Lethe's Betrayal Tarot Decks

The darkest lullabies

In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of the Underworld, offering eternal forgetfulness to those who drank from its water. Lethe, or oblivion, often viewed as an equivalent to death itself, brings relief from the burden of memory - however, one does not have to die in order to forget; and voluntarily choosing oblivion over the pain of memories could be a way to cope with grief, or even with the less weighty troubles of everyday. This is not necessarily a foolproof solution, though...

Lethe's Betrayal & Lethe's Betrayal Nocturnes Tarot decks (January-May 2017) attempt to explore how the human mind plays games of its own through direct or indirect triggers and associations, so that memories may always resurface - find a crack in the most meticulously built facade and bring themselves back to life.

The traditional Major Arcana figures are reinvented in a modern, often subversive manner, their symbolisms re(en)coded and expanded into a philosophical, sometimes humorous, macabre or even deliberately grotesque view of the standard Tarot emblems and connotations.

What we are missing in our present is probably buried under a long repressed past, waiting in a dark corner to be found and awakened. A life in perpetual slumber, a "living death" without memory, is hubris; and while the lifting of denial is distressing, it can also be a radical form of restitution - a catharsis.