X-Men Tarot icon set

[st_aurafina]

These are 22 icons that I made for tarot_challenge.

Fandom: X-Men (specifically the X-Men movieverse)
Genre: Movies
Icons: 22
Resources: My resources in my user info

1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20
21	22

Specific resources for these icons:
The screen caps that I didn't do myself are from Secret Obsession for X1 and X2. ComingSoon.net for caps from the X3 trailer

The brush is by unmasked_icons

I used an HTML table generator made by 77words, here: Icon Table HTML generator
It's the best thing ever.

Quotes are from either Aleister Crowley or A. E. Waite.

While I was making these icons, I was carrying around Jana Riley's "Tarot Dictionary and Compendium", which is a collection of different views on each of the cards. It was very useful, but cheaply made, and now it's falling to pieces. Poxy perfect binding.

List of cards:
0. The Fool: Marie D'Ancanto, before she becomes Rogue
1. The Magician: Professor Charles Xavier, using Cerebro
2. The High Priestess: Dr Jean Grey, speaking before the Senate
3. The Empress: Storm
4. The Emperor: Cyclops
5. The Hierophant: William Stryker
6. The Lovers: Scott and Jean
7. The Chariot: The Blackbird
8. Justice: Mystique
9. The Hermit: Logan at Alkali Lake
10. The Wheel of Fortune: The doors to Cerebro
11. Strength: Dr Henry Mcoy
12. The Hanged Man: The Amazing Nightcrawler
13. Death: Logan escapes from Project X
14. Temperance: Iceman
15. The Devil: Pyro makes his choice
16. The Tower: The dam at Alkali Lake
17. The Star: Artie
18. The Moon: Jason Stryker
19. The Sun: Jean metamorphoses
20. Judgement: Magneto
21. The World: Evolution (from the opening credits of X-Men)


This was interesting to put together, it's really made me think hard about the characters and how they fit (or don't fit) into the archetypes of the major arcana. It was surprising to see where the characters fell. I would have put Storm as the High Priestess if this were comicsverse, but in the movie we see her teaching and nurturing, much more like the Empress.

The hardest three icons, and the most important for me were the Fool, the Magician and the High Priestess. I cast the Fool fast, but tinkered with the image for ages until it had the right kind of misty, dreamy effect. When I'd finished the set, it turns out that the two "travelling" icons, the Fool and the Hermit, were the only icons that used a human figure rather than a close up of the face.

The Magician was much, much harder to cast, and I tried a few different people in the position, but as it turned out, the image I was going to use as the World, with Charles and all of humankind lit up on Cerebro, ended up as the Magician. And Jean was my favourite for the High Priestess, but it took me ages to get the right image. I didn't figure it out until I rewatched the first movie and saw her giving her speech, with those rays behind her. Then I had to figure out how to cap the image, since I couldn't find the right angle in any galleries.

I have Pyro down on the Devil icon, not because I think he represents the devil, but because the situation that he's in at that moment is very like the situation that the Devil might indicate indicate in a reading, a warning to be careful with your choices, make them for the right reasons or they'll bite you in the ass.

I've gone for literal translations on the Wheel, the Tower and the Chariot, because I wanted to incorporate the non-human characters of the film as well as the people. The Blackbird is a great enabler for the X-Men, and it wasn't a big stretch for me to place it as the Chariot. Cerebro as the Wheel of Fortune is harder to see, but Waite calls the wheel "the perpetual motion of a fluidic universe, and the flux of human life". I imagined Charles using Cerebro like a magician uses a scrying bowl, to view human and mutant-kind. The Tower was really easy to fit; the breaking of the dam at Alkali Lake forces the transformation of Jean Grey. It has nice synchronicity considering that in this set, she is also the High Priestess.

There are a couple of icons with images taken from the X3 trailer. I have always thought of Dr McCoy as the personification of the Strength card, particularly the Rider-Waite Strength, which emphasises embracing your inner beast without letting it control you. I think that's very Henry McCoy from the comicsverse. This may not correspond so well with the Henry McCoy in X3.

I've also used the image of Scott and Jean from the trailer for my Lovers icon. It's literal again, the Lovers don't have to be, you know, lovers, but it's such a beautiful image. When I cropped it back to just their faces, I was surprised at how much tension and anger there was. It brought the right feeling of opposition that I think fits with the Lovers card.

Feel free to take any of these icons if you'd like. Comment if you want. Please credit me as the icon maker. Thanks!