My RWS hate/hate relationship

My favourite decks do not include the RWS per se but rather decks based on it. Personally I found and find it an excellent structure to base my foundation on because:

The structure has a logic that I can appreciate for its own sake without having to learn things I don't want to learn at least for the moment (e.g. astrology, kabbalah, etc). I'm not claiming that knowing these things wouldn't add depth to my readings (don't know if they would or not) BUT it can be seen as a standalone system.

The cards resonate with my experience of living. I don't have to stretch my mind far to find a personal example of any card you care to name. And, in addition, between them they seem to cover my experience of living. Here I'm talking about both my inner and outer life.

The structure seems to lend itself to many different ways of expressing it, and as I see more of those ways the card meanings I add depth to my understanding. I think that's where the strength of the system shows, for me.

It's like reading books. Some books, the words almost are the meaning of the story. You scratch the surface and there's nothing underneath. Other books need you to understand and study lots of other things before you can even start to make sense of them: they are very hard work, and may or my not repay that work. But among the best books are those that you can read on several different levels and go as deep as you want to go (some of these are children's books with those unexpected depths). These books you can go back to and back to and find something new each time.

The RWS system is, to me, like this last category. Easily accessible but you can go as deep as you want to find additional layers of meaning.

I haven't yet found another divination system that, for me, has these qualities.

Aerin

firemaiden said:

Maybe they are

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I believe it XD Though the snobby attitudes are not necessary even in that case.

Its interesting that the RWS came into being with the emergence of modernism, and rather than sinking into obscurity when modernism waned, it actually gained in popularity in the 1960s. I seem to recall that Thoth didn't even become widely available until the late 60s/ early 70s?

I wonder why RWS became a... the template for modern tarot, generating such creative re-imaging in its clones, yet largely faithful to the RWS 'system'... and why Thoth has not to anywhere near the same extent.

It seems to me that attempts have been made to re-envisage tarot, if not re-structure it. Some have been a fascinating addition to the tarot world - Shining Tribe and Margarete Peterson, for example. Others have seemed to me to be lazy, ill-conceived, and just plain daft.

Aoife said:

I wonder why RWS became a... the template for modern tarot, generating such creative re-imaging in its clones, yet largely faithful to the RWS 'system'... and why Thoth has not to anywhere near the same extent.

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Scenic pips. Approachability.

Aoife said:

It seems to me that attempts have been made to re-envisage tarot, if not re-structure it. Some have been a fascinating addition to the tarot world - Shining Tribe and Margarete Peterson, for example. Others have seemed to me to be lazy, ill-conceived, and just plain daft.

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Couldn't agree more. In fact (and Ric, this is not an attack on you) a lot of the LS decks I see seem to be just that, but having gained a lot of respect for Ric, and through him the team and process LS have, I wonder if it's just a lack of understanding on our part. Ric, honey . . . they need books. Or at least websites.

\m/ Kat

You can use the RWS at many different levels and for many different purposes.

It's hard for me to see the Thoth in that light, as it has such a clear esoteric exterior

I didn't mean an insult by suggesting a move to oracles, Ric.

I just mean that if one is "scripting" tarot--basically developing a whole story line to be illustrated by 78 cards--then what's the point? It starts to be a graphic novel in 78 cards, maybe?

Oracles can operate much more freely. Oracles can keep some tarot imagery but aren't bound to it...they can be whatever you want, literally. So why keep to the "tarot" format, if the format is constraining?

(*runs for cover*)

thorhammer said:

Scenic pips. Approachability.Couldn't agree more. In fact (and Ric, this is not an attack on you) a lot of the LS decks I see seem to be just that

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Oh well... some they are! ^_^
And some are not.
(but, please, do not make me talk LS decks here in this thread.)

Debra said:

I just mean that if one is "scripting" tarot--basically developing a whole story line to be illustrated by 78 cards--then what's the point? It starts to be a graphic novel in 78 cards, maybe?

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I'm not sure I understand, so this answer may not be correct.
"Scripting" Tarot happen any time the writer and the artist are two different persons. It starts basically with one writing all the description for every cards, and usually ends up as a two-ways (three ways if you consider the editor) communication-adaptation process.

That, however, does not mean creating necessarely a story line.
Sometimes it is. For instance I am very interested into what I call "narrative decks" that imho are an important new way of doing Tarot.
But even if you don't rely on narrative, the Journey of the Hero makes a powerful intuive structure model to work with.
In these cases a "story line" is part of what you write.

But, if You take the Fey, the Etruscan or the Manga Tarot (I'm stayig on decks I authored), the concept behind does not make a story line.
Or - working on another script I know very well, but I't not mine - the Lo Scarabeo Tarot, it does not make a story line. In this case the author challange was to "study" three different tarot traditions, the RWS, Thoth and Marseille, find the common grounds (both in meaning and in the way the meaning is portrayed - which are two different things), find the differencies and the contracdictions and finally merge everthing into a coherent, harmonious Tarot deck.
I will not enter the specific on howthis was done and the extent it was succesful or not, but it is an example of "scripting" that has nothing to do with building a story line.

I think... but I'm totally not sure of myself, and even less so of the way I can explain it... that the process of designing decks "could be" much more complex and very different from the process of "reading" decks.
I take (if I may) Baba example. I have an utmost respect for her, and Alex work... and we may all safely assume (at least for the sake of discussion) that the decks produced by Baba studio are awesome.
However she starts from a specific choice that should not be given for granted: to work her creative magic within the boundary of the RWS structure (or Thoth or Marseille). To me, at least for the deck I'm curently working on, is not the beginning of the design process but quite an advanced step.
My disconfort has been (the sense of my first post) realizing that all roads brought me back there. And that forced me to discard something of the possibilities I was seeking to incorporate in the deck.

From a Reader point of view... I read Aerin post and I undertstand it completely.
From a Designer point of view, it is a powerful choice that almost shape the decks.
So many decks, more and less inspired, were built in this way... that, taken at itc core, produce a clone deck, while taken with true creativity brings different, evolved results.

However, from a designer point of view I'm working on a railroad, on a fixed path... that set my beginning point, my end point and all points in between. I have still an huge choice on how to travel between those points... but it would be a different way to go off-road and see different landscapes.

RWS (and RWS structure) is not all that is Tarot, nor all it was, not all it may be.
So, when I work with a designer point of view, I must as myself questions on:
- what I want to do
- what is the best way to reach my expressive goals
- what are the subsidiary consequences of those choices
etc...

A very simple example...
How should I number Strength and Justice?
Now, Waite modification was due to Astrological concerns, to place Libra and Leo in correct order.
Why I should I keep that in a deck that does not follow Astrological associations?
There are answers, but they are not so obvious.

So, when I start wrking on "scripting" a deck, what I'm doing right now, is starting from a clear slate, trying to understand not just WHAT is in the *traditional* decks, but WHY, and trying to create a deck whose all parts (artistic and structural) merge toghter into something *usable*.
One of the considerations that I find most important is "recognizabilty", or the fact that the new deck may appear familiar to the average user, and therefore may be used with not so much study and effort, and used in the way people are used to read Tarot.
But it is just one of the possibilities. There are decks that are built NOT to be recognized. Of course they are more difficult, but that's a choice that brings different consequences.

I make three examples more.

Let's take the RWS and the famous sign in the Sun card. For years I read many and many explanation to that sign, thata dded layers and layers of mening to the card. I have seen those meanings integrated in many new decks.
I'm convinced that the sign was just a mistake, caused by something heavy falling dawn on the lithographic stone during the printing process.

Let's take the Manga Tarot. I made the *structural* choice of chaning the RWS male figures into female figures and the other way round. That caused a chaning in the order of some Arcana.
Why? To gimmick? A bit ^_^
But I think that that change is quite important to make people think and see different on the cards. It is an important part of the way the deck work, intuitively.

In the Thoth deck, Aleister Crowely moved the Aleph cabbalistic association from the Magician (male energy card) to the Fool (gender neutral card) (Thoth expert will kill me for this simplicistic explanation).
This modification and all the structural cascade of it, was the key for the trasformation of Tarot in the direction of gender parity.
It is not a small thing, even if one is not aware of it. Structure, when done in a good way, works underneath a deck... at an unconscius level (both in the artist and in the reader) and gives unity, purpose, direction to a deck.
And sometimes a structural alteration is needed in order to achieve specific functions.

(well... lunch break long gone, I must return to my work. I hope this message may explain in a better way what I was trying to say and discuss.
Discuss, because I have much more questions than answers... and this is a deck creation subforum, so there may be people that face the same problems I'm facing).

ric

RiccardoLS said:

The structure of decks, imho, is something really important. (And... I'm afraid many times need to stay flowing and plastic.).
I mean... how many readers are confortable with Astrology and use Astrological associations in their attributions? Quite a few, but I would say less than 30%. How about alchemy? I would say under 3%.
So, why we use that in decks that should need that not? ^_^
It should be the other way round: *structure* should serve the way we read Tarot and not the other way round.

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OK, I've probably been able to follow at most one percent of this discussion. I may or may not understand what you are talking about re: structure.

The example I can use is the Buddha Tarot. Bob Place took the majors and used them to illustrate the life of the Prince Siddhartha-->Gautama-->the Buddha. He created a new major--Parinirvana--at the end of the majors. Is this what you mean by a "structure"?

The minors are based most closely on the Tarot de Marseilles AFAICT. The "courts" are Dakinis, (sacred) Animals, Saktis, and Buddhas.

It's taken me five months of work for me to understand all of the associations and correspondences (partly because it's a Tibetan Buddhist deck and my background in Buddhism is more in the Zen tradition).

In the case of this particular deck I believe the artist and author were the same person, and the deck is a monumental achievement (and beautiful to boot), but not very accessible. I've been putting off getting the Alchemical Renewed for the same reason. I already have one full-time job that has nothing to do with Tarot.

M_M~

Moderator note:

I would ask that the discussion centre around the question which is roughly the positives and negatives of using the RWS (or Thoth or Marseille) structure to develop a deck and not into a discussion on LS decks or comments on rightness of the question itself.

Thanks,
Marion
Global Moderator

rwcarter said:

The "new" tarot might only need 40 cards or it might need 100. 22 Majors? Maybe 30 are necessary now. Court cards? Royalty isn't as important in most of today's world as it was in times past. Maybe Court cards are unnecessary. Or maybe they need to be re-imagined as "Family" cards as some deck creators have begun doing. Four Minor Arcana suits? Earth, air, fire and water? How about a suit dedicated to spirit? (I know some people believe that the Majors represent spirit, but I'm throwing things out for the sake of argument.) Why only 4 Minor Arcana suits? Maybe 6 or 7 are necessary to reflect today's world. Are 10 pip cards per suit not enough, too many or just right? Does tarot even need to be cards? <snip>

The next question then is who, exactly, gets to decide what the "new" tarot will look like? <snip>

There are always going to be people who are going to argue that anything other than 78 cards arranged in a specific sequence with a set number of Major Arcana, Court cards and Minor Arcana pip cards is not tarot. That's their right. And anybody who creates tarot should know going in that they're never going to make those people happy. <snip>

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All true, which seems ironic because the original sequence of the trumps is not known IIRC nor were the contents of the trumps established for some time after the invention of the game. Why shouldn't there be cards that take quantum physics into account (to borrow an idea from another recent thread)? If that makes the deck an "oracle," who really cares? Maybe oracles are where the action really is because there are fewer perceived constraints on the form.

M_M~

While there are a lot of insulting pompous Waite texts, tarot is a picture story and has to be measured accordingly. After a century of tradition, the RWS can not be simply tossed aside after a good chuckle as easily as the bulk of Waite's absurd scripts. The RWS, despite its mutant nature, has went on to great commercial success. This makes perfect sense in light of the fact that the pips were revolutionized into easily interpreted picture cards, which made it readily accessible to non-occultist dabblers, hence the tarot's massive explosion in popularity. How many of you can honestly say you would have ever heard of tarot if there had been no RWS beginner deck for you to break the ice?

So essentially Waite acted as a tarot pimp, selling out the tarot for his own personal fame and fortune, selling out sacred occult secrets in THE prostitute of tarots, the RWS. Obviously, a true occultist would never have done that. The RWS could be titled the beginners' tarot for the masses.

{Some off topic comments removed in the interest of keeping the discussion civilized. See moderator note above. Marion}