Imagekind Gallery Posters

Spirit Hill Tarot Poster

An endlessly fascinating study of human life in all of its variety. Here is the Spirit Hill Tarot deck laid out on a poster. You can print it letter size or even 3 feet wide.

This deck plus the Simple Tarot make up the Magic Mirror Tarot Set. You can do a reading with these decks on the web, or even download and build your own working copy of them, all for free at www.stoneriley.com

Simple Tarot Poster

An endlessly fascinating study of human life in all of its variety. Here is the Spirit Hill Tarot deck laid out on a poster. You can print it letter size or even 3 feet wide.

This deck plus the Spirit Hill Tarot make up the Magic Mirror Tarot Set. You can do a reading with these decks on the web, or even download and build your own working copy of them, all for free at www.stoneriley.com

Awaking In A Dream (poster)

Painting by Stone Riley.
The following text is printed on the poster:

There are many tales, of course, of Lao Tzu who, according to the legends, wrote The Watercourse Way, a little book of nature poetry upon which other thinkers then built up the lean, beautiful and tough spiritual philosophy of Taoism. Here’s one of them.

The story flies us to the early morning of a day when our hero was a bright but sorrowful young man. He was a bureaucratic junior clerk in the palace of a rich and brutal warlord prince. The sparkling morning and the budding springtime garden grounds through which he trod to work belied the torment in the young man’s soul. This day’s duty was to be an awful deed which no one with an open heart could ever wish.

The garden path led on across a footbridge on a lovely brook and, setting foot onto the rising boards, his paces further slacked. His gaze was beckoned to the sparkling water. On the arch’s highest little height the now unconscious footsteps stopped and -- mind, heart and soul -- he found himself drawn out into the clear deep rippling stream.

This was the moment when a human asks of "there" and "here". As another poet wrote, do I dream the butterfly or does the butterfly dream me? Gazing deep into the world I see only countless things which mirror me, so what are "you" and "I" and what am "I" to do?

But in this young man’s mind no riddle of that sort found any weight. The doubtless fundamental knowledge that this clarity exists would henceforth lure and guide his thoughts and steps. The beauty of reality had ravished Lao Tzu and he was struck with lifelong love.

Lady Of The Witches (poster)

Painting by Stone Riley and Zoe Salmon. The Great Goddess seen through human eyes today.

This poem is printed on the poster:

The Empress

Oh
QUEEN OF HEAVEN
mistress of our prayers;

Oh
grandmother EVE
you who first bore child
and gave it suck,
you who first laid hand
upon the newborn human brow;

Oh
PERFECT MOTHER OF US ALL

I,
fruit of your womb,
call your name BLESSED
and kneel here

at your feet.

Gazing Within (poster)

Gazing Within, painting by Stone Riley

Be aware of where you are now: looking through your eyes out at the world. Now turn and look within instead. Is this a different world? No, how could it be? All that exists is one whole thing so there is only one reality. So this must simply be the world seen with other senses that know other pictures.

Minotaur (poster)

Minotaur: The Occupation Of Iraq, painting by Stone Riley.

This text is printed on the poster:

The old Greeks knew what the Norse and Chinese and every other ancient culture knew, a fact we are learning now: War drives humans mad. And war is the greatest crime, for it brings all other crimes surging in its wake. And war could well destroy our world like it has destroyed so many of our culture worlds. But we seem unable to stop doing it. So "What shall we think of war?" is our most perplexing question. But perhaps we can understand it. Perhaps war is a parasitic self-replicating meme living in the information ecosystem of human history. (This idea is older than Thucydides but here I've cast it in terms of current suppositions.) That is to say, war may be a kind of infestation in our cultures not inherent to our human nature. And some historians now claim, with ample evidence they say, that there have been broad sweeps of land where for several thousand years humans did not war. So perhaps this insanity can be cured somehow.

Can there be an age of history after war?

Odysseus At Ismarus (poster)

Odysseus At Ismarus, painting by Stone Riley.

The following text is printed on the poster:

Ismarus was the place where the military stratagems of a very clever man became undoubted crime. It was a very long excruciating war far away but they destroyed the enemy at last, and largely by the wit of this Odysseus. So now the soldiers were going home in ships. Along the way he and some of his boys came up to a little sea beach town in a boat and robbed the bank and killed some local cops. He got off clean too, except pursued by the anger of those people's gods. Some say this caused the curse. He wandered lost for years.

The painting style here is a study of certain pictures by Henri Matisse, but adapted for storytelling.

Buddha Of Infinite Compassion (poster)

Buddha Of Infinite Compassion, painting by Stone Riley

Here is Amida Buddha, a most beloved subject of sacred sculpture in Japan. This is not the one who sat beneath the Bodhi Tree and banished hordes of demons with a gesture. This is, instead, the other one who keeps a paradise where all of us are always welcomed in with love.

Journey To The West

This is an illustration from my book Bright Jewels. You can read it for free on my website: www.stoneriley.com