Crescents – A Journey

The Kult tarot deck’s minor arcana is divided into five suits: Skulls, Eyes, Roses, Hourglasses and Crescents. Each of these are connected to one of the five schools of magic recognized in Kult’s mythos, but more than that they illustrate important concepts within each of those five schools and give the magic a more practical and digestible form. Each suit, from the ace to the nine, reveal a spiritual or metaphorical journey that explains something about the Kult mythos and the essence of magic. The exact interpretation is, of course, personal, but I hope that by presenting the suit of Crescents I can stir your thoughts to interpret all five suits in a similar manner. This is not always a straightforward process and I am still contemplating the details of it myself. If you have any insights into these mysteries, feel free to share them in the comments below or anywhere else I can read them.

The Suit of Crescents

Also aptly known as The Moon, the Crescents is the suit of cards in Kult’s tarot associated with dream magic. The card’s symbol is that of two blue crescents, one filled and one empty. The image may bring many things to mind. The passing of time through the lunar cycle, nighttime when sleep is common and most humans access the dreamworld Limbo, emptiness and fullness, and reflection of the known. All this and more might be leveraged by the student of dream magic to attune themselves to their dreams and the source behind them. By mastering techniques for lucid dreaming, dream wandering and manifestation, the dream magician might construct complex worlds of their own making and completely dominate the internal processes of another being. Limbo is a realm of pure creation, and through the consideration of the Suit of Crescents some knowledge might be gained of how to wield the power offered by that place.

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Tarot Characters: Joanne

Greetings Kultists! I have mentioned before that I love the Kult tarot deck (in fact, I have a category on the blog specifically for it!). I wrote a post detailing a method for creating characters for Kult using the tarot deck, and last week I sat down and did this with the wife again! I performed the reading, we both came with suggestions and ideas for how the cards might be interpreted and what stories one might tell. Once the reading was done, we picked a Dark Secret, Disadvantages and Advantages and created a more or less complete character, ready to be played! This is her.

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Discoveries in the Minor Arcana

A while back (the post may be buried by the time I post this), a post in the Facebook group Kult RPG Fans started a discussion on what humans can even eat if they’re stuck in Metropolis. There was interesting discussion to be had, but what I am writing about here is based on some banter between myself and another poster on there, Alex. He suggested the “refreshingly exciting” option of hunting down a cairath and peeling off a rat or a dog or something less tasteful from its body. I found this hilarious, and responded with the joke that the cairath can’t hunt you, if you’re hunting it.

The interaction got me thinking about the taroticum (as many things in Kult tend to do). The suits in the minor arcana all carry a meaning, some metaphorical or physical transition that moves from the start of the suit until the end. I realized, after some contemplation, that the same applies to smaller sequences of cards. There may be millions of story elements and insights into the Kult world that we can glean from the way the tarot cards are sequenced.

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Tarot readings for Character Creation

I originally wrote this post for the Razors Through Flesh blog. It’s a good blog and Basilides is a cool guy. I encourage you to check it out. This is the second post I wrote. Part one is here.

In this post, I would like to present an idea I have experimented with: to use the tarot deck for character creation. I thought of this one evening, and suggested to my wife that we try it out. We sat down with the deck, lit some candles, and I performed a reading using the “Individual” template in the rules.

Before we began, my wife selected an archetype she wanted to play: The Broken. After this, I laid out the cards as usual. The cards were turned over one by one, and I explained the card’s meanings to her using examples and wide concepts, mostly taken from the document. Together, we discussed what each card might mean for the character.

The result was incredible. I strongly suggest trying this out with your own players, provided you know they are comfortable with it. Once the reading is complete, you as the GM can build the character rules-wise, or you could proceed with character creation as normal. This method provides a character concept that, thanks to the Kult tarot deck being so well made, is certain to fit in with the game’s mechanics.

Here’s how the reading went.

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Using the Tarot

I originally wrote this post for the Razors Through Flesh blog. It’s a good blog and Basilides is a cool guy. I encourage you to check it out.

One of my favorite materials for the game is the Kult tarot deck, it’s beautiful and every card connects in deep and interesting ways to the game’s world. For this blog post, I will explore some of that by showing examples of my process when doing tarot readings for the game. Tarot reading in Kult: Divinity Lost works as a creativity engine – it helps you explore the game’s concepts and develop your scenarios and characters.

Before reading further, I recommend you at least glance through the tarot reading rules for Kult: Divinity Lost. They are available here: Link. You can also keep it open and read the full description of each card as I discuss them, if you like.

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