Wednesday 4 February 2026, 3pm
Learning Centre, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
All welcome
The artist Suzanne Treister uses Tarot to explore science, futures and spirituality.
Some of this work is currently showing at Museum of Art, Oxford.
These include HEXEN 5.0 and HEXEN 2.0, each of which include new Tarot decks. They present a critical, historical and mystical exploration of new global developments in terrestrial and interplanetary technologies, science and communications, corporate and governmental forces, the ecosystem and climate crisis, recent and traditional fields of knowledge and spirituality, new branches of bio/socio/political theory, contemporary countercultural and futuristic movements, new directions in science-fiction, and proposed possible solutions for an ethical survival of the human race.
The visual structure of the works is largely based on alchemical drawings of the 13th - 18th centuries, entwining these subjects into a holistic mystical space where they become differently animated and resonant. In alchemical drawings, science, art and religion/spirituality co-exist, echoing the recently converging fields illuminated in some of the cards, such as Spiritual Ecology, Nexus thinking and Earth System Science, fields which may lead to better solutions for the climate crisis and for returning the planet towards a self-regulating system.
Where HEXEN 2.0 analysed the legacy of cybernetics as embodied in Web 2.0 and systems of control, showing how Web 2.0 works as a societal controlling system, HEXEN 5.0 traces cybernetics' relevance to whole earth systems and how the cybernetic self-regulating feedback loops of the planetary ecosystem, which we have sent out of whack, need to be addressed through an understanding of the workings of the total global ecosystem. This is embodied in the aims of Earth System Science and potentially in an even more holistic system incorporating traditional knowledges and spirituality.
The published deck of tarot cards is intended to be used as a tool for groups to discuss and envision positive alternative futures and may be used in conjunction with HEXEN 2.0 Tarot deck.
Divination, Oracles, and Omens
