Tarot Huramentado


Huramentado in the Philippines translates to “running amok”, and the word has an interesting history. It comes from the Spanish word juramentado, meaning sworn. The word was used to refer to Moslem assassins or swordsmen during the Spanish Colonial (and therefore Christian) period in the Philippines. The Juramentado (according to Wikipedia): “...attacked and killed targeted Christian police and soldiers, expecting to be killed himself, the martyrdom undertaken as an unorthodox form of personal offensive jihad”. Over the years, the term has come to mean running amok.

I used the name and the definition (running amok) in a very light sense for this deck. It has quirkily drawn figures in scenes which are either modern representation of the Rider-Waite-Smith’s imagery (the major arcana), a combination of imagery from the RWS, Thoth Tarot, and the Golden Dawn traditions (court cards), or a strange reinterpretation of tarot imagery based on meditations on the Thoth Tarot’s descriptions (the pips) - which makes the deck very much schizophrenic! I am thinking of maybe splitting it into 3 different decks – the Thoth reinterpretation being the most interesting for me.

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