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Imaginalis

Tarot & Myth · an app for iPhone

Stop looking up the cards.
Start meeting them.

Looking up meanings keeps the cards at arm’s length. In this app you learn to meet the figures on the Rider-Waite-Smith cards and read them in your own words.

Download on the App Store

Meanings you look up never quite fit

A booklet gives you seventy-eight meanings to memorize, and after a while the cards feel like someone else’s.

The Eight of Swords, from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck: a woman bound and blindfolded among eight swords stuck in wet ground, a castle on a cliff behind her.

A booklet says the Eight of Swords means restriction. Look at her yourself, and you want to ask her something: what keeps you standing here?

“The pictures are like doors which open into unexpected chambers.”

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Stay with a card a little longer and someone looks back. You get to know the figures the way you know people, and soon you read them without the booklet. After a while a hard week or a street can look back at you too.

No belief needed. Talking with a picture asks only for your attention. Every source in the app is one you can check.

Try it on one card

Meet the Hermit

Don’t look him up. Look at him, and ask.

The Hermit, from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck: an old man in a grey cloak on a snowy peak, eyes closed, holding up a lantern with a six-pointed star inside, leaning on a tall yellow staff.

  1. “Good evening. You’re a long way up.”

    The HermitNot many climb this high.

  2. “What is that in your lantern?”

    The HermitA star. I hold it up for whoever is willing to climb.

Maybe, for a moment, he looked back. People once called a world like that ensouled.

In the app you do this every day, with its deck or your own.

Your way through the deck

Path is the app’s course in the fundamentals: a way of looking that opens any of the 78 cards.

20 lessons · 5 to 7 minutes a day · 4 weeks

The Path tab of the Imaginalis app: Seventy-Eight Doors, 10 of 20 lessons walked, amulets hanging in a paper sky over today’s lesson, The four suits and their elements.

In the Path tab

Seventy-Eight Doors

The fundamentals of tarot, in twenty short lessons.

  1. 1Read a littleA page or two on the day’s theme.
  2. 2Look closely at one cardZoom in, and see what is there.
  3. 3Practice with the cardsYour own deck or the app’s. What you notice goes into your journal.
The Four of Cups: a young man under a tree, arms folded, not looking at the cup a hand holds out to him from a cloud.

Week 1The Map of the Land

5 lessons · 29 min

Map the deck, trace where its meanings come from, and look at any card in three layers.

  1. 1.1What a tarot deck isThe deck's two families, and the two stories of where tarot began.6 min
  2. 1.2How Waite and Smith made this deckWho made the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, and why most of its cards hold a scene.6 min
  3. 1.3How to look at a cardThree layers for any card: the image, the tradition, your own eye.6 min
  4. 1.4Where the meanings come fromWho wrote tarot's meanings down, why they disagree, and what to do with an upside-down card.5 min
  5. 1.5One card a dayThe daily practice: draw one card and say what is there before you think.6 min
Five trumps fanned out: the Magician, the High Priestess, the Fool, the Hanged Man and the Moon.

Week 2The Road of the Trumps

5 lessons · 31 min

Walk the 22 trumps in order, name each one, and see how their pictures answer each other.

  1. 2.1The Fool and the road of the trumpsLay the 22 trumps as one road, in three rows of seven, with the Fool apart.6 min
  2. 2.2The first seven: Magician to ChariotTrumps I to VII, and how each card answers the one before.6 min
  3. 2.3The middle seven: Strength to TemperanceTrumps VIII to XIV, and how Strength and Justice swapped places.7 min
  4. 2.4The last seven: Devil to WorldTrumps XV to XXI, from the chained pair to the dancer.6 min
  5. 2.5Other maps of the trumpsPair trumps, move the Fool, and see what a trump does among other cards.6 min
A pale road runs through a night meadow between small paper lanterns, a white dog trotting ahead, foxgloves and ferns at its sides.
The four Aces laid in a cross: a hand from a cloud holds a wand, a cup, a sword and a pentacle.

Week 3The Four Lands

5 lessons · 30 min

Find your way around the 56 suit cards by suit, number, rank and picture.

  1. 3.1The four suits and their elementsThe four suits, the elements the Golden Dawn gave them, and older ways of sorting them.6 min
  2. 3.2Ace to Five: numbers as stepsThe first five numbers as steps, and how one number looks across four suits.6 min
  3. 3.3Six to Ten: how a suit endsSix to ten, and how to walk a whole suit like a street.6 min
  4. 3.4The court cards: sixteen figuresThe four ranks, and three ways to meet them: people, sides of you, ideas.6 min
  5. 3.5Suit, number and picturePut suit, number and picture together, so any small card opens.6 min

A closer look

Four suits, four lands

Each suit is a land with its own weather. Know the land, and you can read its cards.

A wide still lake under a full moon, moonlight on the waves, willows and water lilies on the shore.
The Queen of Cups on a throne at the water’s edge, gazing at an ornate closed cup; beside her the Ace and the Six of Cups.

The land of water

Cups

The heart’s country: what you long for, what you offer, what spills, and what still stands after the spill. You’ll know a feeling on a card when you see one.

A great bonfire burning red and orange at night, blue hills behind it.
The Three of Wands: a man on a cliff with three staves, watching ships on a golden sea; beside him the Ace and the Page of Wands.

The land of fire

Wands

Desire lives here: the spark of a plan, the wish that sets out, the fight for it, the weight of carrying it too far. You learn to see where a wand wants to go.

Pale silver and lavender peaks rising out of the clouds.
The Queen of Swords on her throne in the clouds, sword upright, one hand raised; beside her the Ace and the Three of Swords.

The land of air

Swords

Thought and the spoken word: what is decided, cut, said and left unsaid. The hardest cards live here, and you learn to look at them without flinching.

A walled garden glowing in gold and copper.
The Nine of Pentacles: a woman in a vineyard garden with a falcon on her gloved hand; beside her the Ace and the Three of Pentacles.

The land of earth

Pentacles

What grows slowly: work, money, the body, the home. Every coin here is also a seed, and you learn to see what it costs to grow.

Try it: a reading “What do I need to see about moving to a new city?”

Week 4Laying Cards for Yourself

5 lessons · 31 min

Ask an open question, lay three to ten cards, and shape a practice of your own.

  1. 4.1A question that looksTurn a question that wants a verdict into an open one that helps you see.6 min
  2. 4.2Three cards in a rowLay three cards, treat each place as a question, and read the row as one scene.6 min
  3. 4.3Cards that talk to each otherSee a spread as one table: who looks where, a suit that returns, a number that repeats.6 min
  4. 4.4The Celtic CrossWaite's ten-card cross from 1910: its places, its story, and how to lay it.7 min
  5. 4.5A practice of your ownShape a practice that fits your life, and a spread of your own.6 min

Read your own cards, in your own words

  • A card a dayDraw from the 1909 deck, or log the cards you drew from your own.
  • SpreadsEight spreads with a question for every place, or design your own.
  • A journal that remembersWrite or speak a line. After thirty days, see which cards came back.
  • The libraryAll 78 cards, with the myths, art and history behind them.
  • PathThe fundamentals in four weeks, one short lesson a day.
  • No AI, no accountNothing reads the cards for you. No sign-up.
Download on the App Store

For iPhone

Questions

Do I need my own deck?

No. Draw from the app’s deck, or log the cards you lay from your own. Want paper cards too? Print the deck free.

Do I have to believe in the tarot?

No. You can talk with a picture without believing it predicts anything.

Is this about fortune-telling?

It’s about reading pictures closely. The tarot began as a card game, and the fortune-telling came later. The app never says what will happen.

Does it use AI?

No. Nothing reads the cards for you. You look, and you say what you see.

What happens to my journal if I stop?

It stays yours. Member or not, you can read it and export it as one file.

Is there an Android version?

No. Imaginalis is for iPhone.

At dawn a small figure with a dog walks a pale path over the hills toward the rising sun.

Begin with the Fool

Seventy-eight figures are waiting. Meet the first one today.

Download on the App Store