Welcome, Magical Being! Come in, make yourself comfortable, and enter the beautiful and magical world of Tarot and esoterica with my guest, Andrea Aste - a multidisciplinary artist from Italy who found home in the UK, where he creates weird and wonderful worlds in his Tarot, Oracle and Lenormand decks.

Andrea is also a philosopher and a linguist, so the themes in this conversation run deep! I hope you'll enjoy listening to Andrea as much as I enjoyed talking to him.

Andrea's decks we mentioned in this episode:

The Book of Shadows

Oracolarium

The Ghastly Lenormand From The Grave

The upcoming Tarot of the Crossed Destinies and The Discombobulator: The Esoteric Magazine of the Unseen and the Unexpected.

You can find Andrea on his website, in The Inexistent Library publication on Substack, Facebook, Instagram and Kickstarter.

Host: Gosia Rokicka of Las Vistas Tarot & More

This podcast is sponsored by Las Vistas Tarot & More, an online shop with indie Tarot & Oracle Decks. For a 10% discount in the Las Vistas Tarot & More shop exclusive to podcast listeners, use code PODCAST10 at checkout.

To be up to date with Las Vistas Tarot & More news, join the inner circle and sign up to the newsletter.

Disclaimer:

Tarot readers, healers and practitioners of "woo" can offer valuable support, but they’re not substitutes for licensed mental‑health professionals. Listeners needing therapeutic help should seek accredited counsellors.

Hello, magical beings and creatures of the forest.

This is Gosha, the host of the Tarot and More podcast.

And today I have the absolute pleasure, pleasure to introduce my guest, Andrea Aste,

who is an artist, an illustrator,

multimedia.

Multimedia artist.

A multimedia artist, sculpture, painter, you

know, writer as well.

You name it, you name it.

Andrea does it all.

And he creates Tarot decks.

He's very interested in esoterica in Tarot, in Lenomant,

and he's got the whole selection of beautiful decks.

And I'm very honored to be selling his decks in my shop, Las Vistas.

And today I have for you a conversation with Andrea and it's a long one,

so make yourself comfortable or maybe take us with you on a walk or a train journey or a car

drive somewhere and enjoy the beautiful and magical world of esoterica and Tarot with

Andrea Astel.

Hello, Andrea, nice to see you here.

I'm glad you accepted the invitation.

Thank you.

Gosh, nice to be with you and I'm incredibly

happy.

I love your podcast.

So it's a pleasure and an honor to be here with you.

And I'm curious and worried about the question you may ask.

No, nothing to worry about.

I know you know everything about your own art and can talk about it for hours.

So this is no tricky questions here.

So I, I mean, you've created quite a few Tarot decks and also Elenormand.

And could you tell us a bit about how did it start?

How.

Why are you interested in Tarot?

You're obviously an illustrator, a painter, an artist.

You could, you know, do lots of other stuff and you know, any other topic.

What,

what is it that draw you in in Tarot?

Oh, this is a very interesting question.

It's a very long story, but it's a very

fascinating one because Tarot were part of my childhood.

My mother was a Tarot reader.

Not only a Tarot reader, she was like an

explorer of the occult.

So she used to do scenes.

She was talking with the dead.

She was doing crazy stuff.

The pendulum,

automatic writing.

I think she tried every single divination instrument she found she was able to find.

But I was a kid and I remember the, the, There was in the, in the, in the kitchen.

There was a round big table at a night.

It was just a candle there.

The door or the kitchen were closed.

And we knew that my mother was there doing

something.

And it was incredibly spooky, incredibly beautiful.

But then there were Taro, and Taro were my absolutely favorite because the other one was

a little bit scary.

I have to be honest,

But I mean, as a kid.

Yes, but taro absolutely.

No. I love when she was spreading all the cards on the table.

And for me, imagine a kid seeing every time a different deck.

And see all the pictures like animating my fantasy were animating the cards with the

story.

And my mother was telling all the story.

So it was amazing.

I mean, she was reading tarot for friends and a kid.

I was there.

I was allowed to watch sometimes many times.

No. And I was furious because I love it.

And sometimes she was doing tarot with me and then sometimes she was using tarot to.

Let's say as a trickster, like laying down the tarot.

It was late at night and say the cards and telling me that it's time for you to go to

bed.

And if the tarot are telling.

Very clever.

Yes, I'm very, very clever.

If the tarot are telling you that you have to

go to bed, of course you go.

But me and my brother, we were like quite

cheeky.

We were the kinds of guys that for Christmas, Christmas Eve, we were leaving the door just

ajar.

Spending all the night try to have a glimpse

of.

We say the Zubambino.

So baby Jesus.

We don't have Santa bringing gift.

But when there was the cost of my grandmother for the Day of the Dead.

My mother used to have a bowl of milk on the table.

Always the kitchen table with boiled chestnut.

So an ancient tradition is the food for the

dead.

And were there trying to see the grandma, the ghost of grandma, how she will be.

I mean, wow.

It's a little bit spooky and a little bit

scary.

But he's endearing his wi too because he's

your grandma.

So there is part of you that is a little bit scary because he's a ghost.

There's the other part that is his grandma.

I mean, how can it was absolutely delighted.

I have the most magical childhood of I could have.

I love my mother a lot.

Unfortunately, she's not young anymore.

And when sure her ghost is with you.

Oh, I have many ghost stories to tell about it.

So. Yes, you are absolutely right.

No, but the funny part that when I finished my last exhibition, and at that time was the last

exhibition there was in a big museum in Turin.

It was a very crazy exhibition because I

mixed.

Let's say it was a fantasy one.

I created plants, animal and inset based on

the history and the architecture of my city.

And I place it in this.

In the Museum of Natural History.

So making like a dialogue, creating a dialogue between the fictional insect Animal and

plants.

And the real one, with all this fake

scientific notes and everything, with Ara Destin as an explorer.

And then I recover it for the Tarot project.

Because I fell in love with that character.

I see myself, the explorer, the crazy one in that character.

But anyway, I decided to celebrate my childhood.

And I wanted to say thanks to my mother with a big surprise.

Creating the biggest exhibition had painting Tarot.

And the idea was to paint all the deck oil on canvas.

But to paint oil on canvas, a deck is years and years of work.

And I didn't have the time.

I wanted to create it immediately.

And so I started to use another technique.

So I started to use ink works, like I did for Torinide, the exhibition at the museum I just

mentioned.

But then while creating the cards in my mind,

I started to see an alchemist creating the deck.

So I said,

imagine if the first deck ever created were created by an alchemist.

And the story of the alchemists were lost to history.

And his first deck is lost.

But now we are all the copies.

And all the copies are less and less magical.

But the first one is incredibly powerful.

And then I started to create, while I was creating the deck,

the manuscript.

Because I said if the alchemist is inventing

the tarot, he need a sort of grimoire when he writes all the Athens, the history, the

magical tools, why created in everything?

But I didn't write it, I just illustrated it's because I wanted to.

I said, okay, I create a fictional language and a code and I write everything.

But then, because I studied philosophy, a philosophical language.

I know very well that if you do a cipher, just translating one letter with another, a symbol

with another symbol, is incredibly easy to decipher it.

And then I said, which language?

Italian,

English, the base, I mean, to good translation.

So I said, no, I just do something completely different.

I invent a language that is not connected to any symbol on anything.

So it's more visual.

And then strange symbols.

But doing so,

more stories started to come alive.

And so I invented the story that an

archaeologist find the laboratory of this alchemist in London in 2010.

I remember.

And the digging went on.

And then there are debate between logician and esperant cipher.

Try to decipher the book and the deciphering collection of short stories.

And so I exploded that in a universe.

And then to connect everything, because I have

all the pieces, imagine I have this story that I narrated.

You see all the pieces without a unifying narrative.

And so the unifying narrative is a long film, an hour and 30 minutes that I created to

connect everything.

Then after something like five years, I realized the missing piece there was how

technically the alchemist created the tarot.

And so I created a graphic novel and I created

the Book of Shadows, an alchemy story that is the full world.

And so this is the image.

Three years it took me to create the first

project.

So. So just to like summarize, basically you thought that you're gonna do 78 oil paintings

and you thought that's too long, that's too complicated.

Oil paintings take too long.

So instead you just created a deck, a book and

a film and a complicated story.

And obviously the film you had to do all the props and everything to create a film and film

it and learn animation.

And I think that maybe painting 78 oil

paintings would be quicker.

I agree.

I took three years.

If I consider the year I used to create a

graphic novel, I think teched a long project is four years.

But you know what?

When I was the sad part, I mean, it's amazing.

It's something to liberate my mind.

And I realized what I wanted to do as an artist.

And maybe I'll tell you a little later.

I mean, I want to finish the story.

The story is that at the end I use my friends

as actors in the film.

Mixing with real amazing professor at

university there is Roger Scruton, that is, he was an important philosopher in aesthetics.

In England there was a Casley Hayford and he's working for BBC and he's a writer of tons of

book.

He's the author of Lost Kingdom in Africa.

And then I have Mary Greer, all

of them, Mary Greer, just talking about fictional Tarot with like straight face.

Yes, everyone is talking about my fictional world and it was real.

Why? I mean, the point you can ask why I created

it.

The point is that that project exploded in my mind with a complexity and a level of

something I never had in creating something.

And I think I transferred this passion to the reader, the viewer and the people that read

the tarot because exploded worldwide.

So I'm incredibly happy.

I mean, this is the project that gave me the freedom to escape my country and move to

England.

That it wasn't my dream because in Italy I was not anymore a serious artist.

From the moment I started to create tarot and do animation and film,

the system blocked me.

They closed me the door.

Because in Italy at the time series, I mean, it was 100 centuries ago.

It's just 10 years ago.

I don't know if things are changed now, but I have no contact with my country anymore.

I hate it so much that really I free myself.

I say that I'm happy exile here.

And really,

this is like.

Everyone loves Italy.

Like, you know,

for holidays.

Yes, for living.

You know when they tell you every single day that you are not a real artist or what you're

doing is completely wrong.

And they don't want to exhibit in galleries.

And this is the reason why I was working with museums.

Because my projects were more intellectual, or more crazy, or more fun and more intriguing.

And I'm not focused on selling stuff, but in telling stories.

And so I had a lot of fun.

They are far more professional for me.

I found my professionality working with museums, that working with art galleries.

So anyway, it was already a process going,

but when I came here then I was finally free to do everything.

And no one judged me for what I'm doing.

So this is the point.

But at the end, you may not.

Italy has also this hundreds and hundreds of years of history of art, of being like this

top country for art overall, I think in the world.

And I think it's just maybe taking itself too seriously.

Yeah, but it's strange if.

I mean, what is difficult to understand if you

live in a country that produce so many work of art.

How can you now think that being artist is not a serious job anymore?

Because this is the real problem.

They don't consider you seriously.

So it's horrible.

I mean,

it's really, really horrible to market there.

I don't want to go in detail, but I didn't

like to work there.

After I did the Venice Biennale, this was the

last thing I did in the work of classical world of art.

And then I decided to follow my art and do what I really wanted.

And don't care about what they were thinking about.

What I discovered through the Book of Shadows, this film multimedia project and everything is

the power of imagination.

Magic is a science of the imagination.

Imagination as a tool for faculties to

understand and represent the world.

Because with fantasy we can think about fictional reality, analyze them, compare it to

reality,

invent things, change our reality.

Following the ideas or the fantastic idea, the

fictional idea that we have in our mind.

Usually when we think about fantasy will tend to opposite to reality.

If something is real, is serious, is concrete, is valid.

If it's just an imagination,

is just fantasy, is wrong.

But all the inventions started with fantasy.

All the big changes started with fantasy.

Fantasy means the world of ideas, the abstract world of ideas.

You can think about Plato, the Hyper Uranus.

You can think in a psychological way.

Leonardo da Vinci, his ideas were not some of them absolutely.

But this was the beginning because someone dreamed to fly.

Now we can do it because someone think about Jules Verne with Nemo and Denartilos.

Denartilos was propelled, but a very strange form of energy.

And this is electricity.

But when he was writing, he was far ahead.

All atomic energy, if you want.

Even better, maybe.

But this is fantastic.

We have to imagine something before making it real.

This is the part of our imagination.

Then there is all the part that connect fantasy with childhood.

These are the things that I really like.

The storytelling, the mystery, the discovery of the world,

the leaving the door open.

When you are a child, you judge less what you

have in front of you.

You are less materialistic, less concrete.

You are a little bit more a dreamer.

You play.

You navigate the world through fantasy.

When you switch off the light, you see

monsters.

And in that act of seeing monster closing under the closet or under the bed,

a lot of things can happen.

Because your idea can shape poetry, art.

Your future is built in that night.

I mean, you can use it, of course, to build your.

Your mood, your career, your.

Your character.

Not your career, your character.

And this is interesting, though.

This project was like the atomic bomb exploded in my brain.

That made me shift and made me realize what I wanted to do.

And so for that moment, I always.

I always thought about magic as a science of imagination.

But connecting magic as magic of theaters or stage, magic of the term magic of tarot and

the occultism of magic as the magic of childhood.

The magic of seeing the world with new eye and fresh eye and not be guided, but all the

biases and knowledge that you ever have when you are older.

That is beautiful.

I think.

I think it's essential,

because for me, this is the part constraints.

So the part when you go through, you build a

value.

But then this is inserted in what is called the part distrust.

That is the part when you destroy something that is think about.

I mean, I.

Well, I grew up with two.

Let's say with a mother and a father, like everyone.

But while my mother was the eccentric one.

The explosion, the fantasy, the possibility,

the open door to everything that is strange.

My father was the classical.

I don't want to say macho man, but really

toxic masculinity.

A guy has never asked to cry.

A guy plays soccer and I hate it.

I mean, so is.

It was very, very difficult growing a father

that was crushing you,

diminishing you, never give you value, never say I love you, never give affection.

Because a man has to Be like a rock, motionless, absolutely boring and empty.

Because there is nothing there.

It's just a rigid block of stone.

You cannot even sizzle.

You cannot do anything with that.

It stayed there like a monolith, crushing everything around.

So for me is the refusal of a society that force us to find an economic role in the

world.

Like you grow up, you have to find.

You have to study something that allow you to

have a job, to make money, to have a family, to reproduce, to have a house.

To have a beautiful house, a beautiful car, beautiful clothes, beautiful holidays,

beautiful wives with beautiful children.

I refuse this kind of world for me.

I mean, I study.

I study first Greek and Latin.

So something that is absolutely practically

useless if you want to think about money.

But it's incredibly deep because it give you the eye.

It's like opening a window to the past.

And see the world through the eye of two

amazing and different society and culture.

And read them and translate them and fall in love with them.

I mean, we still read Homer, the Iliad, the Odyssey.

So the Odyssey.

So there are things that speak today still

after, I don't know, 2000 more to 2000 years.

I mean, maybe 4000, 3000 years ago, written so many.

I mean, written started to be narrated.

They are archetypes.

They are those archetypes like Tarot.

They are telling the stories which are the part of our experience have been since the

beginning.

Exactly.

Is important.

And then I study philosophy, Philosophy of language.

That is not something practical like, I don't know, you become a plumber or an engineer or

something like that.

But it give you depth, your soul as a depth.

Then you can use and I mean evolve in something else.

I mean, for me,

the goal.

And I'm not rich.

I mean, I'm not coming from a rich family, is a working class family.

So I know what doesn't mean doesn't have money to reach the end of the month.

There were period of time when it was difficult to put food on my table.

So I know very well so.

But I never left the money to define my dreams, my goal, my way of living.

Because at the end he considers just this simple question.

You are here.

You are here for a limited amount of years.

Because we are not immortals, unfortunately.

How do you want to spend your time?

You spend a lot of time working.

Do you want to do really something that you

don't like, or you don't like that much just for money?

You have no time.

You go in retirement phase.

And then you have a few years when your

physique is Falling apart because you're old, you have lots of problems, you have not the

energy to enjoy life.

When we were younger,

so what is the goal?

Not to mention we don't know whether we are going to live that long.

So what is the goal of it?

Living for a future that is already a decadence.

And I don't want to be pessimistic, but I mean, being 20 is not a bit and 80 years old.

I mean, unfortunately.

So I didn't want to spend time like that doing something that I didn't like.

I tried and I gave up immediately.

I started writing advertising.

And when I realized that I was spending my energy in trying to convince someone to buy

something that they didn't need, I said, you know what?

I have better way of using my skills and my talents and my time.

And I did it especially that if we,

you know, often there is an advice like do something for money.

And then in your spare time, do the things you love, but you don't have energy anymore to do

the things you love.

So, yeah,

it's like saying, you know,

try to spend time pretending to love a person and living with a person that you don't like.

And then in the spare time, you live with the person you love.

But I won't get crazy to do something like that.

I will not do it.

I mean, it's a tough metaphor to.

They clarified the concept, but we live in a society that tried to crush us and to label us

and to push in a direction.

Unfortunately, I was a rebel, a science rebel, because I mean, I follow my road,

I believe in what I believe.

And I took all the responsibilities to do.

I mean,

every choice,

every decision you take,

bring you consequences.

I asked myself, are you ready to pay the price for your freedom?

And I say, yes, absolutely yes.

I've wrote book of poetry.

I create an animation every time I studied for creating the technique that allowed me to do

what I wanted.

I started to do sculpture, I started to do film, theater.

I never was in theater, but I knew I have an idea to how to create animation for theater.

And I did it and I have success.

And I mean, the show is still represented in Italy.

So it's great.

I love it.

I wanted to have fun.

And when I master a technique and I get bored

of using it, I don't use it anymore.

I change and evolve because I want to be,

to stay fresh, to have something to still.

I mean, to use a tool to still talk to me.

And the tarot and tarot decks and lenormands, they Are an oracle because you've done oracle

as well.

They kind of let.

They are the storytelling means of storytelling.

And they also let you explore those different techniques.

Because each of them have something different.

Like the Book of Shadows have this complex

world, the story behind it.

There is a Tarot deck, there is a graphic

novel,

there is a film.

And then there is Oracularium which is an oracle.

And it has the digital.

Yes.

Animation which.

Which when I show.

When I show it to people everyone is like wow, it's so clever.

Can you tell.

Can you tell more about it?

How this came.

Came about?

I think every time.

I mean for me, Taro are incredibly intriguing.

First because I connect myself again with the.

With the childhood.

My childhood and this kind of dream space.

But then I use Tarot to understand better myself.

So as a psychological tool I love using Tarot for telling stories, to create narrative for

my short stories, for my exhibition, for every game.

And Tarot are storytelling devices.

And we can use in completely different.

Different ways.

A mirror of the soul for divination,

for storytelling, for entertainment.

And I love them.

And every kind of deck I created is try to

analyze an aspect if the Book of Shadow think about the magic in Tarot and try to analyze

why Tarot are magical connected to fantasy.

And so we said Oracularion wanted to bring.

To explore the idea of magic as technology.

Using technology to recreate something like science fiction magic.

The feeling of magic.

So having cards that coming alive to augmented

reality is intriguing.

You can move the animation, follow the car.

So it's peculiar.

It was difficult to create.

It was very challenging.

But I love it.

I really, really love it.

And I think Dandelion or man is completely different because wait.

Taro I love him because there is this archetype structure.

There are lots of symbology and a lot of history.

A stratification of meaning.

While Lenormand being more recent had less

stratification of meaning.

I don't want to say that it's easier, but it's

different.

It doesn't tackle on the archetype structure and Jung and things like that.

It's a little bit more immediate.

It's more closer to us.

It's closer to us as time and approach and

symbology.

But yet as a semantic that is incredibly intriguing because you create a grand tableau.

So all the.

Using all the cards of a deck and all the

cards are connected and then you read them.

So the reading can be incredibly complex.

Incredibly beautiful.

Is that is what I love Lenormann.

So I start studying Lenormand and started

drawing them.

And then, of course, again,

the storytelling part for me is incredibly important.

One day when I was.

I was with my boyfriend there in Paris.

We were working there to a common project, and at a certain point, we decided to go to Per La

Chaise because, I mean, you have to see Paris, in Paris in view.

And Per Lachaise is an absolutely amazing,

monumental cemetery with a lot of people.

Is there like,

oh, now there is Colette, there is Sola writer,

there is Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison.

I mean, a lot of people.

And then when we were going there, taking pictures and.

Because it's absolutely creepy.

Fantastic.

I mean, it's really fantastic.

I. You know, you read names, you see the pictures.

Sometimes there are not, because it's very old too.

So you see just carving statues and something like that.

I see a name, Mademoiselle Lenormand.

Oh, it cannot be Madame Lenormand.

So I got closer to see and I saw a lot of.

Thank you, Madame.

Pack of cards.

I said, oh.

And then I. I remember, of course,

at her time, she was not married, so she.

Technically, she was a mademoiselle.

Now we call her Madame to give an importance in sign of respect.

But she is very like Mademoiselle Lenormand.

And then I was there,

a woman clad in black, like a Victorian ghost came and I stunned her because she started

talking because she saw me that was looking in one of the cards on the tombstone.

And she said, do you know the story, the legend?

And it's absolutely not.

I mean, I stumbled on a tomb by chance.

And he said, oh, I thought he was here for the ritual.

Ritual.

Well, so she explained that story goes that if

you have a card, a pack of Lenormand, if you leave it one night on the tomb of Madame

Lenormand and you retrieve it the day after, during the night,

Madame charged it with her power.

And at that moment, I saw Madame Lenormand coming out from her tomb and say, andrea.

Screaming, andrea.

Andrea.

My Tarot deck is lost.

Many cards are lost.

You have to complete it.

And so I created the Ghastly Lenormand from the grave.

So he made in this dialogue.

But it was.

It was fun because while I was creating,

I was having this dialogue with Madame Norman and said,

do you think this is the right way of portrayal?

No. The fox.

Do you think this is the right fox?

There is a lot of humor here.

What do you think about the humor and burning

in the car?

And we started to have the conversation With a ghost.

And it was absolutely fantastic.

And so I, I wrote about it and I created the

gastrinorman.

So the cars are in the shape of a coffin, the

box is in the shape of a coffin.

And I have a lot of fun because yes is.

I mean, there is a lot of symbology of study.

And then I explain how to use the cards and the booklet.

You. You have from zero to.

To advance if you want.

But the storytelling is important because it's the part that make us love something.

This is the reason why we love so much film,

because they are visual storytelling, they can inspire us.

And I simply love it.

Absolutely. And the Gaslit Lenormand is so beautiful.

It has a little book which looks a bit like a book for kids because it's like this square

little one with illustration and with this story you just told about meeting this woman

and the Pelache and.

And there is.

It's really, really good even for people who

don't know anything about Lenomont because all the cards are described very in detail.

And then, and then you've got all the.

From two cards to grand tableau, the whole concept, how to use it.

And also you created your own cards because Normally Lenormand has 36 cards and you added

more.

Your one is 52.

But you know, I discovered using Lenormand and I love it.

I said, okay, there are a lot of concepts that are left behind because we live in different

times.

So I wanted to create cards that were able to

reflect the problems, the topics that are obsessing us in this time,

that are pivotal, that are important in this time.

And so I drew other cards.

But then again, when I create something,

my first goal is to try to create something that I like,

something that I can use, something that is deep.

When I bought my first Lenormand deck, that was an amazing deck.

Maybe Lenormand.

I really, really love it.

When I bought it,

then I. I read the booklet and I said, and now what?

I not able to read the cards because there is nothing that helping me to read the cards.

It was for someone that never approached the deck before.

It was.

I don't know what to do now with that, so I have to buy other books.

So Rana, George and I. I fell in love with the kind of narration and narrative and

everything.

And I started to read it in a deeper way and then I started to.

To appreciate better.

And then, I mean, I, I, as I said, I love

philosophy, I love languages.

So Lenormand for me is another like the Tarot,

a peculiar way language lenormand as is another has another level, not better or

worse, but different level of languages where the semantics or the rules or combination of

the symbols are incredibly complex and incredibly fascinating.

When in Tarot is the card that is fascinating because the real meaning, the depth is there

in century, a century of mini specification.

Make every single card like a window opens to

a constellation of meanings.

And this is what I love of Tarot because you can watch them and, and you can do everything

you want.

Think about Calvino, create a full narrative

about it.

The Castle of Cross Destiny.

So it's fascinating.

Exactly. You mentioned Cross Destinies.

And your newest project we just finished on

Kickstarter is called the Tarot of Cross Destinies.

Tell us more about it.

This one hasn't, I mean exists now, right,

because it's printed, but it's not

yet is being printed being printed.

So it's not yet right now.

So it's about in the liminal space between the dreamlike, the dream world, the world of ideas

and the material one.

In that one I wanted to do the next step in the tarot world.

I wanted to bring people inside the card.

And so I did.

For me it was an incredibly, incredibly difficult experiment because I wanted to do

one thing and to achieve it I complicated my life immensely because one, I wanted that

people were able to leave the card inside,

be inside the card and that every card will be connected.

So whatever, two random, whatever random cards you have every single card merge in the other.

So all the designs are connected.

And so I wanted to use a very powerful

metaphor.

The metaphor of architecture and inspiration were Calvino.

Taro is a storytelling.

So I created, I wanted to recreate like the

castle that Calvino for Calvino is just like a background of the story, but you never see.

And so I decided to create,

to transform every Tarot, every card in a room, in a hall, in a corridor, in a dungeon,

in the secret garden, in a tower of the castle.

And so every single card,

when you connect, you can create with the cars infinite architecture of esoterica.

So I think it's just the first level,

the combinatorial part when you create architectures.

But these architectures are like the mirror of our soul.

The castle is like the castle is the spirit of Tarot.

The castle is an entity talking with you through its runes.

And so and you enter into the room because I wanted to delete all the figures so the rooms

are empty.

But something happened.

You see that objects are falling or not just Fell, but falling.

So something was there.

You see shadow of people that is there, but

there is not the people casting the shadow.

There are ghosts, there are bones,

so there are remains of people,

maybe other explorers.

And this.

I did it because I wanted.

The only real person is the reader.

The reader is the one that,

semiotically speaking, is the one that has to bring meaning to the car.

He is the narrator.

And so I wanted to leave a lot of mysteries, a

lot of hidden narratives, a lot of cross references.

But it's incredibly.

I mean, it seems complicated, but it's

incredibly easy because it's visual.

So you don't have to get mad.

There is not right or wrong.

Whatever you think it can be right.

You have to navigate, you have to cross one room to the other, open a door and go to

another dimension.

And honestly, the more I did it.

And then after the Kickstarter campaign, the project exploded again into my mind in such a

way that I have already meeting with Tarot authors and psychologists that give me other

ideas on how to use the castle.

I have people already talking about their life in the metaphor of the castle.

So it's incredibly fascinating.

And I did.

I mean, I realized something, that I achieved my goal.

I wanted to bring people closer to the.

To Tarot, but in a complete different way.

Let them live,

experience them.

Think about one card.

I just give it an example.

The tower.

Usually in the classical representation of the tower, you see a distant tower collapsing

because a lightning is destroying it.

And then you see people falling apart.

In this deck,

we are inside the tower while it's struck and while it's collapsing.

So you see all the cracks forming, all the ceiling, the vaulted ceiling collapsing.

You are inside the tower in this way, the collapse.

And the meaning is not something distant.

You are not like the spectator or something

happening there.

Far in the background.

You are inside the tower.

You are experiencing the fall you're feeling.

And so I wanted to create sustate a sort of panic.

Panic maybe is too much, but let's say the horror of the collapse, the feeling of the

fear of the cracking of the pavement and the collapse of the tower you are inside.

And now I think it will easier to understand the drama of the distant object that it was

represented in other cards.

So congratulations, you just made the tower even more scary than it normally is for most

people.

But I mean.

Yes, but we don't have to be scared about the

tower.

I mean,

I don't think there are negative cards or negative suits in the Tarot.

Everything is there with a purpose.

The tower is there to remind us that a system we believe it can be our moral system values

an idea, a project, something we believe real or possible is just an imagination.

A castle of cars collapsing and of course is not pleasant.

But it's like driving a car, I don't know, 400 km an hour.

If you don't crash,

I mean, it's better that you brake the engine and then you stop instead of crashing at the

last moment and die there.

The role of the tower is this one is to break the engines before you crash.

So it's important.

So it's negative.

I mean, what we call negative.

Negative is what we don't want, what we don't want to face what is opposite of what we wish

to happen.

But if you think about another philosophical system, think about Buddhism.

Everything we call negativity, the sorrow of the accident of life or something is something

that happens to remind us that we are on the wrong path.

Then maybe we have to change something in life.

So yes, I mean, like you always have pain in your back.

Well, maybe your posture when you're at the desk.

Problems I have.

Often you have to sit in a different way.

If you didn't have the pain, we will not correct the posture.

If you don't burn when you feel the pain of the burning when you put your hand in the

fire, you will live in that and you just roast your hand.

So it's necessary.

Of course we don't want to feel it, but it's

necessary.

It's part of the way we are built.

So it's useless to refuse the tower or refuse the swords because oh my God, it's a sword.

Oh my God, it's a tower.

No. Open your eyes and open your heart.

Open your mind and upset what the cards are telling you.

I love it.

I absolutely love your explanation of that.

Just.

I really.

I really do.

It also reminds me my teacher, Lindsay Mack,

Tarot teacher.

Who am I?

I just feel like I'm mentioning in every episode has this saying that.

No, that all cards are.

They are not doing anything to you.

They are for.

They are for you rather than to you.

And.

And that's.

Yeah, it's exactly what you said about the

tower.

And.

But yeah, it's a. It's a. Because lots of people are scared of it.

Like I.

More so than that.

Like, I think I'm.

I don't want to speak for everyone, but I feel like it's easier to understand the card of

death as something ending.

Not necessarily really dying, but something

ending which may Be painful, maybe sad, but it's necessary to end and to compost.

But Towers seems to be like, oh my God, it's gonna ****.

It's gonna hit the fun.

Yeah.

And we don't like that.

No, I understand even because if you think many people won't go to a tarot reader or read

tarot when they want to know the outcome of something, if an idea on a situation.

We are humans.

We need to be consoled, comforted.

It's part.

I mean, who doesn't like to in.

In the wake of a big project or not, and everything will be fine.

Maybe the cards are giving.

Giving us the strength to believe in ourselves

and do what is necessary to do.

So I don't judge.

I don't like using cards for prediction.

So in divination, divinatory way.

But sometimes I do.

I mean, I'm human.

I my flow.

I am my.

I'm human.

It's normal.

But if you use the card in a psychological

way, as a mirror of the soul, like instead of asking yourself,

will this project be good? But ask what I can do to make this project

bigger? Or what is the part that I don't see of this

projective relationship, whatever it is the issue,

then you can go further and then you can.

There are exercises in tarot that you can do

with your friends, and I absolutely love it.

Like instead of thinking about the meaning of a card,

think about something that is important to you at that moment.

You have a question, you have a sorrow, whatever it is.

But you have to be with a friends because alone is more difficult to do.

You can do it, but it's incredibly, incredibly tough.

You draw a card and then you start saying the first thing that comes into your mind.

The feelings.

How do you feel in front of the car?

Not what is the meaning of the car, but what the card means to you, what the cards talks to

you.

And you realize that different cards at the same cars will tell you different things in

different situation.

And then you ask your friends to tell you what

they think about that card.

Oh, they are there to pose the question that you don't dare to ask yourself.

Like, I don't know, you draw the devil and you say, oh my God, I'm changed to a situation.

The role of the friends is why you said in the first instance that you are changed.

Why you read the tarot as a table, as a change.

Analyze that, go deeper in the connection that you created in your mind within the card, the

card, the meanings and the concept in your mind.

And if you Go there, you can explore your psyche.

You can go really, really deep.

You can even do it alone, but it's difficult.

You can journal.

And this is important too because it's a process of self discovery.

And then when you read back what you write, you can detach from what you have written like

it was another person writing it.

And you can understand better yourself.

I mean, tarot is important.

Think about what they use.

That a great psychologist like Carl Gustin

Jung was doing of time.

He connected the tarot to archetypes.

He was the first one to do something like that is interesting, is intriguing.

So this is the way I prefer to use tarot.

But I don't condemn other use.

I mean you can use it even to create a story

and it's fantastic.

You say, okay, the first card is the main

character.

The second card is something that happened or

whatever and you start to create a story and you can create.

Challenge your friend to create different story with the same set of cards.

And it would be fun.

Why not?

I mean,

yeah,

Tarot has so much symbolism in each card has so much symbolism that you can create a story

pretty much from one card.

Honestly, it's just so much happening and it's

different.

That's true.

It's so different to Lenormand.

And I was thinking I just liked in one way, I liked the simplicity of Lenormand, but I

didn't.

When I read some other book and then I read your book with ghastly Lenormand and I

thought, yeah, well, I, I get it, but isn't it going to be too simplistic?

As in like it's like about very particular things.

And then a friend of mine read for me from your gasoline, Norman, but just 36 traditional

cards without your ones.

She did a grand tableau and it was so amazing.

It was just so much.

I mean I knew the theory because I read how to do it,

but only when someone who is experienced in this did it and could tell from the position

of this card so much so many different stories from things that on paper look like.

Well, you're just talking about, you know, there is a message coming.

There's a message about something positive.

It's like you think, oh well, that's very

simple.

And then when it's so many cards

together and you read them in particular order depending on like where you are and was like,

oh my God, it can.

It was such a wonderful story.

I think I have to.

To actually invite her for podcast podcast to act to like do this live to Just show.

Because I don't think people.

I mean, maybe it's just me, but I have a

feeling it's.

It's not only me.

Even unless you experience that you just.

I have the same feeling with Elenor man when I started.

But I think compared to Tarot is simple.

But it's not.

I think the usual approach that we have on tarot on.

On. On let's say 90 all the books that I read.

So maybe there are books that I have not read that I have.

The pros that I would like to have is like this card means that.

And there is not an explanation on why.

A reason why this is the meaning of the card.

It's just traditional tradition means that

this is the reason why I've been collecting ideas and everything.

And now I've started to write a book that are completely different approach.

Instead of telling you what is the meaning of a card, I wanted to connect the reason why.

I want to study the meaning of the cards from an historical perspective.

Artistic point of view, psychological point of view.

I mean opening the cards in a complete different ways,

using different techniques to show how the tool can be incredibly more intriguing.

In such a way you navigate a plethora or a set of possibilities and you can mix and you can

give something.

What I would like to do is give people tools to read tarot instead of giving readings.

Like the devil means that no, I give you the tool to read the tarot in certain way.

So you can.

Not that you can do whatever you want, but in

such a way that you can use it and have a meaning.

It depends on the use that you want to give to a tarot deck.

You have different rules, so prediction.

Okay,

psychology.

Then there is other things.

And I wanted to use all my study of philosophy

of Lange and semiotics and put everything together in an easy way, but in a very.

In a very.

I want to say deep but easy to understand.

Because I think it is an approach that is missing in Tarot.

I don't like every time people say the meaning of this is that.

The meaning of this is that yes and not we can go far beyond.

This is just like the tip of the iceberg.

Then we have everything submerged and you

leave it there.

But again, many people that read Tarot and are doing more for business and so it's completely

different.

I don't want to say that if you do it for

business, you don't do it properly,

but it depends.

I know people that are incredibly professional

and I know people that are doing just for money.

So they don't.

They don't care that much about the meaning.

They say what they need to say to hook the client.

Think about.

I think every one of us.

I mean in Italy is very widespread,

very.

Let's say bad quality channel on TV television.

And you see public readers of Tarot is absolutely disgusting.

It's horrible what they are doing.

They are scamming people.

I mean, sorry, this is the reality.

I know professional tarot readers that do

something absolutely amazing.

Try to help others and other one just to scam.

I mean, if someone tell you that maybe in three years we'll find the prince charms in a

black horse.

Well,

maybe you have to doubt it the reading.

Absolutely. But yeah, that's.

Yeah. Daytime television on bad channels on

like I. Yeah, I remember channels like that from 1990s in Poland.

Like those cable TV channels.

That was a lot of that

very horrible reading.

We're very crazy woman.

Every time there was just a stereotypical tarot reader.

They wanted you finding.

I don't know, in a comic books or something

like that.

Absolutely crazy.

Sometimes screaming doing.

I mean for me the occult is very serious.

And this is the reason why I created a

magazine about the occult.

But the occult is even appropriate.

Is a lot of time appropriated by people.

The only goals is to scam others to sell things to make money off.

That is not like researching, study.

Try to understand the reason why things are in the way they are.

Or just study think about the ghost is you find people that talk with that and they are

doing in a very suspicious way.

And there are people that are doing it that try to do any or maybe manage to do it because

they are curious.

Because there is a necessity there.

Because there is a possibility they want to explore and see if it's possible.

I mean, I don't know.

I always leave the door open.

But I like analyze things in a more.

I don't want to say scientific way, but in a

more logical structure way.

And this is interesting.

I mean for me it's interesting.

Then it can be body for someone else.

And no, of course that if you are a mother, you just lost the son you want to not and

everything is okay.

And there is nothing absolutely wrong in that.

I mean, I'm not judging that.

But if this person is asking you thousands of thousands of pound then there is a big

problem.

There was a scam in Italy when I don't want to mention the woman.

I don't want to do advertising.

But it was absolutely disgusting.

She was hooking people like that.

And Then started to say if you don't pay me £10,000, if you're going to give me your

house,

I will not able to protect from the evil eye or something something bad you, you will see

your children die because I'm here not to protect you.

And this person was so scared that you know, and then this is proper criminal.

This is a proper criminal exposure really

wanting to tell it but she didn't lost her money.

So this is horrible.

I think they should deprive or everything she

did in this way.

But anyway we have to pay attention of not what we do, but how the reason why we do

things like that.

It is the reason why I love the Psychic College of London because it's one of the

most.

The oldest institutions, if not the oldest for

the study of psychics studies phenomenon in let's say try in a scientific way.

Try to understand if it's very Victorian, try to analyze the electricity in here.

If there are ghosts or something like that.

But it's fun then.

I mean I love, I mean I have a lot of ghost stories.

This is the reason why I speak about ghosts because it's one of the things that many

people all believe or don't believe.

But if you ask me if you believe or don't

believe, I say I leave the door open.

I don't know.

I'm not leave the possibility open because it

depends.

I heard ghost stories that I mean no, it's

impossible to believe.

I mean they're no, it is clearly not real.

They are fiction.

But there are other stories.

They're absolutely incredible.

And I lived stories like that.

I mean I witnessed them.

So it's completely different is you have to pay attention.

It's just that.

And it's often I think far more subtle than,

than like you know, the ghost.

The stories would are very often dramatic.

The fake ones are very dramatic.

But actually I, I, I think it's.

There is a lot of subtlety.

I. Since my dad passed away six, six years ago, seven years ago.

I do experience his help and I really genuinely feel like he is with me but like

helps me in situations that he would have helped me if he was alive in the same way.

And the things get solved simple little things sometimes in a way that I still don't

understand.

Like when I almost accidentally ran over my

own dog and I didn't nothing happened to him.

And I still, I don't like talking about it because I get very stressed.

Although it ended well,

but I still don't understand how considering where the dog was and how I drove where.

I drove where the cow was.

I don't understand how he wasn't injured.

And I just genuinely feel like in situations like that, that there was.

That that was my.

My dad's help in.

And I. I do feel it.

I do feel it.

Before I didn't.

It's not.

I didn't.

I. I don't think I thought about it.

Do I believe in it or.

I don't.

But I never experienced anything.

And I heard stories about.

Especially about animals feeling the presence of people.

And my previous dog,

she.

She had a lot of problems.

Emotional and like incredibly sound, sensitive and really, she.

It felt like she was seeing things that no one else saw.

And I think, you know, maybe she did.

Yeah, exactly.

But then at the end, we have to think about

it.

Is the reason.

I think this is the reason why I keep.

I mean, I made the concept of magic my job as an artist.

I mean, because the magic,

as I defy it on the magic of the childhood theater, on tarot or whatever.

Because in all the depth of the meaning of magic.

Because imagine every time believing only in things that you can prove.

You can see, you can feel, you can taste.

The life is incredibly boring.

But then even.

Not even science is like that.

We have a concept of science and it's

completely wrong.

If you think with.

If you talk with an astrophysician, if you talk with people to study the world of

particles,

you see how all the problems of the electrons that are here and there and everywhere there

are ubiquitous.

I mean, there are lots of problems there.

Now, I'm oversimplifying, but you see that there are things that we cannot explain.

And this doesn't mean that science is failed.

It means that our world is more complex than

we think.

So keeping an open mind without being completely gullible, this is incredibly

important.

Because otherwise, you know,

it's a very tricky situation because we live in a period when we are people to believe that

the heart is flat.

I think it's a big heresy.

I think this is a big mistake.

I don't want to justify this kind of stuff.

This is negative.

It's going back to the Middle Ages is not

helping anyone is stupid or people that don't believe in vaccination for complex theory.

I'm sorry, but if you think about Catherine the Great,

she was the first monarch that gave her body for the polio, for the vaccination.

I think it was the polio.

I don't want to be mistaken, but it was a

vaccination.

And no one Wanted to dare to do it because it was risky.

She was an enlightened mind.

We have to progress, not to go back.

But the problem is that we don't have to progress, just only with science, with

technology, but even with spirituality.

And I think we are incredibly back.

We are still aggressive, we are still doing world.

We are not progressing.

The progression is a fake.

Our science, our technology are progressing.

But if you talk with the classical current,

I don't see many, I mean, I don't see even the scientific progression in ideas.

And I think we have to rethink our society in such a way that we can be better version of

ourselves, but not just few.

All of us is important because otherwise we

become human waste.

And it's very sad to say something like that.

I don't say judging,

but we,

me, you, every one of us are running into the risk to waste our human potential,

not to do with our life we were supposed to do.

And when I say what we are supposed to do, I don't want to be religious or mystical, but

every one of us has incredible potentiality.

Are we using it sometimes? Not because we have to pay the bills.

And this is wrong.

If we are killing our potentiality because we

have to do something to pay the bills, we are wasting our time.

If society force us and make incredibly difficult to do something different.

This means that our society is wrong.

So this is why I'm talking about magic.

This is why I'm creating tarot.

This is why I create animation in the way I do, to try to communicate in this way, to make

people dream.

I don't want to be too long in that.

Sorry, I don't want to bore you, but I

remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine once we were, you

know, we were post university,

we met and out of the blue this friend of mine said, do you realize, Andrea, that all of us,

you are the happiest.

I said, what?

I have my problems.

I never considered me happy to you.

What are you talking about?

And he said, no, no, no, I didn't want to say that.

I said I stopped dreaming because now I am a father and I have responsibilities.

I was shocked and I said,

well, yes, you're a father, you have responsibilities.

But this doesn't have to prevent you to dream.

You have to dream and transfer the ability of dreaming to your children.

Otherwise what kind of father you will be? You will be like mine.

That I mean, no, pay attention to what you do.

We can never stop dreaming.

And I'm incredibly I mean, unfortunately, I hated my father because he made me suffer a

lot.

That. I mean, I'm a gay man.

So imagine when it's.

It was not easy growing as a gay kid with an teenager, with a father that decided to crush

everything that is not heterosexual in macho man and patriarchy.

I guess from the time he was growing up, that is a bit of a toxic masculinity from like

Italian traditional.

Yeah. Yes. But you know, I have to stop you here before I understood why he was in the way

he was.

But we cannot use the history to justify.

We can use the history, the psychology, the

personal history, I mean, to understand,

but not to justify.

Because how many challenge you have to face, how many sorrow.

Every challenge can test you to be a better woman on a worst woman.

But you.

I hope you are a better woman, Ted.

Before the challenge.

So, I mean, I.

With all the sufferings that I receive as a gay kid,

I could have been a monster, a stubborn man, or completely negative,

nihilistic or whatever.

I became a dreamer.

I became a. I tried to build something positive of the negative that happened to me.

And on the contrary,

my father didn't build the step.

He suffered from what he suffered.

And you repeat the cycle, breaking it.

That's unfortunately really common.

Instead of trying to change, we just repeat.

Now some people do just get stuck.

We have that responsibilities.

I mean, we are here to do what?

To try to fulfill our potential, to be better, to know as much as possible.

I mean, to be curious, to explore.

And this is the reason why I said at the beginning that I always bring with me are a

destined.

That is the anagram of my name, by the way.

And few people realize it, but this is myself transplanted in a character, in a fictional

character.

And it's not me.

This is what I want to be.

This is the reminder I would like to live

every day.

It's difficult, but this is my reminder to explore life, to taste something new every

day, to do something different,

to explore, to enjoy life with curiosity.

Like a child, like always be a child.

A kid is always curious about the new things.

To hate about the new film, about a new toy,

about the new travel.

I will lose that.

And it's a story.

I mean, I'm sorry for that.

I. I haven't.

Sometimes I do.

And this is the reason why I. I do what I do.

Try to remind myself to never give up,

never to kill the kid.

I think all kids like art,

like art and music.

All kids sing and draw.

And until we get told, some of us Some of us are more talented and get told, well, you

should, you should.

You should keep doing it.

You should be an artist.

And the majority gets told, nah, it's not, It's.

You're not gonna.

You're not gonna go far with that in terms of.

Go far as in, it's not gonna be your job in future because you're not good enough.

So just stop doing that.

And I think this is.

This.

I mean, I don't know if it's still like that,

but I think it used to be people were not encouraged in school and by the parents unless

they were really talented.

We're not really encouraged to continue with art.

And we just stopped.

I mean,

I think it's still the same.

The problem is the talent.

You define the talent.

I mean, we define the talent following what is

the mainstream now.

So to be a talented artist, you have to paint

in a certain way.

But think about Basquiat, think about Picasso.

Are they talented?

Yes, they were talented, but they crack and destroy the talent to build this personal

expression.

So how dare you to say a kid that is not

talented?

Yeah, King is talent talented.

He's not talented.

Everyone is talented.

If you.

I don't want to say if you push it, but if you encourage him to.

I don't know, to dance, to.

Do every one of us love something more than others?

Someone that like music, someone like more dancing, someone like more drawing.

I mean,

I don't say push it, but give it.

Give them the tools to explore the curiosity

above all what they are.

Kid,

you have to bring, I mean, to give it the most stimulus possible.

Bring it to a science museum, to a film, to.

To a ballet, to.

To a musical.

Let them see the world, the differences of the

world.

Let them choose.

Let give them the possibility to be what they want.

Because this is the end.

You don't have to say to give a kids the rules to be happy, because this is your rules.

Not.

They are not their rules.

You have to give the tools to build their own happiness, their own life,

their own love,

try to give the tools to be better humans that we are.

This is.

I mean, otherwise, what is the progression of

humanity? There is nothing.

True.

So that would be a perfect place to finish.

But I want to ask you one more thing about

your magazine, the Discombobulator.

Can you tell us more about the magazine you are the creator and the editor of?

Absolutely.

It was a big dream of mine for a lot of time.

And then one day I decided to invest my energy resources and create the first coffee table

MAGAZINE OF THE OCCULT So I wanted to talk about the occult from a philosophical,

anthropological, historical point of view in an accessible way,

but deep.

So you have deep article with big pictures, a lot of illustrations.

I mean, the beauty for me,

the beauty of the magazine, the quality of the paper, the quality of the printing, it was

absolutely pivotal.

So there is the aesthetic aspect and the

content aspect.

The present, for me,

beauty of the aesthetic has to be the form, the shape,

where you present to the public the depth of a content,

so they have to dialogue.

So I don't have very little or very bad pictures on everything.

The quality is very high.

The Discombobulator is called like that because to discombobulate is to surprise is to

shock.

But in a nice ironical way,

because what I wanted to do with the Discombabulator, that is the esoteric magazine

of the unseen and the unexpected,

is to give people food for the curious mind.

Show the beauty of the occult,

try to go deeper and deeper.

And so how amazing, how complex and marvelous

at the same time.

Easy is the world of the occult.

So the tower the tradition and try to give people more than just the usual spread to know

if your husband is cheating on you.

Because at the end you find a lot of magazine about esoterica that are very, very shallow,

very direct, but very unexpiring.

I wanted to collect the most brilliant mind in the esoteric world from Tarot, creator,

historian.

People that write about are called occultists.

And I put them together.

So the magazine is printed only twice a year.

It is big because it's 72 pages,

is big because A4 format.

So it is a big magazine,

but it's having lots and lots of success and is growing.

Now I'm in the phase of printing the number one issue.

Number one after the number zero.

We presented the number zero at the College of Psychic Studies.

It was an incredibly great success, where people coming from all over the world.

And when I say all over the world, I mean Japan, Thailand,

Australia,

England, the Americas, Europe came to talk about something that connect us,

our love and passion for the esoteric world.

We wanted to know more, to go deeper, to

explore this uncharted land in a very nice and professional way.

And I think we are doing very well.

I mean, it's incredible the way people love

it,

the emails we receive.

And now the.

The magazine has been nominated for the Tabby Cart Award.

So it's an important recognition.

I'm incredibly happy.

Think about that.

May.

I mean, museums, the Tokyo Tarot Museum are selling our magazine.

The director wanted to write in the magazine.

He's writing amazing article connecting Tarot

with the Japanese philosophy.

Because the idea behind the magazine is every

culture in the world have esoteric aspect.

Occult is defining us as human being.

Like every culture,

everyone is artistic, an artistic expression.

Occultism is another expression of us as

human.

So I wanted to connect the esoteric panorama of the world in a unique magazine.

So articles coming from Africa for people that is there in the culture from Japan, from

Thailand to China, America, South America, Europe.

Connecting everyone with their tradition.

So is incredibly, incredibly intriguing, incredibly amazing.

And allow me to meet absolutely fantastic and splendiferous mind.

I'm very happy.

It's a lot of job because as you said, I'm

alone doing it.

So all the illustration, the editing, did the printing process.

I mean batties.

I will never give up the magazine.

I mean,

it's amazing.

It's a process that is amazing and is growing

now the first issue has even element of multimedia because I embedded in the.

In the article QR code.

And you can listen music,

follow meditation,

listen to debate.

We are.

I don't want to say.

Well, we are.

I call.

We call it.

It a velvet revolution because it's a soft

revolution in the world of esoterica.

We wanted to say more and differently.

Usually if you open a esoteric magazine, it's just a lot of advertising.

We don't have advertising a lot at all.

I mean,

and it's just article they are promoting your services or Tarot.

You find old articles about Tarot deck published by big publishers.

From the moment I started with the Discombabulator, I said, I will never talk

about a deck that is published by a big publisher unless it's really important.

I mean, for this quality, for this not just for the artistic aspect.

And we wanted to talk with people that is usually misrepresented or not represented at

all.

Independent thinker, independent artist.

We want to give a voice to people that a voice doesn't have because.

Because the magazine think about the mainstream.

We don't want to talk about something that is mainstream.

We wanted to talk about the beauty of the occult in his essence, in his depth, in his

philosophical or magical aspect.

So.

And it's impressive.

I mean, I can't believe that you are doing all

this like illustration and producing and writing on your.

I mean, you have obviously commission articles, but the whole process of production

of the magazine on your own.

Because I was my first job years ago after graduating from university.

I worked for a theater magazine which kind of looked similar in terms of.

You know the outcome of how it looks.

And there was like 14 people working on it.

So I know the technology changed a bit since then.

It is a bit easier to do some things quicker, like in terms of even.

Even creating the layouts and things like that.

But still,

I mean, it's so much.

I. I think that promotion is now difficult

than it used to be, for example.

So it's crazy.

I would like to have more people.

I mean more people.

I have people helping me because more people.

I mean, it's just me.

So yes.

More people in anyway.

Yes.

What make this magazine even more complex to build is that every single there is not a

graphic grid,

a graphic style.

Every article reflect in the font, in the

illustration, in everything, the meaning, the essence of the article.

So in the next issue there is an amazing article written by Silvia o'.

Donovan.

So Fairy Light Tarot that is about the

censorship in the world of Tarot because it's something that people don't think about.

But if you want to be published by a publisher, you cannot have.

Have a lot of stuff happening in the Tarot deck.

And I think is a negative approach.

So it's a very deep article.

But the article is organized like a CI

document dossier with part of the writing is deleted in black.

You see in transparency.

It's like a report secret with all the photos,

all these deck table censor before the censorship.

So it's like opening a secret to secret.

Yeah.

And I like that.

And there are lots of every single article.

His own font, his own illustration, his own

spirit.

So it's incredibly long to do and is the reason why I do just to issue a year.

But I think,

I mean then it's expensive to print and everything.

I have to have advertising, so is my resources and.

But I wanted to do something really, really special and give people something that I think

has never seen before.

Oh at least I never have a magazine like that

and I dream of it.

My point of reference, if you buy Archaeology magazine or Art magazine, that was the.

The point my inspiration, the point I want to reach.

And I'm happy.

I mean,

yeah, it is.

It is an incredibly, incredibly incredible in its content, but also in the way it looks.

And yeah, do recommend everyone want to buy it and read it.

I have it in my shop and you.

I know that also like for example in Tarot Museum in Tokyo and in many other places

people can buy it and also directly from you.

Yes, Yep, absolutely.

Yes.

So can you.

Can you tell us where people can find you?

Because you also have substack you know, lots of things you haven't talked about yet.

But what's.

Isaac, if someone wants to follow you to see

those beautiful things we are talking about, where is the best place?

Place.

Okay, they can go on, let's say my website.

So andreas.co.uk then, then, then the website is connected to the shop, so you can see all

the pictures, the video and everything, or every single product and book and things I

created.

So it's there because the website is more philosophical and more artistic.

But then if you see practical things, you go to the shop and you have everything.

Then you can follow me on Facebook, on Instagram and on Substack if you want to know

more about my creative process,

the path that are not taken, the experiment, the deep philosophy of things, my connection,

my experience of the references of the person, the books, the things that, the ideas that

inspire me to create what I create.

I always share everything on substack because I think that one of the most important thing

an artist can do is share his technique, share his process,

dialogue about it.

Art is a dialogue.

I never believe in keeping secrets.

The references, the technique and everything.

No, we are here to share, to experience,

to.

To learn.

If no one share, no one can learn, no one can

do anything.

So.

And it's free, so it's beautiful.

Yeah, it's.

It's a lot.

I mean, I don't know how when you have time to write all those articles as well for Substack

on top of everything else you're doing, because they are very deep and it's absolutely

lovely.

All the links.

I. I will put all the L in a show notes so

people can click and find you.

So thank you very, very much.

It was a wonderful conversation.

I just.