GREETINGS!
I'm Josh. I'm an artist and indie tarot creator. I've been researching and developing a Mormon themed tarot deck and guidebook since 2009. I finished the project and had it printed in early 2026. Sego & Salt Tarot is an archetypal journey through the first 100 years of Mormon history. It reflects my own persective on what I've learned from the best of Mormon history scholarship.
In 1916, the artist Robert Henri asked Utah artist Minerva Teichert:
"Has any artist told the great Mormon story?"
"Not to suit me!" Minerva replied.
"Good heavens girl," he retorted. "What a chance!"
MY STORY...
I am an American artist and heritage Mormon whose work centers on the landscapes and people of the Colorado Plateau. I began as an oil painter, exploring the tension between abstraction and representation in relation to space, light, and geology. Over time my practice expanded to include film and music, all rooted in a region that has shaped me, my family, and my ancestors.
The Sego & Salt Tarot continues this trajectory, uniting my creative work with my religious heritage. My lineage reaches back to some of the earliest Mormon converts: Joseph Knight Sr., Polly Peck Knight, Amasa Lyman and Paulina Eliza Phelps Lyman. My grandfather was the chief architect of the Nauvoo Restoration Project, and my father created the white bronze model of the Nauvoo Temple and worked on multiple temple restorations, including the Angel Moroni atop the Salt Lake Temple. Though I initially resisted making Mormon-themed art, by my thirties the tradition caught up with me. In 2009, I left Seattle’s Tenzing Momo apothecary with my first tarot decks, and soon realized the striking resonance between tarot archetypes and the events of early Mormon history...
This tarot deck focuses on Mormonism’s first century, when the movement was most innocent, most divergent, most intellectually adventurous—and as a result most peculiar. Many of its defining episodes—visions, migration, violence, folk magic, polygamy—map naturally onto the tarot’s system of archetypes, which span light and shadow, beauty and terror. The tarot is especially well suited to preserving the parts of history we might prefer to forget. Just as light in painting requires shadow to achieve luminosity, so too does Mormonism’s story require its darker chapters if we are to learn from it fully.
"One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism
is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may."
—Joseph Smith, Jr.
In designing the cards, I drew on the best recent scholarship, often finding uncanny alignments between historical events and tarot symbolism. I also introduced structural alterations: each suit now includes six court cards—Duchess, Duke, Princess, Prince, Queen, and King—expanding space for historical figures, especially women. Three Magicians highlight different interpretive lenses: Luman Walters (the believing empiricist), the Angel Moroni (the apologist), and Joseph Smith (the naturalist). Two World cards conclude the arc: one honoring Juanita Brooks as a reflective counterpoint to Joseph Smith, and another inspired by the Ordain Women movement and Fawn Brodie, with the Salt Lake Temple at its center.
“Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”
― Joseph Campbell
The Sego & Salt Tarot functions both as a working deck and as a cultural artifact. For those unfamiliar with Mormon history, it teaches through archetype; for those within the tradition, it illuminates tarot’s symbolic language. More broadly, it preserves the peculiar, colorful origins of a movement that has profoundly shaped American history.
For me, this project has been both personal and historical—a way of deconstructing and understanding my inheritance. My hope is that the Sego & Salt Tarot keeps Mormonism’s story alive in all its complexity, resisting the temptation to smooth away its strangeness, and honoring the shadows that give its history light.
"I owe it to myself and to my readers to tell all the truth, for truth suppressed is its own kind of lie." —Juanita Brooks in a letter to Justice Jesse Udall, 1961
THE SEGO & SALT TAROT GUIDEBOOK
The Sego & Salt Tarot Guidebook is a 720-page companion volume that gathers the research, sources, and inspirations behind each card. Inside are quotations, scriptures, anecdotes, historical facts, stories, song lyrics, images and symbolic correspondences—an expansive collection that illuminates the cards in rich and unexpected ways. Every chapter deepens the meaning of its corresponding card revealing the layers of history, belief, and culture that shaped it. This book is both a resource and a journey: part archive, part commentary, part guide to exploring Mormonism’s peculiar origins through the lens of tarot. Available as a downloadable ebook with the purchase of a Sego & Salt Tarot card deck or in print, it offers readers countless fascinating details and insights that bring the deck fully to life.
A FREE DOWNLOADABLE PDF EDITION IS INCLUDED WITH THE PURCHASE OF EACH SEGO & SALT TAROT DECK! But if you want a printed copy, you're welcome to purchase one in the Sego & Salt Shop.
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
—Walt Whitman
DISLCAIMER
WARNING: Sego & Salt Tarot contains elements that might be disturbing to children.
I will continually be improving the information in the guidebook. Artists have often been considered to be the enemies of historians. I'm extremely interested in getting the story right according to the best scholarship available. You will find some examples of chapters from the book below...they're still a bit rough, but if any of you find errors, or have suggestions for improvement as far as factual history goes, I will gladly listen! Please contact me at the bottom of the page and provide your source material with complete Chicago Style citations (include page numbers) and bibliographies. Include "SEGO & SALT TAROT GUIDEBOOK SUGGESTION" in the subject line.
