Eight of Swords

Artist: Isabel Hernandez

I replaced the tied-up woman with a silhouette of a person. It was important for me to hide the person's gender because the cards should reflect everyone. Everyone should be able to admit their internal struggles. Having a woman feeds into the social construct that men should express their emotions. As humans, we all have emotions and should freely express them without fear of judgment.

My final change to the tied-up person was to make it a light source. Light represents our inner light. When we have these self-imposed restrictions, we dim our light. We tend to constrict ourselves with our thoughts. We are our harshest critics, and Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics allude to this. The black hole in the card is the black we create, which our light cannot escape from.

I changed the swords to some words that might be holding back our inner light. Negative thoughts about ourselves dim our lights. Replacing a deadly object, like a sword, with words shows the potential harm those words can cause. We need to remember the impact words have on us.