Ciro,
Your points are all well taken, and I know you're always looking to challenge yourself. I'm especially interested in the how FAR you can take the histrical component... to show us something new. Give us undiscovered worlds to conquer.
Also, I'm very happy to hear you say
mini novel. A narrative, but nothing too elaborate or convoluted, so that there's more symbolic flex in the cards, if you know what I mean. There's a great advantage I think to Tarots illustrating not just a set sequence of stops on the "Major Arcana" or "Suit" trains, but rather illustrating a world entire; the cards should be windows into that world. Less literal, and more supple for readability. The Fradella Tarot is a perfect example of how to make this work beautifully.
I'm reminded of Mary Greer's fabulous article about the Waite-Smith Minors and the Grail Hallows. While I do accept her reading of the placement of the scenes within those 4 narratives, I also like that there's a certain narrative
give to Pixie's scenes, and (due to Waite's total silence on the possible connection) the symbols remain specific without boxing us into a rigid flowchart of activity. There's a happy medium between building a world that invites participation and laying down a codified cha-cha-cha chart like those old dancemats with printed footstep markers.
I know you know what I mean.
Riccardo posted recently about the future of narrative in Tarot and I think he makes an incisive, cogent point with a built in caveat. I don't think Tarot-as-strict-literal-linear-narrative is interesting or useful. Mark McElroy made a bold stab in this direction with his Elves, but I feel like a lot of the resistance to the deck (aside from the CGI recoil) is its strict adherence to a single narrative line from which the cards (as in his gored High Priestess) are difficult to divorce... I understand his logic and applaud his boldness, but in a way the Elves deck is an experiment that proved something I've suspected: some element of the reading process demands a firm but
loose symbolic framework that invites gradual exploration... a soft trellis! A flexible frame that grips and guides our intuition like a half-open hand.
Build yourself a world, Ciro! All I ask is that you look in the parts of town and types of landscape you might have avoided or rushed past before.
And then let us come visit.
Scion