Major Tom said:
For me, and this is my opinion, a tarot deck is a deck of 78 cards consisting of 22 trump cards, 16 court cards and 40 pip cards. There are probably many, many exceptions that people could point to, but that only reminds me of the saying, 'the exception proves the rule'. It's my belief that there's something very important in the very structure of a tarot deck and that any variation becomes a diversion on the Royal Road.
Up until recently I would have agreed 100% with this. I'm not so sure now. I am coming slowly to the view that their are two different types of tarot decks. They are the 22 Trump, and the 78 card tarot readers deck of 22 trumps, 56 pips and 16 courts. The difference for me lies with the purpose.... I think...maybe
This is new territory for me which is coming to light as I create my deck.
If the purpose is reading - though of course you can do majors only readings - a 78 card deck is preferable. Simplisitcally the three card groups could be identified as the psychospiritual, the mundane/situational and the people/cast of characters. The trumps, on the other hand, can have a whole range of tarot purposes, whether they be a map for studying the western mystery tradition - a guide for initiates?; as a jumping off point an exploration of the history of tarot and how the 22 cards came to be the accepted number and why?; a Middle Ages version of what psychology has so ineptly tried to create with theories of human developoment or personality theories.... maybe many more things.
I am finding, as I create my majors, that I am less and less inclined towards moving past them into the realm of the pips and courts. I feel that, creatively, psychologically, spiritually, the trumps are complete as a free-standing set of interweaving symbolic images. And yet, they are incomplete in the sense that after creating one set of 22 images, they ask (and have already asked) that a second set be created, and a third and fourth and so on. They seem, to me, to be an exploration into the unseen, the unconscious, other realms of existence, the inner world, the underworld, the over world ... whatever terminology you might wish to use.
Of course, I may not be talking about tarot
per se here, but my own journey/relationship with tarot. I may not be touching the universals of tarot, but my own need for exploring tarot through art. I just have a sense that the pips and the courts, though of inestimable value in reading (which is not my area of interest) have been tacked-on to the 'real' tarot.... that, just maybe, the 'real' tarot's purpose is not reading.
This is not meant, in any way, to disparage the value of reading tarot cards. In fact, as my past psychology and social work supervisor once said ... "If I want help with a problem, I won't go see one of 'us', I'll go to a tarot reader." I just think that there is dual process which occurs - one that is reading related, and the other? As yet I have no word for it ... it is, currently, for me, an indefinable something - a numinous purpose I suppose. contained in the trumps. Will I feel differently if I begin working on the pips and courts? I just don't know! I just can't answer all my own questions about what tarot is, or what a tarot deck is, yet, but I find it fascinating that, until I began creating a deck, I would have wholeheartedly gone for the 78 model. Now, I am not so sure.
Thanks for reviving this question Tom. Synchroncity at work methinks
mythos
