THE HANDS BEHIND THE SYMBOLS
Artwork & origins.
The tarot deck
Our cards feature historical Rider–Waite–Smith illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith, created in collaboration with Arthur Edward Waite and first published in 1909. Smith’s visual storytelling is central to this deck’s enduring influence.
The historical scans are supplied through the Tarot API image collection, which identifies them as public-domain images. Background on the historical artwork is available at Wikimedia Commons. We use these historical illustrations, not a modern commercial recoloring.
The portal artwork
The illuminated doorway was created for Velvet Omen using OpenAI image generation. It is an original atmospheric illustration, not a photograph of a real location.
The written interpretations
The reflective card descriptions, prompts, and suggested actions are original, AI-assisted writing prepared for this site. They draw on widely used tarot symbolism, without reproducing the divinatory claims of historical texts. No professional certification or independent tarot-practitioner review is claimed.
For historical context, see A. E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Historical sources reflect the assumptions of their time; our approach centers personal choice and reflection.
The Lenormand, playing card, and oracle decks
The Lenormand deck, the playing card deck, and the Velvet Omen Oracle are original artwork created for Velvet Omen, drawn as simple vector illustrations in code. The Lenormand card names, numbers, and playing-card insets follow the traditional 19th-century deck; the oracle deck and all card texts are original writing, created with AI assistance.
The rituals
The ritual illustrations, Moonwater Cleansing’s silver bowl, The Unbinding’s golden threads, The Lantern Circle’s moonlit clearing, Full Moon Release’s lake, New Moon Intentions’ starry hill, The Unsent Letter’s candle-lit table, The Open Window’s garden view, The Remembrance Candle’s sheltered light, The Autumn Gate’s woodland path, and the rooms, stream, mirror, table, winter lantern, doorway, ledger, birthday candle and stepping stones in the newer rituals are original vector artwork created for Velvet Omen with AI assistance. The ambient music and environmental sound are synthesized live in your browser from simple tones and filtered noise; no recordings, samples, or licensed tracks are used, and no claims are made about the effects of any sound or frequency.
The ritual guidance is original, AI-assisted writing. The rituals are symbolic practices for reflection; they do not come from, or claim to represent, any historical or cultural tradition. The glowing marks in The Lantern Circle are original geometric shapes, not symbols from any practice. Full and new moon dates are calculated on this site with a standard astronomical method (after Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms) and are accurate to within a few minutes. Eclipse dates use published Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA’s GSFC. Solstice dates use the US Naval Observatory seasons service. These dates do not imply that an eclipse is visible from your location.
Birthplaces and astronomy
Birthplaces in the birth chart calculator come from GeoNames (towns of about 15,000 people or more), used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Sun, Moon, sidereal time, and Ascendant calculations follow Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (2nd edition, 1998).
Typography
Headings use Cormorant Garamond by Christian Thalmann, distributed under the SIL Open Font License. The font is hosted with this site so visitors do not need to contact a font provider.