Tarot Card Puzzle

[Saturn]

*Rips bong*

What if the Tarot card puzzle is literally Ariane talking about all the different incarnations of herself? There was another dude who mentioned Bioresonance enabling remote viewing of other's dreams. If it's like Silent Hill, then peoples' subconscious can absolutely be blended into the narrative/reality.

The Lovers --Kitezh -is a red, desert-like planet...which could explain the red desert symbolism we see with Elster, Ariane, and the Penrose-512. It symbolizes love, relationships, passion, desire and choices. Maybe that big red desert Elster is traversing is Kitezh, maybe that is where is ship is. I know it mentions farming, and someone is going to be like "What are they farming?" Idk, lesbianism. I have no idea.

Death- Leng and Sierpenski -being slowly morphed into a cancerous blob of flesh. Maybe Alina Seo, seeing as she was repurposed as a mine worker in Sierpinski. Makes sense because the meaning of the Death in tarot is change or transformation. Could also involve Falke? Since she is kind of a glorious amalgamation of Ariane and Elster who is also slowly corrupted, came "Down with the Sickness" as a Disturbed fan might say.

The Tower - Vineta --might relate to her previous incarnation / potential alternate self taking place in the war, maybe Alina? It's a stretch. We know Alina served on Vineta with Lilith and that Alina is the spitting image of Ariane (or vice versa) and Elster do be looking like Lilith quite a bit. The card symbolizes disruption and conflict, chaos and destruction.

The Moon--Rotfront--could be Arine's childhood--could be, could be. We do know that those Itous do be losing eyes left, front, and center. Lilith, Erika (Death photo), later Isa. We already know or can theorize Lilith is the OG template for Elster. Girl is just doomed to be blind in one eye, I don't know man, I don't know.

The Sun--Buyan seems to be linked to the OG Empress (Imperial Palace). The Sun symbolizes success, confidence, and enlightenment.

The Star--Heimat--I got ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for Heimat, however it may be tied to something extraterrestrial. The Star is symbolizes hope, inspiration, and beauty, it also comes after the Tower (numerically).

To me, there is a connection here. I could be wrong, also not sure if anyone mentioned this before. If they did, let me know what you've found lol. Fuel the conspiracies, do it.

[ᗩᑕᕼEᖇOᑎ]

Well, I like theory crafting and I'm actually reasonably confident I've Signalis figured out.
Bold claim, BUT I can explain.

First of all, I've actually gone out of my way to research and read all the source material Signalis is based on. Not an exhaustive list, but here is the ones relevant to this question.
1) An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce
This is a short story about a dude who essentially finds himself in the land of dead.
2) The King in yellow, Robert Chambers: This book appears in game. It's a short story collection and many quotes in Signalis come from this book. ADDITIONALLY, the author of this book actually takes many of the ideas from "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" and makes it his own/re-interprets this. So Carcosa becomes much "scarier" than originally depicted.
3) Festival and Color out of Space by HP Lovecraft. First is quoted in game "great holes are secretly digged blah blah", second I won't explain since I've no idea if you've gotten all endings. Additionally, HP Lovecraft was also deeply inspired by Robert Chambers.
4) Isle of the Dead, a series of paintings irl. In-game, those are attributed to Ariane.

It's worth mentioning a core question of SIgnalis is about the "life"of a "copy" or a "derivative" work. Like how Replikas are copies of Gestalts or how in the 4 examples above there's a clear "line of transmission". Bierce inspired Chambers who in turn Inspired Lovecraft. There are other lines of transmission in game, but lets stick with this for now.

Second of all, I have been reading tarot cards irl since I was 14. I'm 28 now. So, that's a while.

OKAY INTRO OVER

Lets dive in.
First of all, I don't know if you've noticed but SIgnalis is set in a retrofuturist alternate version of our OWN solar system. Bear that in mind before we go on, each planet in Signalis corresponds with one in our system. (also check the solar system in Signalis).

Second, the tarot cards don't always represent what's personal to Elster and Ariane. neither read tarot cards, but interestingly the tarot cards are used as aliases by the Empire spies. (Remember Sun's note?). Bioresonance passes on memories and emotions involuntarily. Rotfront in game is a creation by the "Flesh" from the memories of Ariane, Adler and the spy "sun".

"The Lovers --Kitezh -is a red, desert-like planet...which could explain the red desert symbolism we see with Elster, Ariane, and the Penrose-512. It symbolizes love, relationships, passion, desire and choices. Maybe that big red desert Elster is traversing is Kitezh, maybe that is where is ship is. I know it mentions farming, and someone is going to be like "What are they farming?" Idk, lesbianism. I have no idea."

Kitzeh is Mars. Or at least the Signalis version of it.
I do think the in-game events disprove your hypothesis. When we first leave the ship in it's a snowy area, and the game is set on SIerpinkski, which isn't on Kitzeh. Second the landscape the ship is in isn't always red. The colours there change depending on the ending for one thing (in leave it's blue, start of the game it's snowy and pale, etc). Third, if we compare the colour palette from the Kitzeh posters to the red landscape, Kitzeh is more orange and dusty, rather than stark red and black.
Additionally both Elster and Ariane have no in-game connection to Kitzeh, interestingly enough, and out of all mentioned in game planets, Kitzeh has the least lore. It's the place "Sun" fled to.
My crackpot theory is that if Signalis ever gets a successor set in the same universe the likeliest place is Kitzeh.
That aside, I do think there is a hint that connects the Lovers to Elster and Ariane.

Remember the Isle of the Dead painting? When you remove it with the Acetone it bleeds. The spooky black arch imho is the "entrance" to the Isle of the Dead, aka Carcosa. In Bierce's story Carcosa is also covered in tombstones which explains the black obelisks we see there. Additionally in The King in Yellow, Carcosa is re-interpreted as a place with black seas and "strange moons" etc. DO you remember running around near a black sea in game picking up paper? Paper that literally quotes The King in Yellow and an Ihabitant of Carcosa?

The lovers on the painting is pretty obvious. It's telling you that both of your "souls" so to speak are constantly being called back to "carcosa". In Signalis, Carcosa is a limbo space created by Ariane's bioresonance. It's open only to Elster and Ariane. It's the resting place of their souls. Adler can't enter, and Falke gets overwritten. It's theirs and theirs alone. The penrose was where they met, where they fell in love and the penrose became their tomb. The penrose was in space, with no end in sight and no return possible. That's very clearly a limbo space. Elster and Ariane could only ever love each other in that limbo. It was all they had. It was their tomb and their safe haven away from the nation's prying eyes.

Death- Leng and Sierpenski -being slowly morphed into a cancerous blob of flesh. Maybe Alina Seo, seeing as she was repurposed as a mine worker in Sierpinski. Makes sense because the meaning of the Death in tarot is change or transformation. Could also involve Falke? Since she is kind of a glorious amalgamation of Ariane and Elster who is also slowly corrupted, came "Down with the Sickness" as a Disturbed fan might say.

The "Flesh" itself isn't cancerous. The radiation sickness is only the first stage. Gestalts merge with the Flesh and live on after death in a hive mind, but Replikas are unable to merge with the flesh. Replika flesh is poisonous to humans (remember the notes?). Replikas don't disolve like Gestalts. Death isn't really a bad thing in the tarot, it simply means irreversible change. but the flesh of a Replika isn't the same as the flesh of a gestalt, so the Replikas are trapped in "Hell" unable to transcend their forms and become one. For that reason I don't think it involves Falke.
I think this is quite literally the fate of every gestalt on Leng. To become one with the sea of flesh. Remember the quote on the beach?
"It calls to me, in a sea of flesh, we will become one, but I can never go back to being me."
Leng is probably Triton, a neptunian moon. Additionally Leng appears in Hp Lovecraft's work.

The Tower - Vineta --might relate to her previous incarnation / potential alternate self taking place in the war, maybe Alina? It's a stretch. We know Alina served on Vineta with Lilith and that Alina is the spitting image of Ariane (or vice versa) and Elster do be looking like Lilith quite a bit. The card symbolizes disruption and conflict, chaos and destruction.

It's not that much of a stretch. In the fake emnding we see Alina and Lilith on Vineta it's being bombarded by the Empire. vineta is likely to be earth. It's also the place that gestalts were preserved. It represents that disaster I think. Additionally, Lilith is definetly the template for Elster. Gestalts are erased from public record when cryopreserved. How did Alina end up on Leng? Likely its' because she was Lilith's lover and would have protested her squeeze being put on deep freeze. So the Tower is a personal disaster too for both of them.

The Moon--Rotfront--could be Arine's childhood--could be, could be. We do know that those Itous do be losing eyes left, front, and center. Lilith, Erika (Death photo), later Isa. We already know or can theorize Lilith is the OG template for Elster. Girl is just doomed to be blind in one eye, I don't know man, I don't know.

It definetly is Ariane's childhood, as well as where she also met the Itou twins. The eye isn't just limited to the Itous, Adler also loses an eye.
So the moon means the unconscious, lies, deception, not seeing the truth, being manipulated by unseen forces. Losing an eye is symbolic in that sense. Additionally, Rotfront is likely IO, and remember when Elster finishes with a room, the flesh eats it. How could Elster be on Rotfront after being in "Nowhere" which is at the bottom of the sierpinski mines? Additionally Alder also gets pushed down there by Isa. So I think the moon tells us the nature of Rotfront. Rotfront is a "lie". It's an illusion generated from Ariane and Adler's memories (remember, Adler's gestalt likely met Ariane and he's shown in the Rotfront sequence beforehand) to achieve a goal. What is the goal? Getting Elster to complete some kind of ritual. When Elster is done with an area, the flesh no longer recreates it and simply goes back to how it was. Elster and Adler are in reality, still with in the mines of Leng, deep in Nowhere. This is where the entrance to carcosa is located too.
You are literally being decieved and manipulated by the flesh, or rather the "master of the flesh" to complete an eldritch ritual. (The festival by lovecraft is about worms performing a creepy ritual, worms pretending to be people btw, great holes quote comes from there).

"The Sun--Buyan seems to be linked to the OG Empress (Imperial Palace). The Sun symbolizes success, confidence, and enlightenment."
Buyan is also likely venus. Sun is also the name of the spy. The spy "sun" is very likely to be Adler's gestalt, remember all the fuss about the spy in Kolibri's computer on Rotfront? I think the Sun is more about Adler's gestalt and Adler himself than the Empress. Sun and Adler are both fanatics devoted to the cause. Sun to his Empress, Adler to his Falke. Adler is also the only one who understands the full the full truth of the cycle and keeps his memories between each cycle. It also is poetic that Adler is utterly powerless despite his knowledge. Signalis is a very cynical and hopeless game after all.

The Star--Heimat--I got ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for Heimat, however it may be tied to something extraterrestrial. The Star is symbolizes hope, inspiration, and beauty, it also comes after the Tower (numerically). The star is actually the symbol of two things in game. 1) Eusan nation uses 3 gold stars on their flag. Additionally Heimat is the capital of the Eusan nation. People think Heimat is located on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Would be fitting. Also, the Nation arose from rebelling against the Empire, so the star is propaganda, "new hope".
2) the star symboilizes bioresonance. 3 red stars on a forehead denote bioresonance in the nation. I think it also appears on that song of the stars book that's banned. Bioresonance is heavily linked to space and the stars. But bioresonance often causes suffering, Nation is miserable, Ariane is unable to die. False hope. Cynical game.
On a personal note I've seen the Star appear in my spreads beside the seven of swords to indicate self deceptive hope. Not really relevant, just remembered that.

Btw thanks for posting this.