CARD BACK

The back of the cards in my deck Tarot de St. Croix shows a full moon lighting a small temple in the clouds and the reflection which forms a reversal. This is the place where I received inspiration to paint the deck. On the winter solstice 2008 I did a shamanic journey. In my vision I travelled to a small black and white temple in the Upper World. On the throne lay a tarot card of the High Priestess: Isis. I sat on the throne to look at it, suddenly I felt surrounded by a huge presence - Isis. She instructed me to paint a tarot deck. A couple of months later I began to paint the deck always invoking Isis as my guide. Magic occurred in the form of synchronicity. The perfect messages and images coming each time I pulled a new card to paint. I lived in the archetypal realm of the Tarot for five years as I worked on the deck. 

During this time I visited my father in South Africa who showed me an old suitcase which contained some ritual garb and books of my Grandfather Philip de St. Croix who was both a Rosicrucian and the Worshipful master of the Masonic Lodge in Bloemfontein, South Africa. There in one of the books was something that looked like my temple with black and white columns, checkered floor and a throne of sorts behind it where the Worshipful Master would sit. It was one of those moments where time evaporates and the air is electric with energy.  Some cellular memory had been passed down to me. Back in Santa Fe, I took a tour the Masonic Scottish Rite Temple, with a magnificent theatre filled with mystical symbolism. In the costume room I saw the robe of Isis. I don't really know the role she plays as it is a secret society. All I know is that Isis called me and that there is some ancient lineage to which I belong.