Life Purpose Tarot Spread Created by photographer Alice Smeets, this 78-card deck features real life scenes from real people from all around the earth in world class documentary style photos (Some of these photos even won international photo-awards). None of the photos were staged, these are decisive moments captured in daily life scenes, different religious practices and rituals or festivities. The 78 photo-cards are rooted in classical tarot interpretations that delve into the mystical occurrences and stories from different countries of our earth such as Haiti, India, Panama, The United States, The UK and more. The Gift of Life Tarot Deck will help you in these times of uncertainty to reconnect to what is truly important and show you your unique gifts that you can rely upon to get you through all of life's ups and downs. While you can use the deck for any type of questions that you may have, the deck is particularly good at answering questions that reconnect you to your joy, your inner power or about how to make life more meaningful. It is here to guide you back into alignment with your higher self. The real life scenes of this deck make it very easy to relate each card to ourselves and our lives and facilitate the interpretation process finding the answers to our questions. This makes it a great beginners tarot deck but just as well a powerful tool for experienced readers and professionals alike.
Alice Smeets is a Belgian photographer, filmmaker, artist and teacher. Her documentary photographs from Haiti are fairly well known and have won her several awards including the Unicef Photo of the Year Award 2008.
For a long time, she wanted to interpret the Tarot Deck with her photos, but taking ordinary pictures of the scenes seemed too simple. Her aim was to create a very personal deck without loosing the different spirits of the cards. Then the idea entered her mind to combine three of her passions: the spiritual world, the Haitian culture and people as well as the philosophical reflections about the dualities in our world; in this case rich and poor.
Since 2007 she has been a regular visitor to Haiti and has lived in the country for 2 years. Its complexity and spirituality have played a big role in her life. The observations of the Haitian society have brought answers to many of her questions.
So taking the tarot pictures in the ghetto of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince was the obvious choice to create a very personal deck: moving away from the cliched images of poverty, illustrating the spirits and meanings of the cards with a touch of humor in the middle of the slum and showing colored people on the traditional, old European cards to break stereotypes.