Prefered Placements

rabidwolfie

Ok, so I'm SLOOOOOOOOOWLY working on making a new deck, although I don't know how long it will be before I make enough progress worth sharing. But I wanted to ask my fellow enthusiasts about a small issue.

This deck is a bit of a theme, but not just the usual RWS clone. I have trouble with memorization, even key word memorization, but I also love symbolism, so I'm creating a deck from scratch that will have symbolism I personally understand versus learning what someone else's old picture's mean.

With that, I'm not sure if I should follow RWS tradition or go with the traditional placements for Strength and Justice. I can work with either one since I don't do numerology. But should I ever actually manage to complete this thing and share it, what would you prefer?

Should Strength or Justice take the number 8 placement? I've heard that 8 is a more balanced number and therefore should be justice, but 11 seems perfectly balanced to me. Put a line down the middle and you have a 1 on either side. But what would you prefer?
 

wooden-eye

Hi Rabidwolfie! (freaky name by the way- as a child I had a pathological fear of rabies, due to a public info poster on my walk to infant school.)
When talking of balance on this subect of 8s and 11s- this is pretty much echoes the opinions you will likely gather on this quandry for deck makers.
I have two thoughts.
Perhaps pick the way withwhich you are most comfortable. It is your creation and is not really a deal-breaker for too many taroists.
The next would be to leave those two cards unnumbered- or even all major arcana and just pop the titles on.
Just to say, Strength at 8 is my personal favourite, but this is how I learned the system and thus how I read.
 

rabidwolfie

LOL Amusing coincidence about my nickname.

As to your suggestion, I like that idea! I never thought to simply leave all the majors unnumbered, but it makes a lot of sense and a much cleaner image. Thank you greatly for this suggestion. I think I will do that indeed.

Also an amusing anecdote about something that happened to me not twenty minutes ago.
I was trying to decide which card to work on next and decided to leave Justice and Strength alone until I had come to a decision.

So I reach for a nearby deck that happened to be handy, spread the cards a little, although I did NOT shuffle, and grabbed one at random. It just so happened to be Strength.
"Haha. Very funny." I actually said this out loud and put the deck back down to pursue other distraction for a while.
Finally I come back to my deck and say, again aloud, "Don't you dare give me Justice. Please don't be- Oh god it's Justice."
I'm not sure if the deck was giving me its opinion or trying to call me out for trying to procrastinate, but I found the coincidence greatly amusing.

My cards love to pull pranks on me.