BRITISH OCCULTIST, magician, and mountaineer Aleister Crowley was infamous in the 1940s for myriad reasons, among them his creation of the Thoth Tarot deck. Two of these cards—the Lovers and the Devil—serve as the symbolic foundation of Portland musician Johanna Warren’s twin albums, the newly released Gemini I and the forthcoming Gemini II.
Gemini I isn’t Warren’s first concept album—last year’s nūmūn centers on the restorative energy of the moon. Her latest weaves references to the Thoth tradition into her own personal narratives amidst the mystical folk of tenderly picked guitar, haunting piano melodies, flute, mellotron, and synths. While the centuries-old practice of reading tarot requires deep, esoteric knowledge of its many complexities, Warren uses it simply as a means to connect with her intuition. “For me it’s just a really beautiful and effective tool, like a library of visual, symbolic archetypes, breaking down the human experience into these building blocks that everyone can understand,” she tells me over tea. “It raises so many interesting questions, like do you believe in predestination, do you believe in prophecy?”