Tarot in the Land of Mystereum:
An Interview with J. Jordan Hoggard
(c) Cheryl Lynne Bradley 2011

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Cheryl: What was the inspiration for your Tarot deck and book?

Jordan: Architecture was initially the form-giver for The Land of Mystereum. My visual language of divination blooming was the inspiration. I was digging around an orange tiger lily in my garden in 2005, and the Magician from the RWS, the pic on the box, came to mind. At the same time the word architecture came to mind with its Greek roots of "arche" (arkay) and "techne" (teknay). The Magician. Arche. Techne. All 3 hanging out around the flower like hovering hummingbird bees of ideation components. I looked at the flower, and there the inspiration was, "Decks aren't resonating with me, and that’s my gig. I am sight reading them which is great, but something is missing . . . Something is missing. What is missing is how I TELL this visual story, how I DIVINE the images. THAT's what's missing. My language of Tarot.” Then it happened. I saw the arche of architecture as The Magician, the original inception, the formless idea coming into being, 1st-sparking to . . . . And, the techne of architecture, the making, the putting together, giving form to the formless. . .idea. . .as The High Priestess! The High Priestess giving form to the formless! The deck began blooming right there! I jumped up and ran in to my office with my muddy fingers, fired up the computer, and sitting there with my own Tarot bloom in my mind, said out loud, "I have 3 years to do this. It's called The Mysterium Coniunctionis Tarot" after Carl Jung's study of the mystery of the conjunction of the opposites. I’m a geek for the integrated opposites of antinomy. And, that started a 3 year process, which, going through title and form iterations became the self-published Mystereum Tarot with a 48-page little white book IN MY HANDS on May 5, 2008. The now 192-page Imagination Primer book that comes with the Schiffer published package was inspired after I completed the self-published version as a tool for Tarot voice and for opening people up to what I now call Imagin-Action, using your imagination with Tarot effectively in personal and business situations, any situation, as a vital tool for building quality from start to finish.

So, architecture was the original form-giver of Mystereum. But, like in theater, the warm-up isn’t often part of the performance. The architecture sloughed off as the curtain of my Mag-High Priestess duo of inspiration opened up and tracked through each card as if creating them for the first time right there. Canned air kinda help clean out the keyboard that evening. Kinda.

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Cheryl: I often say that the future of Tarot is built upon its past and that it is the most flexible divination tool. Do you feel your deck is true to the traditions of Tarot while still being innovative and progressive? How so or How not so?

Jordan: My deck is true to the Tarot tradition of 78 cards composed of 22 Major Arcana with 4 suits, each one working with Fire, Water, Air, or Earth -- Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles. That tradition provides a hidden structure like your skeleton. You don't see your skeleton, but you use it all the time. And, that use is the basis of the tradition on which Mystereum is based. The tradition on which Mystereum is based is the presence of divination naturally present. in focused creativity and experience.

At 4 1/2 years old the cards told me stories. No books, no LWB, I began reading Tarot by reading the cards. I began reading Tarot by literally READING Tarot (cards). I find the traditions and systems I have experienced after opening up to myself teaching myself to be like alphabets of different languages, syntaxes and tenses and differing modes of expression of basically the same thing. . .Tarot. . .which is to say Divination. Divination is that hidden skeleton of structure in Tarot from my perspective.

And, the over-arching traditions generating The Land of Mystereum are my lifelong play with architecture as a discipline and creative exercise of structure in form, and archetype as a divinatory experience of the structure and presence of the formless as a catalyst.

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Cheryl: What is your work schedule like when you're creating?

Jordan: My creative work schedule is very simple. I call it Butt In The Chair. I set a standing meeting every day from 2p to 5p. Monday through Friday, my butt's in the chair working on the project. Working sometimes equates to a dreamy catatonia staring into a blank screen or out the window. . .or being rebellious while following my own rules and taking my chair out to the garden and planting my butt there. Carrying the chair still on my butt is probably a little slapstick. No neighbors to my knowledge got a pic, though. On Saturday and Sunday, there's weekend stuff. Friends, bbqs, get-togethers. My Butt In The Chair for those 3 hour time-slots on the weekend equates to forgetting what I am creating, and if it seems to begin to play out in situations, letting it. The Saturday and Sunday are like 2 days off where I take a bunch of mental post-it notes for those 3 hours each day. But, at 5p regardless, TIMES UP! And, I stop. If something is SO brilliant, it'll come back later. And, if I forget some of those post-it notes or all of them? Good Good. That was the weekend cleaning the air filter so to speak.

I value punctuality for myself, even with my ideas, or rather especially with my ideas. I do not feel we are helpless to the universe in that regard. I also value the ideas that only saunter in after long periods of disciplined work. It is a lot like "no-one generally runs a marathon by jumping up and doing it having never run." I would say from my perspective, that generally, creative projects are not brought to fruition without training similar to that of running a marathon. And, creativity is its own brand of marathon that I wholeheartedly dig! And, I get a chuckle about valuing punctuality with my ideas. I had a boss about 15 years ago who laughed that under a new deadline thrown on my desk amongst the others I would put both palms on my desk and turn my head up slightly to the right and glare out of one eye. He laughed that it looked like I was a one-eyed pirate threatening the cosmos or my muse with an “uh HEM, I’m waiting, like my eye was a scope.” Hey, squeaky wheel can sometimes get the grease, huh? LOL. Really, I feel two things about that. It was me switching gears to a wholly new focus + me looking at the art in the museum that is what is referred to as the other side. 15 or so minutes later he would walk back by and without looking up I would lift up a drawing or two and he qould quip, “Now, where did this come from?” Smiling, “If that’s what you didn’t know you were after, print it.” He would smilingly nod his head. That was a pretty cool environment to be in . . . back then.

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Cheryl: Do you enjoy the creative process?

Jordan: Yes! The "creative process" can be effectively substituted with the word "life" from my perspective. Creativity is both a mirror and a portal into and through myself and the world around me in the form of a sandbox. Watch a tiger with her cubs. I believe there can be expert skill expressed in play. That sweeping them off their feet thing she does? That may involve a deer and dinner a year later.

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Cheryl: Do you have a background in art, design or writing?

Jordan: My formal training at university was in Architecture. I took a 5-year professional degree in Architecture. Upon graduation I promptly decided to paint for the next 5 years, and I had never painted before. During that time I discovered Carl Jung, Mary Louise von Franz, Friedrich Nietzche, and Harold, Harold and the Purple Crayon. Carl and Mary and Fred and Harold played their quartet as I painted, weaving a fabric for me to also begin to write about my experiences, both inner and outer, in earnest. . . and where I realized I was nuts in a really rockin' way.

I also grew up in a university setting experiencing Art, the English and Languages Departments, and the associated pranks and hijinks.

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Cheryl: What do you like to do when you're not creating?

Jordan: I have never experienced that. Ideas to me are like spark plugs in a car that's turned on. I don't ever not have them. Even in silence of mind I find inspiration and am creating. Even during the post partum phase of rest after completing a large project. . .my mind is still working things out. I keep in mind to never stay in a single gear and whine-rev burn it out, though. Life is a lot like driving to me that way, a lot of race car driving in regard to creativity. It’s a real blast, and the track is always refreshing itself anew. Maybe I simply have a direct line driven by my body’s cell replacement pace.

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Cheryl: What card(s) in your deck do you feel the greatest kinship to?

Jordan: The card back, Temperance, The World, The Empress, and The Hanged Man. Also, all 4 nines in the pips. The 9's play such a dynamic, always complete never finished tune for me that closely expresses creativity folding over itself continually for me always in process, always completing, never finished. In fact that statement is one thing that synopsizes my process. “Always complete, never finished.” I said it in my sleep camping with a friend. Which reminds me, I’m pretty sure I still keep working in my dreams. Glad I like what I do.

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Cheryl: What card(s) in your deck were the most difficult to create?

Jordan: The Hermit, and Temperance. The Hermit is the only card I ended up printing out and drawing over to get the robes right. Something wasn't being touch-tailored on the screen with the flow of the robe. One good and quick mess with a pen fixed that. Temperance, I saved for last. It seemed to stab me in the gut. An unknown mascot? An unknown leader? I am also a hobbyist astrologer. When I overlayed astrology and Tarot with one another, I realized that Temperance rules Sagittarius which is my sun sign. Who didn’t know that?! Me! Call it the 27th letter. Not really important for language so to speak. So, with a “cool there’s always still more” grin, I simply let Temperance head back out into orbit and planned on doing it one season plus-minus after I completed the rest. I completed the rest of the cards, so I thought, in April of 2007, and planned to do the Temperance card in one start-to-finish charrette on the Summer Solstice. It was to be an all day affair. That was a great day! I stood up upon completing it, fists victoriously pumping in the air dancing around "I'm done! I'm done!". . .and then stopped, laughingly a little deflated as I sat back down in my chair. . .Hmmm. . .Nope, I’m not done. I still need to do the card back. So, I took myself to dinner, and came back and did the card back that same evening. The card back is really my favorite card, and it took substantially less time than any of the others. Showing your work so to speak can be important, though I have never thought that showing the blood, sweat, tears, and time it took to produce anything to justify it or give it more value. Things stand on their own even if they took 5 minutes. The card back took at least 3 times that. ;-D And, I am not bragging on that, more making a point. When you don’t distract yourself with everything you shouldn’t or won’t do, and look straight in to develop what you ARE going to do, there is some intense workability in that. Things can take as little time as drawing them continuously start to finish. . . a lot like racing a car on a road that you have never been on. . .I call it sight-reading creativity. I gather it may be different for each and everyone out there. I wonder, though, if it is different in an “all similar, each unique” way. . . like expressing archetypes.

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Cheryl: If you had to choose, which Tarot writer or deck creator would you consider a mentor?

Jordan: Myself and my garden, Harold and Milo -- of Harold and the Purple Crayon and The Phantom Tollbooth. Again, I did my first reading out of nowhere at age 4 ½ so I honestly cannot play the homage game believably. I call the universe my mentor, and amazing friends all take over that role here and there. My research for the deck was a forgetting or brainwashing process, literally a brain washing. I did not allow myself to look at or read anything about Tarot during those 3 years of the original deck/book creation, and honestly prior to that I think I had only read Jung and Tarot which is of course not by Jung--and ironically he did not do much with Tarot in his work. I was a pretty hard-ass boss about not experiencing others' Tarot work, too, even looking away from any allegorical sculptures or images as I would start to read them, and as they were not of my making, I saw them as pollutants during the creative process. Divination was to be by divination. I had had enough of others' perspectives, and it was a time to "Just Say It, Man!" I love the Tarot community. Deck creation was more of a personal initiation, the Tarot child becoming the Tarot man so to speak. So, I thrust myself out into the desert, more a lush jungle, of my creativity without even a machete. Now, I am a Tarot slut, though. I will read most anything, and I love sight-reading decks, so I am glad others are making their own. I see and feel others' work more clearly after emancipating my own Tarot voice, and am more comfortable in general.

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Cheryl: Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members.

Jordan: I really was working in a Tarot vacuum until I finished the deck and had it in hand in May of 2008. After I self-published I found the Denver Tarot Geeks, Ruth Ann & Wald Amberstone and The Tarot School, and Readers Studio which I attended in 2009. At that point the Tarot community I began meeting became my Tribe. Oh, and you used the word entity. I call Self "Chthonic Numinosity, antinomies of integrated inner opposites." My sense of Chthonic Numinosity could be an entity, but you said outside of family member. ;-D So, after self-publishing Mystereum in 2008, and attending Readers Studio 2009 (RS09). I received a deal with Schiffer Publishing at RS09, and shortly after I started re-working the book, about 30 pages in, the Imagination Primer idea of the cards literally speaking in the book came to me. I had general personal and community support from my Tarot community friends, and I am pretty sure that to a degree the initial 48-page LWB being catalyzed into an Imagination Primer was opened up from their loving support and 2-way street enthusiasm.

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Cheryl: What does your family think of your Tarot endeavour?

Jordan: My Mom is a great supporter and champion of my Tarot work. She penned, "Mystereum! Tarot for the 21st Century!" that summer of 2008 when I self-published. Though the rest of my family is not so into Tarot, they have expressed a respect the images as a series of paintings.

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Cheryl: How did you come up with the title? What media did you use for the artwork on the Tarot deck?

Jordan: This is a great question. As I mentioned the title was originally The Mysterium Coniunctionis Tarot as an homage to Carl Jung's work with the phenomenology of Self of which I was wholly immersed in the 90's. The "ium" ending, though, began to feel a bit stuffy, and Mystereum with the "eum" sounded more like OM, really resonated more vigorously. Sounded better, and it felt that catchier in this sense more attuned to the upbeat Tarot voice of the cards and book. I felt the language in the text needed to be as vibrant and evocative as the images in the cards, otherwise why bother with a book?

The media for the cards was an architectural CADD drawing system called ArchiCad. I then imported the images into PhotoShop to accommodate pre-press and manufacturing process considerations.

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Cheryl: What was the hardest part of creating your book and deck?

Jordan: Keeping it quiet. Several friends began noticing this pattern of my standing meeting especially on Friday afternoons that I held no matter what. Several began stopping by which I thought was both cute and kind of a nosey neighbor kind of thing. "Come back at 5!", I would say when they would all of a sudden be at the back door of my house which let the garden air in. As I would stand up and cover the screen and sleep the computer . . ."Man, I can keep a secret. What are you working on that keeps you on this multi-year deadline?" I would only smile and point to the gate. "I would tell you to sit out there at the glass table and go ahead and open that wine, but you might peek." The cat and mouse became a funny little surprise of a game here and there. One friend actually asked me if I was secretly courting a Russian bride. "I'm not sure where she's from, Man" I have to laugh. That didn't help things any.

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Cheryl: What do you see as the influences that helped you create your books and deck?

Jordan: The discipline of the ritual of my years in the martial arts, and the suggestion by an astrologer in the late 90's that I of anyone had no problem with knowledge, and might want to work on a better comfortability with more abstract and nebulous things. Carl Jung expressed, "Learn all you can, and forget it every time you act." Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed, "I loathe quotes. Tell me what you know." I feel all of these things work together for me to stand and deliver in ways that are attuned to my personal brand of how I go about doing things.

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Cheryl: What Tarot deck(s) or books have most influenced your life?

Jordan: The process of deck creation itself and then my Tarot in the Land of Mystereum set a tone for how decks resonate with me. The Alchemical Tarot Renewed by Bob Place is generally the only other deck besides Mystereum that I read with. The Tarot deck called nature and the outdoors is my greatest influence, and then of course I am indoors mostly doing the work. I rather like the tidyness of that outdoor to indoor example.

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Cheryl: Are you a practicing reader? If so, for how long?

Jordan: I am. I only began charging for readings 6 years ago, though I have been reading since prior to age 5. So, 38 years off and on. Almost longer than I have been alive, and then I think. . .maybe longer.

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Cheryl: Tell us about the first Tarot reading you ever had or ever gave?

Jordan: The first Tarot reading I ever had was from a stranger on a bench in the park. I was sitting there looking at a tree, and she ambled up and sat down in the middle of the bench, not on the other side, right in the middle. I said hi, and she hmph'd as she sat down. She was a very old woman, pulled some cards from her bag, and began rifling through them. Pointing at the tree I was so intently taking in saying, "There are plenty of those already" as she thrust a card in front of me. It was the Death card . . .as she skeptically quipped "What's that say to you?" I remember my head turning as if someone put a weight on my left ear while she was sitting on my right, call it half-a-heavy-buddha-earring . . .right brain rising? "Gardening", I said. She pursed her lips and her eyebrows raised up. "Well, whattaya know? There’s hope. You'll do fine, sonny" as she dropped her cards back in her back and stood up and walked away. I think I caught the Tarot bus in the middle of the park that day. I was about 12 years old. The park was over for that day. I hopped on my bicycle and rode around in kind of a stupor the rest of the day.

Other than my reading at 4 1/2, I do not remember the first reading I gave. That reading at 4 1/2 had some Pages in it I think, but I remember more that I was being told a story. . . and I do not remember it anymore than what I ate that day, probably tater tots. . .maybe it was the story of serendipity and synchronicity to arrive later on a park bench. More-so maybe it was my Neverending Story that I live and see as I go along.

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Cheryl: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything?

Jordan: I have never really played that game very well. I tend to bump into things when I turn that way, literally. It’s lik the Native American saying, “You are walking big” when you bump into doorways and such, but not in a positive way, at least for me. . .more an OUCH. Life dealt me a full deck in regards to using my noggin' imaginatively. Now that I think about it, maybe I would have gone to Formula I racing school. Driving for work would have kept my feet closer the ground.

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Cheryl: Do you have any advice for other people in the process of creating their own deck or Tarot book?

Jordan: When the fleeting thought comes across, DO IT! You will be in for quite the magic carpet ride. From my experience it is a self-initiation to grow authority with yourself in regards to your own power. And, personally, if it is possible, I take things more in stride now that expressing myself is not like pulling teeth. Creating a deck with my own original language fully from my perspective has really given me a greater appreciation for the decks out there. And, play your progress your way. It's your deck, and there is no-one who can do it just your way. All similar, each unique. I can laugh even more now at how weird I can be. It’s a real kick in the pants to one’s Tarot process from my perspective.

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Cheryl: Do you have anything specific that you want to say or share with your readers?

Jordan: I encourage you to have your own experience with Tarot in the Land of Mystereum. It is a great catalyst to shedding skins you won't miss, and to further finding and emancipating your tarot voice. It’s deceptively simple, expert skill masked in play. Though of course that for you to be the judge of. The Imagination Primer has gifts of Imagination Tools given to you by each card. They are presented as gestures to bring your way more into play in all you do, to enhance yourself in ways just so fitting to you. Also, three things:

~ The deck+book package Tarot in the Land of Mystereum is available signed at retail on my website www.jordanhoggard.com . Unsigned, also on Amazon, and at The Tarot Garden.

~ Also, on my website I offer original Tarot spreads packages that also have original artwork. Great also for reading for yourself.

~ You can chack out my Tarot blog and Tarot Youtube channel linked from the Blog page of www.jordanhoggard.com

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Cheryl: What are your current projects/latest news?

Jordan: My latest news and new current project is putting together Imagin-Action workshops that are developing The Land of Mystereum further with interactive sessions which is an exciting development. My fave ongoing work, though, are the readings I do in person or by phone/Skype for clients. Recently, I have also been have a blast doing mini-readings as the last segment of radio interviews where I have been featured.

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Cheryl: What Astrological sign are you?

Jordan: Sagittarius with Cap Moon and Cap Rising. I really love my chart. I won’t go into it, but innovative healing and teaching is natural to me.

I always look forward to hear feedback where I strike chords to resonate with people, and encourage it. Thanks for having me here, Cheryl!

Cheryl: Thanks for being so generous with your thoughts Jordan. This is a great interview!

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Read Jordan's blog by clicking here!

To view Tarot in the Land of Mystereum Major Aracana click here.

To order your signed copy of Tarot in the Land of Mysterium, click here.