Minimalist decks?

magicjack

I don't think it hurts to have a "minimalistic" deck in your repertoire. I happen to have The Fountain Tarot and I enjoy it. That's as far as minimalist I can go. I can't imagine having The Wild Unknown as my first learning deck. I don't care for it. It's kind of like a fad for the new generation. You don't dare mention the words fortune telling. It's becoming a psychological session. You can only go so far with them. Sometimes they seem to me as if they are art projects from students that need to do something at the end of a semester. They are coming out at a rate of around 10 a day. Many people despise the RWS now. They hate it. It's ugly. If it wasn't for the RWS they wouldn't exist.! I know, Im getting old. I do understand how a tarot deck for one person is something totally different for someone else. If your capable of giving me a good reading with a deck like that then you have tapped into something nice. And that's a good thing.
 

Le Fanu

I don't think it hurts to have a "minimalistic" deck in your repertoire. I happen to have The Fountain Tarot and I enjoy it. That's as far as minimalist I can go. I can't imagine having The Wild Unknown as my first learning deck. I don't care for it. It's kind of like a fad for the new generation. You don't dare mention the words fortune telling. It's becoming a psychological session. You can only go so far with them. Sometimes they seem to me as if they are art projects from students that need to do something at the end of a semester. They are coming out at a rate of around 10 a day. Many people despise the RWS now. They hate it. It's ugly. If it wasn't for the RWS they wouldn't exist.! I know, Im getting old. I do understand how a tarot deck for one person is something totally different for someone else. If your capable of giving me a good reading with a deck like that then you have tapped into something nice. And that's a good thing.
Interesting post which encapsulates so much. There are these trends... Plus I do see a greater awareness over the years of more "discard-the-study" just be intuitive - school of tarot. The logical conclusion of not really wanting to study the difficult parts may well be a greater emptiness in cards. You just sort of look at the blank spaces between the sparseness and - well - just get a message. I suspect you might be right here; maybe growing minimalism and that despising of the RWS among some sections of the tarot community might be connected phenomena. I'm old fashioned and expect symbolism in tarot - not excessively esoteric as, I think - for me - that can really cloud readings if I'm worried about getting the symbolism right.

I have the Fountain and love it - and get it out (having long since tired of the Wild Unknown) - and shuffle it and it's almost like a battery; I know that it doesn't have infinite readings in it like other decks. It really will run out of messages, so I'm reluctant to overuse it.

Then the LoS Mystical Tarot comes along full of symbolism and weird touches and bits of Renaissance portraits and it excites me no end...
 

teomat

Interesting thread. Wouldn't TdMs be considered minimalistic? Or playing cards?

And once you've studied tarot for a while and have learnt some of the esoteric basics, do you still need all the various symbols to appear on the cards?
 

EmpyreanKnight

Interesting thread. Wouldn't TdMs be considered minimalistic? Or playing cards?

I think playing cards are considered as another distinct divinatory system - cartomancy.
 

magicjack

Interesting thread. Wouldn't TdMs be considered minimalistic? Or playing cards?

And once you've studied tarot for a while and have learnt some of the esoteric basics, do you still need all the various symbols to appear on the cards?

I'm glad you mentioned TDM's and playing cards.
 

Barleywine

And once you've studied tarot for a while and have learnt some of the esoteric basics, do you still need all the various symbols to appear on the cards?

This is a good point. Having absorbed the deep esoteric symbolism of the Thoth deck for so long, I find that merely recognizing a card in any deck I'm using, without dwelling on the imagery, kicks in a chain of associations from memory that aren't dependent on the visual symbolism. This may not be what the deck creator intended, but it does create consistent readings. Theoretically, it provides the foundation for using any deck, leaving room for intuition to build on that knowledge base.
 

Gaston D.

Interesting thread. Wouldn't TdMs be considered minimalistic? Or playing cards?

And once you've studied tarot for a while and have learnt some of the esoteric basics, do you still need all the various symbols to appear on the cards?

I might have been inclined to believe that TdMs were more minimalistic than, say, traditional RWS or Thoth decks until I acquired my first TdM this year and started reading Jodorwosky's "Way of the Tarot", which has already convinced me that the Marseille deck is more chock-full of symbolism than first appears on first glance. But I don't think the same claim can be made for, say, the Wild Unknown or (gawd forbid) the Kawaii Tarot and its ilk.

As for bringing outside knowledge to a minimalist deck, of course that would apply to those of us who have been studying other more complex systems for a while. But since many of these decks seem geared towards Tarot novices who don't have that kind of experience, I can't help but feel they're missing out on so many layers of meaning and association by having their first exposure to Tarot be a simplified image that purports to be the "essence" of the card with the expectation that one's intuition will somehow be sufficient to fill in the blanks.

Intuition and personal associations are important tools in interpreting Tarot cards, but they are far from being the only ones.
 

Miss Divine

I am not a fan of minimalist decks whatsoever! The most minimalist deck I have is the Linestrider and even though it's pretty, it does nothing for me. It leaves me cold, and unwilling to use it.
That's also the reason I never purchased the Wild Unknown, even though the whole world seemed to be raving about it.
 

Le Fanu

In terms of TdMs being minimalist - only really up to a point - you have all the Majors and Courts with their symbolism and glances and composition which pulls the eye.

It's when you get the High Priestess with, say, a crescent moon and a pebble or something that I really can't read it and feel that something has been stripped too far. I need layers...