Dharma Deck

Dharma Deck is an attempt to combine Eastern and Western philosophy and design. Each layout is generated with JavaScript, CSS, and minimal image files.

These 60 cards are inspired by Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, Kabbalah, and Western playing decks. Each suit represents one of the four elements — earth, air, water, and fire — and each has as its ace the corresponding Buddha from the Tibetan tradition. The "court" cards of each suit are the ranked elements from lowest to highest, again: earth, air, water, and fire, and also the supreme element of "spirit", representing the Buddha Vairocana and replacing the rank of King.

Each card is also labeled on a spectrum from yin to yang in the Taoist tradition. These labels come from combining each card's rank and suit. Ranks Ace through 10 have corresponding spheres (or sefirot) on the Tree of Life in Kabbalah, and each of these spheres is either feminine (yin), masculine (yang), or neutral. The suits of earth and water have yin energy, while air and fire have yang energy.

The separate parts of the Tree of Life also represent different aspects of reality. The underlined descriptions on the cards come from combining what each rank and suit represents, with the exception of court cards. These cards have underlined keywords above short visual descriptions relating to their suits' element.

The deck has no specific games or intended purpose yet. It could possibly be a good tool for meditation and inspiration, especially with the visual descriptions among the court cards. If you have any suggestions, please contact me at al@fern.haus. You can find the rest of my work here.