A memokeeper from the Garden of Recollection, our mysterious and elegant diviner Miss Black Swan has made an appearance in so many trailers and web events! Peppy’s really really looking forward to all the mysteries we will unfold with her.
You must have noticed the many elements that hint at traditional tarot card reading in Black Swan’s character art as well – the crystal ball, cards, the tome, and candles… From what we can see, the design of the cards also looks pretty similar to irl tarot cards!
Tarot card reading is one of the oldest and most enigmatic forms of divination in Western culture and is extremely versatile with surprising accuracy. In the beginning, tarot cards were just Italian playing cards used in games for entertainment, but over the centuries, they have evolved into divination tools through the hands of the French and the English.
Today, the three most common decks used are the Rider–Waite Tarot, the Tarot of Marseilles, and the Thoth Tarot. Tarot of Marseilles and the Thoth Tarot are more often used in spiritual practices while the Rider-Waite Tarot are what we see the most in divination practices. There are 78 cards in the deck, composed of 22 Major Arcanas (carrying great symbolic meanings), 40 Minor Arcanas (representing ordinary shifts and changes), and 16 court cards (stereotypes of characters). These cards can be used separately or combined in divination. Typically during divination, a question is meditated by the querent, then the cards are pulled at random and laid out to be read and deciphered based on their images for hints of the future.
From the looks of it, Miss Black Swan is probably using the Rider-Waite Tarot deck as well! I bet the HSR devs must have spent a lot of time learning about tarot cards when designing her character, so let’s give them a round of applause for their hard work and dedication! *paw clap*
Oh my! It’s already closing time for Peppy’s Café, but we’re having so much fun! I guess we’ll see each other next time, Trailblazers~
