symbols of binaries, elements, life and death, sight. At one point, I thought they were connected, but realized they had to be more random. This was the fortune part.

Justice: I’ve always viewed Justice as balance, since many representations have blind justice with her scales. What I’m always drawn to in this card’s energy is the notion of principle. In this card, we get a reflection of The Hierophant’s pyramid except the cross is replaced by the stone plates of the Ten Commandments. They are broken and unbalanced on the hilt of a great sword dripping in blood. We have punished both our demons and our angels by the same principles when we adhere so deeply to them.

The Hanged Man: This card has always been the perfect antecedent to Justice as it often represents the reversal of living by principle. I thought a bit too much of myself with this card because I figured the ultimate reversal of viewing this card was not having the hanged man upside down in Odin-like fashion. I also ditched the traditional pose. I thought I was so clever. The clutching of time was the ultimate message of the Hanged Man. The weights of the clock are shifted toward the past here. The clock is my natal signs, meant to represent a chart of my life. The naked hanging man had nothing to hide, which in my mind at the time was a revolutionary perspective.

Death: I always gravitate to the grief aspect of the Death card. I’ve rarely felt it represents the actual irreversible transformation, but the process of dealing with the aftermath. I believe grief makes us uncontrollably transparent. We wear it on our faces and in our heart. This image has the sun shining through the skin of our griever revealing the internal struggle. It’s fairly simple and straightforward.

Temperance: One of my favorite cards in the deck. Temperance is the wise balance that the Justice card seeks. Principles are tempered by beauty and that beauty is flawed. This card heralds the playful joy coming in The Sun card with the boy and his sun wand. Where many would see tragedy with the homeless man and trash, the artist is beautifying the wall with ancient images. It is the awareness that beauty is not about how you improve the material world, but how you see the imperfections without judgment.

The Devil: Usually this card is all about the addiction of self-gratification. I felt like I had a hint of that. What I was aiming for was one word: influence. The technology of The Emperor card has become its own type of demon here where it infiltrates the woman and man from the Lovers via media (television in this case). The couple are shackled by the cable sending manufactured arousal into their bodies. The shadows of this image are irrational and distorted even though the sun shines below.

The Tower: I’ve always considered The Tower the most boring tarot card in the major arcana. It always means the same thing. Catastrophe. Said catastrophe is usually some sort of event beyond the control of the characters in the card, but maybe it’s because I don’t like the victimized nature of the card, I wanted my tower to be the consequence of ignorance. I have the manifestation of the magician standing on a prepice casting a lightning spell without direction. The lightning, the realization, is what explodes his foundation out from under him leaving him moments before falling. It’s also a grim echo of The Fool card.

The Star: My Aquarian nature saw The Star in an unorthodox manner. The usual Star interpretation is a figure pouring water into water under the starlit sky of inspiration. I wanted something even more serene and calming with a natural star, the starfish. I wish I’d been better at my water techniques back then because I didn’t quite capture the idea of starfish on a shallow ocean floor with the reflection of a falling star on the surface. The idea being that when at peace and harmony in the sea of emotion, one can truly witness a fleeting moment of universal awe.

The Moon: I don’t know why I’ve never connected well with the primal energy of the traditional Moon card with the hound looking up to the slivered moon. I’ve always felt protected in The Moon card by the manifested energy of The High Priestess and The Empress. They are both intensified and large in their power here. Big enough to sit a top the planet and embrace the misunderstood moon in their nurturing arms. I also wanted to echo the Death card, but without the transparency of the sun behind. Here we can’t see through the person and the grief from Death is embraced and calmed.

The Sun: One of the better represented cards in traditional tarot, The Sun is almost always jubilant, warm, and childlike. I wanted to add playfully creative as well. The child in my card is actually one of the oldest civilizations, and his magic wand is actually used to blow bubbles. The bubbles being playful suns while he is haloed by the true sun. Yes, it’s also a callback to the multiple suns of The Hierophant, the notion that our experience of joy is what often turns us away from the light of truth.

Judgment: As almost all the cards of my deck have a theme of viewing false perception rather than the truth of existence, it seems fitting that Judgment is the most honest card of all. I won’t lie, I was feeling zombie movie vibes when I thought of Judgment. The arm of some poor soul that has now seen the true sun, not the sun of religious cross echoed as the gravestone in the background. It is grim and not what we want to know as the truth, but it is undying. It is coming for us as the consequence for looking elsewhere for the truth.

The World: Here all the energies of the major arcana are ultimately manifested into being. Like The Eternal Dream itself, this card is about consciously manipulating the converging dreams into some semblance of order. The globes are the solidified representations of each element. The androgynous figure resembling the magician of The Tower card is placing these globes over the golden spiral of The Wheel of Fortune card. The figure is massive as if it stepped out of The Moon card and put the universe into place. The variation of pattern is the attempt to reconcile all the dreams that are taking place in reality.

Deck Reviews

K. Frank Jensen (1933-2016) graciously reviewed my deck as part of his one of a kind tarot collection. By the turn of the millennium, he had collected roughly 95% of all tarot and cartomancy decks ever published. I am honored to be a part of that collection. Since his passing, Arnell Ando has curated his tarot deck reviews here: Manteia - Deck Review of Eternal Dream Tarot.

Arnell Ando also reviewed my deck, but that review is no longer available on her site.

Aeclectic Tarot gives The Eternal Dream Tarot 3.5 stars out of 5.

Print your own deck

When I stopped selling the deck to finish college, I always allowed anyone who downloaded the images to print their own deck for free.

Now you can download the original file I used for printing back in 2001. This isn’t a professional level imposition, but the back registers fairly well on most letter-sized printers.

I offer it for free, but if you feel like supporting me, you can buy the deck for the original price of $22.00. The files are both the same PDF, so it’s up to you. If you do purchase the supported version, thank you. I hope good fortune finds you where ever you roam.