LittleBuddha said:
And reading through, I noticed how many members seem to no longer exist! Vincent was a hoot. If you didn't have 'evidence', he wasn't interested, lol. But he questioned stuff .. and I like that.
Hi, LB!
I actually agree with Vincent...
On the one hand, I believe people have the right to believe whatever they want. But on the other hand, if someone states their theory as an historical fact, then refuses to provide any evidence to back it up, then continues to state it as historical fact, I do feel these statements should be challenged, otherwise some readers may form the wrong impression about what the historical facts tell us.
In general I feel history is very important. It's true that the commonly accepted view of how a specific incident happened can change, but it's important that we examine what evidence is available and think about how it might or might not be valid, rather than simply ignoring historical evidence and believing whatever we want, which would result in simply living in a fantasy land. I'm very disturbed by a tendency among some people to utterly deny historical facts and believe, for example, that the U.S. never landed on the moon. There are other, more sinister examples of this tendency which I won't specify because I'm not trying to be provocative.
It often happens that the real truth is more ambiguous, less black-and-white, and more interesting than the fantasies that people create about it. In this case, there seems to be a view developing among some members that Pamela was an angel, an intuitive artistic genius, a free spirit, who was weighed down by mean old Arthur with his paternalistic, hidebound Golden Dawn system which he imposed on Pamela's deck. This colorful theory has several problems, one of which being that
Pamela was a member of the Golden Dawn. So, rather than all those GD-inspired elements being a foreign influence imposed on the deck, the evidence instead strongly implies that Pamela would have seen the GD influences as being perfectly natural. And who knows, she may indeed have added some of them herself, rather than being forced to against her will by Arthur.
I know little about their relationship or the creating of the RWS.
No one really knows, except what we can surmise from the available evidence, which consists mainly of Arthur's statements which strongly suggest that the project was initiated by him and that Pamela was commissioned to illustrate the deck according to Arthur's directions, and also Pamela's reference to the project as "a job for very little cash" (or something like that, I don't have the reference handy), which suggests she did not look upon the project as hers but rather it was a "job" she was commissioned to execute. It's certainly possible that Arthur was lying, but, like most conspiracy theories, one has to twist the facts to fit the theory to such an extent that the whole thing is really not plausible.
As a modern similarity, it might be interesting to know how someone like Lee worked with the artist of 'The Gay Tarot', as I asume the dynamics are quite similar (forgive me if I have got that wrong, Lee). And when we think of 'The Gay Tarot', we do not think of Lee as being secondary to the artist.
I wrote a verbal description for each card, describing the general scene and any particular symbolism I felt was important to include. Antonella illustrated the cards from these descriptions.
If this methodology was used by Smith and Waite (and it seems probable that it was, or something like it), then I think it's stretching things to refer to Smith as the creator. I suppose it all depends on how one defines "creator." In the case of the Gay Tarot, I decided what would be on the cards. I have the utmost admiration for Antonella's talents and I feel she contributed enormously to the project, but if someone referred to her as the creator of the deck, I would feel that this was an incorrect statement. She was
not the creator. If a different artist had done the deck, it would have been a different deck but it still would have been Lee Bursten's Gay Tarot.
-- Lee
