My spiritual journey to dive into the secrets of Tarot started in the early 1990s. At the time, there was a museum showing replicas of ancient Egyptian artifacts in my hometown in Germany.
I was offered to run the place, but I would be on my own to generate an income there. I liked the idea and thought it would be a great place, to also include my own art...
In the beginning it was quite horrible as I had no idea of running this kind of business and there was a load of other obstacles too. But with time I learned the ropes as they say and "my" museum started to attract a decent amount of visitors. Nevertheless, I was always happy, when I could close it all down for the winter and focus more on my own art.
Now, the building was built as a hospital some 600 years ago and there was also a chapel attached to it, as anything else would have been unthinkable at the time. But now the chapel was no longer used and pretty much empty. A perfect space for a major piece of art!
Since ancient Egyptian artifacts are a bit... out of place in a small town in Bavaria (southern Germany) I was looking for a theme which would tie both a little closer together.
Eventually I discovered a story about how Tarot cards came into our world in ancient Egypt. In Bavaria and Austria one still plays a card game today, called Tarock. As the cards are supposedly closely related, I had my theme!
I started with building a wooden structure, some 15ft high and a total length of some 45ft, all in a U shape. It was to be filled with 66 large paintings on glass.
The idea was, to illustrate the story of the cards and how they came from ancient Egypt to today's Bavaria in the bottom row. Above that I designed my own versions of the 22 Major Arkana, the main cards of the deck. A special challenge was, to make the "chapters" of the story below match the theme of the card above. In the top row, I just let my mind "fly" free, inspired by the "Book Toth" as the cards were once called in ancient Egypt.
Around 2005 my wife and I added a café to the museum...
...and also had some nice events in the "AEDICULA ARCANORUM" (small Temple of the secrets) as we called it
We spent some wonderful years in this very special building. We even had a flat under the (huge) roof. Nevertheless it wasn't without problems and after 2010 a complete renovation became inevitable. But the town, as the owner didn't want to spend the amount of money necessary.
By then we had bought another building, only some 300 years of age and decided, that there was no other way, but to end our contract and move. The café reopened in 2014 in our own house under the name "Café Venus".
In a first step to renovate the old "hospital" the collection of replicas was taken to storage. I finally took down my Tarot just a few weeks ago. Since I don't have a space big enough in our house, I'm currently looking for a new home for the "Temple of the secrets".
Stay tuned if you like to see more about my Tarot cards in the future and please let me know, if I should post more about the museum.
