“A man versed in all the disciplines, curious about all arcana, father of writings, languages, utopias, mythologies, sojourner in hells and heavens,” once wrote Jorge Luis Borges about Xul Solar, his artist friend and compatriot. Solar (1887-1963) was a visionary Argentine painter, sculptor, writer, astrologer, and inventor of imaginary languages. He adopted ‘an extraterrestrial identity’ by modifying his parents’ surnames: Xul standing for light, or lux, spelled backwards; Solar, after his maternal surname, for the sun itself.

In the last decade of his life, Solar designed Tarot Deck (1954), which was composed of 24 tarot cards: 12 Major Arcana and 12 Zodiac signs, interpreting the archetypes of human existence. Into the classical figures of Tarot, he inscribed his knowledge of astrology, numerology, and occult systems, his diary, and astrological charts. The cards were arranged in four columns and four elements: blue for Air, yellow for Earth, red for Fire, and green for Water.

Tarot, practiced as a divination tool since the 15th century, can be considered an initiation in oneself, or, as the Roma scholar Ethel Brooks put it, a form of psychoanalysis before psychoanalysis, a way of reading each other. Dream symbols entering the subconscious or archetypal traveling images (Warburg’s Bilderfahrzeuge) are meant to help us gain the inner peace or mental well-being necessary for a non-violent life on and with the planet.


Xul Solar (1887-1963) was an Argentinian artist. In 1924, he passed by Hamburg while traveling back to South America from Europe.

With support of Fundación Pan Klub – Museo Xul Solar in Buenos Aires and Fundación Ama Amoedo.

Location of the work on Google Maps