Where the material & the ethereal meet
An interview with Xaviera López, our creative director
Today, we’re featuring an interview with Xaviera López, the creative director of The Rebis. Xaviera is a Chilean artist and animator who developed our brand identity and helps curate the artwork and stories featured in The Rebis. She also created our front and back covers along with many different illustrations you’ll find in each publication. Xaviera’s linear drawings, animations, and short-format looping videos incorporate simplified yet highly contextual self-portraits and images that display the meeting place of the material and the ethereal, and challenge perceived delineations between the felt and seen.
On a personal note, I am deeply grateful for Xaviera’s creative vision, artistic guidance, and enthusiastic participation in this project over the past few years. I first became aware of Xaviera’s artwork through her illustrations in Jessica Dore’s book “Tarot for Change.” I reached out to her on Instagram on a whim after having an intensely spiritual dream—I felt intuitively that she was the right person to help me translate the elements of this dream into a design I could get tattooed on my arm. Months (and a new tattoo) later, I had the idea for The Rebis and asked if she was interested in being my artistic partner. Over the years, our collaboration has been filled with magical synchronicities. She unravels words to their marrow, extracts their golden essence, and creates a magnificent home for them to live in. We work in different hemispheres—so while I focus on The Rebis in spring and summer, Xaviera works during her fall and winter. This balance feels inherently rhythmic and aligned. Her trust in me, and belief in this project, have been invaluable.
Here, we chat about her connection to tarot, her creative process, and how she’s alchemized her grief into art. I encourage you to follow her on Instagram to explore more of her work.
The Star issue is going to print in the next month and will be out later this fall. We can’t wait to reveal all of the stories, poems, comics, essays, and art in this volume. There are a few sneak peeks below — and so much more to share soon!
In the meantime, if you’re excited about what we’re creating, consider buying our print publications, sharing our Substack, and recommending us to friends. With the frustrating decline of social media platforms for discovery, we’re relying more and more on word of mouth for growth. Thank you for your support!
Hi Xavi! Let’s kick off this interview with some personal history. How did you begin working with tarot?
I was very attracted to tarot (and many other “occult” things) as a little girl. Then, because of a series of mysterious events in my early life, I got scared of it. When Jessica Dore started posting her daily cards on Twitter (now X) with short insights, the symbols and her interpretations resonated so much with me that my interest was relit. I don’t believe in anything predictive or prescriptive. I just try my best while surrendering to a higher power. Tarot is an old, interesting tool to reflect on and process life.
Love that story so much — and it was through your illustrations for Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change that I became aware of your art! You recently developed that body of work into a gorgeous tarot deck. Can you describe what it was like to illustrate the cards?
I was so into Jessica’s work, I used to take screenshots of her posts very often, and write key concepts in my journals. The posts always felt extremely synchronic with my life, too. So when she approached me to illustrate the cards for her book I just couldn’t believe it. It was an invitation to reconnect with these symbols and meanings I loved as a child. For me, it was a perfect process. We talked and trusted each other right away, and then she gave me tons of space and creative freedom. At the very beginning, I took one of her classes (Tarot 101) to get a big picture of everything. I was so inspired!
The only requirement was to base the work on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck by Pamela Colman Smith, so I did some investigation. Turns out, I had just traveled to London and was instinctively drawn to many of the places, objects, and symbols from her life without knowing!
To illustrate the deck, I just placed each card one by one in front of my desk and asked them to tell me their secrets, and on each card I found layers and layers of meaning.
I wanted to address this project from a more intuitive place rather than an intellectual one, but of course, some investigation was necessary because time is decontextualizing.
I would say understanding the cards is still an ongoing process, but I have a deep nonverbal relationship with many of them: Strength is warm and yellow, I can feel it in my belly. The Fool is like crispy spring air. The Star has a sparkling yet wet grassy sound.
In Tarot for Change, The Empress bears your likeness—why did you pick that card?
Yes, it’s a self-portrait! It was a psycho magic trick (as in Jodorowsky’s work). I felt like I was living too much in my masculine so I wanted to experience and embody the feminine in her way — The Empress — which is an archetypal way. I’m of course not talking about gender roles or culture, but spiritual qualities. I felt like a floating brain, always pushing myself harder. Now I wanted to feel the earth with my feet and grow roots. I wanted slowness, softness, darkness, quietness, fertility, patience, tenderness. Moving from the brain to the heart.
The Rebis is all about tarot and creativity. How do you define creativity and what influences your creative process?
We are all inherently creative, but culture often cuts us from that part of us. I find this terribly sad; I want everyone to get in touch with their creativity and unique expression of it.
To me, creativity is a conversation with subtle energies. Playfulness. Connection. Noticing something, wanting to share your experience with people the best you can. Embracing mistakes, trying again. Bringing into the world things that didn’t exist before, oftentimes different versions of what you initially had in mind.
My creative rituals include drawing every day, even if it’s for an hour. Meditating, journaling, and trying to be as present as possible are very useful practices. I used to be much more disciplined and prolific, now I’m at a very particular time where I’m more open and flowing. Sitting a lot with my feelings because I’ve been grieving.
On that same note, can you share more about what your experience has been like being the creative director for The Rebis?
Before working full-time as an artist, I worked for years as an art director (and teacher, designer, illustrator, yoga instructor, hairdresser, etcetera). While I was doing all those things, I felt like I was wasting my time, but I’ve come to realize that those experiences actually enrich whatever I make. I’ve always had this vision of creating a world I can inhabit, therefore I really want to make everything there is to make. Working (very) remotely, I don’t often have the possibility to do material work (only digital), but it’s something I know how to do and love.
Working with you on The Rebis has been such a pleasure because we connected easily. We are both very reliable and efficient but also creative and playful, it’s like we speak the same language. Then again, I’ve had a lot of space and creative freedom to develop my vision, and I think that’s when I get the most inspired and enthusiastic about projects. We make a great team. I also love the format of choosing one card per year and going deep into it.
And for someone like me, so used to working completely alone, connecting with other creatives around a common theme has been so enriching, not only for my art practice but my life in general.
This is the third issue that we’ve worked on together—what inspired you for The Star, and how was it different than the work you did for our Wheel of Fortune and Chariot issues?
Well, since 2020, some of the people I love the most have died or gotten sick, plus the pandemic and what is always happening in the world... I’ve been grieving almost nonstop, I feel like I’m in my fifth caterpillar cocoon butterfly cycle.
When you first contacted me (in March 2022, to begin the inaugural Wheel of Fortune issue), I hadn’t worked for a whole year and I was ready to do something again. I didn’t want to work on projects that didn’t feel aligned with me or what I wanted for the world. I was also heavily questioning my “style.” As they say, style is a trap, so privately I work with many other techniques, graphic styles, and creative processes than the one I am known for, but I almost never show those pieces on social media. My style felt too clean and neat, and my reality was everything but.
For The Rebis, I had the chance to work a lot with watercolor, which is messy and full of (hopefully) happy accidents. You have to accept the lack of control. Water has this therapeutic quality to it, too. This is something I appreciate because through the work I was able to process a lot of what was happening in my personal life. This was pure magic. It’s not always possible to alchemize pain into a project, but The Rebis gave me that gift.
This year, things felt different. I was extremely inspired by the theme of The Star, so I wanted to work fast and make what I had in mind. I decided to use a language I’m more fluent in and that felt cohesive with the theme.
Some of the keywords that came up to me while I was creating the art include:
Hope. Electric. Distillation. Ether. Reincarnation. Aerial ocean. Breasts. Alien. Nurturing nature. Temperance without wings. Cornucopia. Mother matter. Inner resources. Womb. The horrors persist, but so do I.
Many of the stories and artwork in The Star issue center on the concept of “hope.” What does this mean to you?
Because of everything I’ve been going through, I’ve been experiencing a tremendous amount of vulnerability. It’s scary; I wouldn’t have chosen consciously to feel this way. It actually makes me anxious sometimes.
I remember feeling like raw meat, like I was walking around with my heart on a tray for life to do whatever it wants with it. Over and over again.
All these events and grief cycles have progressively peeled layers of who I believed to be, and behind all those layers I found out there is a lot of love. For the big and little things. Pure love.
That’s hope for me, at this point.
There’s an essay in the upcoming issue of The Star written by Elizabeth Marian Charles titled “The Living and Dead Carry On,” that I’d like to quote, as it was so helpful to articulate all this:
“Perhaps this is the wisdom of The Star: we carry on living in the face of death with full awareness of our own vulnerability, and full awareness of the transformation that awaits us on the other side of the underworld. We can only return to wholeness when we hold this contradiction, like Innana bridging heaven and earth.”
Any advice for how to center creativity, art, and beauty during times of immense grief and uncertainty?
I think discipline is a container for creativity. So just working, doing. Showing up. Releasing the expectations or the outcomes (good or bad). Connecting with what brings you pleasure and joy. Trying to be present.
Once, I told someone that I was so tired of living in the apocalypse. And that very special someone told me: “Hey, we are eating watermelon.”
Final question: Do you have any favorite pieces of art or writing that you feel connect with the archetype of The Star?
A few years ago I made a little playlist dedicated to my Aquarius moon that is very much the vibe of The Star, so here it is:
so inspiring to read about Xaviera's work + to order her deck! very looking forward to The Star issue... ⭐️