Every tarot deck asks us to hold a mirror to ourselves, but few do so with the stark honesty of Marcos Alvarado’s The Light and The Shadow. At first glance, the cards shimmer with surreal, otherworldly imagery. Look closer and you begin to see the dialogue unfolding between brightness and obscurity, the kind of dialogue that tarot has always been about: revelation, concealment, and the fragile line where the two meet.
For Alvarado, the project is a study of balance. His illustrations draw on both the intuitive flow of light and the intensity of shadow, creating cards that are strikingly atmospheric yet deeply meditative. There is a cinematic quality to his work, a sense that each card could be a still from a dream you once had but can only half remember. This quality is heightened by the way figures emerge from the backgrounds, sometimes glowing, sometimes dissolving, always asking you to sit with the tension they hold.
“My goal has always been to create something powerful, something that carries real significance,” Alvarado said.
The Major Arcana feels particularly alive in this light. The Fool seems to wander at the edge of brilliance, one step away from being consumed or illuminated. The Hermit carries not only the solitude of wisdom but the sharpness of shadow that gives wisdom its weight. Even familiar archetypes appear renewed, their meanings refracted through Alvarado’s lens of duality.
The artwork is delicate yet bold. Alvarado uses hand-drawing to evoke both contrast and cohesion, light edges and dark corners, clarity and mystery. The stories that accompany the deck promise to give voice to those liminal spaces, the moments between clarity and doubt, belonging and otherness. Each image feels designed to draw you in, to ask you what you’re afraid to shadow, and what light you need to nurture.
This is not Alvarado’s first foray into art, but it is perhaps his most personal. His background in painting, illustration, and design gives the cards their lush textures and layered meanings, while his interest in spiritual practice gives them resonance. “What you see now is the result of years of devotion to both my art and the timeless tradition of tarot,” he said.
More importantly, Marcos Alvarado’s The Light and The Shadow is produced independently, and I believe in uplifting independent creators whose work carries both risk and heart. Every deck they bring into the world expands the language of tarot in ways that mass-produced projects never could.
Support the project here from $13 : Kickstarter | Marco’s Alvarado Tarot: The Light and the Shadow by Marco Alvarado. Please note that while the campaign funds the deck’s production, the rewards focus on prints, books, and other offerings rather than the deck itself.
Leave a Reply