So what exactly is this Tarot? Is it a work of fiction? Is it a work of fact blended with fiction? Is it some strange fever dream of someone far too interested in the works of H.P. Lovecraft?

 

Yes, yes, and yes.

 

Allow me to explain...

 

My name is Les L. Garner. I've been a professional artist and writer for 31 years now, with a lifelong love of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. As an artist, I've had varying degrees of success through the years, building a large library of Lovecraftian and Lovecraft-based works. As a writer, one of my great personal indulgences for a very long time has been the creation of short stories centered around a character of mine called Dr. Horace Van Meter. For the better part of 30 years, I've written occasional short stories showcasing different ideas or concepts or whatever I thought might be a novel addition to the mythology Lovecraft created, but almost always those works either centered around or featured the character of Dr. Van Meter in some form.

 

Now, let's answer those questions a bit...

 

Is this a work of fiction? Absolutely. That's an easy one.

 

Is it a work of fact blended with fiction? Well, yes. You see, in February of 2023, I had a stroke that initially left me fully paralyzed on one side of my body. Elaborating on this here would be inappropriate in my opinion, but suffice it to say, the difficulties incurred from this experience were great and continue, though I am restoring functionality and healing over time.

 

Where that figures into Dr. Van Meter's Tarot and his stories is that as the idea to produce this work solidified, one novel thought that came to mind was the idea of tying the act of creating this art to the story itself of Dr. Van Meter in a sort of meta-narrative. The initial concept was that Van Meter had released forces that he could not contain in the process of trying to develop a variety of powers and abilities. The idea is that he has disappeared and had left this work unfinished as the fallout of his exploits run roughshod over the people associated with his estate and possibly others.

 

In the course of creating this, an idea was brought up by my associate Charles D. Moisant: What if Dr. Van Meter had reached out to an artist to work on this Tarot deck, who, due to the stress on the psyche of channeling such eldritch powers, experienced something terrible, like, for instance, a near-debilitating stroke? I think you can see where this is going...

 

As Charles has acted as my assistant  and production manager on the project, we decided that his portion of the narrative would come after my calamity and the disappearance of the doctor when the estate figures out that rather than releasing something terrible, the project needed to be completed in order to contain those terrible things, and that it must be published for willing participants making use of it to contribute to its power to contain the dark forces that Dr. Van Meter had initially released.

 

And thus was born the Forbidden Cthulic Tarot of Dr. Horace Van Meter. What started out as a project intended to be a quick bit of fun, which would give me an outlet for a different stylistic approach to art than I have taken in the past, an enjoyable exploration of the world of Lovecraft in my own way, grew into a meta-narrative and a much larger project that I'm happy to bring to you here.

 

I hope you will enjoy the stories and art accompanying this Tarot. An admirer of the philosophical works of Carl Jung, particularly his ideas concerning archetypes and the psyche, I've approached putting together this deck with a very archetypal mindset, pouring through the various public domain works of H.P. Lovecraft for characters and ideas that could be brought to bear in a dark interpretation of the Tarot and the archetypes which it holds. I'm sure not all of my interpretations will be to everyone's liking, but that's the beauty of art and interpretation. I hope that as fans of H.P. Lovecraft and all things Cthulhu Mythos-related, you will approach these works and their meaning with an open mind and enjoy them as much as I've enjoyed making them.

-Les L. Garner, artist/writer, 3-22-2024