When archetypes reinvent themselves: the birth of an astrological deck

Some projects are built around a precise set of specifications. And then there are those that are born from an encounter.

This one was born almost by chance, during a two-week internship at the Kartograme studio. It was a meeting of two creative worlds, two generations, two sensibilities, and above all, a shared curiosity for symbolism, imagery, and the transformation of materials.

An encounter at the root of the project

Lilas was a student at ENSAAMA, one of the top Parisian art schools, at the time. She came to the studio with a portfolio that already testified to a very personal world: a focus on the sensible, a great mastery of drawing, and a certain boldness in the depiction of bodies and emotions.

She wanted to discover my world, my craft of card making, and especially the work of transforming materials.

For my part, I particularly enjoy hosting young creatives and passing on this artisanal know-how. But I also knew that Lilas was primarily drawn to graphic design, cards, images, and the possibilities offered by their staging.

The project was therefore born in a rather unusual context.

At the very beginning of her internship, an emergency forced me to leave the studio for a few hours. It was impossible, under these conditions, to offer her a complete introduction to the artisanal manufacture of cards. I simply left her with a collection of decks, books dedicated to tarot, and a very open instruction:

“I would like to offer cards that represent astrological signs in relation to the tarot arcana.”

No specifications. No precise art direction. Carte blanche.

And it is precisely this freedom that would give the project its unique character.

Ancient archetypes, contemporary bodies

Upon my return, the first drawings were there.

I immediately understood that Lilas had found a true space for expression in this project.

Her drawing established an astonishing dialogue between material, line, and symbol. Extremely fine lines sat alongside thicker shadows, sometimes intentionally wiped away, allowing the texture of the paper to appear.

But it was above all the characters that gave the project its singularity.

Traditional archetypes appeared with androgynous, tattooed, pierced features, with marked faces and bodies that seemed to carry a story. Far from the rigid representations to which symbolic imagery can sometimes accustom us, these characters seemed to belong to our era.

The first archetype was the Virgin Empress, depicted as pregnant.

She is generous, powerful, and deeply alive. The wheat, the crown, the veil, and the jewelry all become signs around her body: a true constellation of symbols evoking fertility, creation, and the connection to the living.

In a few hours, Lilas had laid the foundations for a world that was at once fantastic, symbolic, and resolutely contemporary.

Between tarot, astrology, and symbolism

To build the correspondences between the characters and the astrological signs, we naturally turned to several tarot traditions, notably the Thoth Tarot and the works of Oswald Wirth.

The project is thus part of a much broader history.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, occultists had profoundly renewed the reading of ancient tarots by making the images converse with hermeticism, the Kabbalah, numerology, alchemy, astrology, and various religious and esoteric traditions.

Lilas also brought her own references, particularly regarding Wicca, nature-related rites, and the contemporary notion of the sacred feminine.

This is not about reproducing a tradition or claiming a direct lineage. What interested us was rather the way in which these different imaginary worlds could resonate with one another.

For symbols are never completely motionless.

They traverse eras, change form, and become charged with new experiences.

A fresco rather than a collection of cards

One of the project's great original features was born from an almost instinctive decision.

Rather than drawing each card separately in its traditional frame, we chose to start with the whole.

A massive sheet of paper measuring 120 × 80 cm became Lilas's territory of creation.

Each character, destined to become a card, was thus conceived as part of a much larger composition.

The sheet gradually transformed into a fresco.

The characters emerge from a matter in motion: foliage, water, fire, river, moon, sun, stars, ether… Even the air seems to circulate between the figures.

This approach profoundly changes the perception of the deck.

Each card possesses its own identity, but it also belongs to a living whole, where characters, natural elements, and symbols respond to each other.

The deck then becomes more than a succession of images: it becomes a coherent graphic universe.

Two weeks to bring a world to life

The creation of the fresco took place in just two weeks.

Lilas progressed with an almost astonishing regularity, stringing steps together like beads on a necklace: drawing after drawing, detail after detail, until the whole took shape.

This speed does not mean the project was simple.

On the contrary, it testifies to a form of creative evidence. As if, once the graphic language had been found, the images already knew where to go.

Then came the time for the aftermath.

For between the creation of a work and its transformation into a deck of cards, there is an entire process of conception, selection, composition, reproduction, and manufacturing, including the creation by Lilas of a font for the project.

The editorial and artisanal work was, in a way, a second birth.

The modernity of archetypes

Perhaps this is what makes this project particularly singular: it does not seek to artificially modernize ancient symbols.

It simply lets them encounter our era.

The archetypes appear with different bodies, less rigid identities, and silhouettes that escape traditional categories. They can be masculine, feminine, androgynous; powerful, vulnerable, sensual, mysterious.

This representation opens a space where everyone can project their own experience.

Symbolism remains deeply present, but it is no longer locked into historical iconography.

The images speak of transformation, identity, creation, nature, consciousness, and evolution.

The archetypes do not disappear: they evolve with us.

A creation born from collaboration

This deck is above all the result of an artistic collaboration.

It was born from a dialogue between a young artist and an artisanal studio, between transmission and freedom, between knowledge of traditions and a contemporary perspective.

This is also what makes it unique.

Lilas brought her graphic world, her intuition, and her sensibility. Kartograme brought its inspiration in terms of astrology, its experience of the Tarot, the playing card, materials, manufacturing, and the transformation of a work into an editorial object.

The result is therefore neither a simple reproduction of an existing tarot nor an academic reinterpretation of the astrological signs.

It is a new creation, born from a space of freedom, an encounter, and a dialogue between several imaginary worlds.

A new inspiration for Kartograme

With this project, Kartograme welcomes a new source of inspiration.

It roots itself in the artistic and symbolic movements of the 20th century, in the legacy of occultism, and in the multiple transformations of the contemporary esoteric imagination.

But above all, it looks toward today.

For our society is changing, and with it, our way of representing ourselves.

Archetypes evolve, their postures transform, as do their bodies. New sensibilities are emerging, and certain individual realizations are beginning to find their place in our images, our narratives, and our objects.

This is perhaps precisely what the deck of cards allows: circulating symbols between eras.

Taking ancient images, looking at them differently, and allowing them to continue to live.

It is in this space, between tradition and contemporary creation, between symbolism and craftsmanship, that this project has found its place at Kartograme.

The set of 12 astrological cards will be available starting September 21, 2026.

The 12 individual astrological cards will be available starting September 28, 2026.