For Tarot Deck Creators - What is a Tarot deck? (revisited)

I am inclined to the opinion that the Majors and Minors may have been separate systems at one time. I actually learned to read with playing cards, rather than the Tarot. My Grandmother was a medium and this was her method of reading for people. As a result, Tarot to me becomes a symbol of the human condition. The Majors are a record of the religion or esoteric aspect of the journey, the Minors are involved with the business of living. The "deck" I am creating (slowly, oh so slowly) consists of traditional symbols and numbering and will be executed as 22"x24" woodcuts. The process of creating the imagery and then carving those images into the wood becomes a meditative process of unifying the spiritual with the mundane.

Elven said:

I have a problem with the word Achetype, when attatched to the Major cards.... I dont see the Magician as being number one, nor any Major cards having numbers - though I do see there are elements of 'numbers' within each card - their order somehow urks me
Blessings
Elven x

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I, too, have a problem with applying the word 'archetype' to the Major cards. I read my way through most of Jung and became less and less entranced with the idea of majors as archetypes, courts as psychological types and so on. In fact, I still haven't worked out (for me) what court cards are.

And I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of unnumbered majors. While there are identifiable, normative developmental processes that humans go through ... I don't see tarot (majors) as describing this. Besides, even if they did, the problem with the notion of normative is that it is largely a statistical concept when applied to behaviour, and it covers a range i.e. what is 'normal' lies within two standard deviations of the mean.

For me, life (and all that entails) is not a neat package - it is not sequential, but wholistic and multidimensional with issues, experiences, discoveries of a psycho-spiritual nature, and so on occuring all a differing speeds, in different spaces and places, times and so on.

Numbers, for me are just an irrelevancy where majors are concerned, and a dangerous one at that. Applying numbers to the majors reminds me of stage -based grief theories. I have too often seen 'professional's trying to force people to fit the theory rather than adapting the theory to individual differences. With the majors, if we think in terms of a numbered process, it is too easy to fall into the trap of assuming that their energies are temporal and sequential, and applying 'should' rules to them.

What are the odds of a majors reading, using all the cards, falling into the sequence of numbers? No doubt mathematically, someone could tell me, but when applied to the complexities of human nature, I suspect that all bets are off. Or, as Beth Neilson-Chapman sang: "Their is no system for love" ... to me, there is no system for majors ... for us. There are trends and tendencies, and predispositions and probabilities, but no hard and fast rules or definable sequences. Hence why I decided sometime back that my Major Arcana would not be numbered.

mythos

To me tarot is an archetypal pattern or myth expressed in art, word and number. I have heard it said before that "I don't know the definition of tarot but I know it when I see it". I agree with that sentiment.

I'm not a huge fan of oracles myself, not because they aren't really nice or useful, just because its the pattern of tarot I love.

Marie

Ravenswing said:

First of all, I consider tarot to be a specific sub-set of oracle.

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It's good to see you active again my friend.

I don't consider tarot's primary purpose to be divination, so cannot agree with your analysis. For me, tarot is more than an oracle which can take the form of almost anything - from cards or tiles or stones to the entrails of a sacrificial animal. Paul Foster Case considered the use of tarot for divination 'frivolous'. I don't go quite that far myself.

Allow me to quote a passage from Robert O'Neill's Tarot Symbolism for the benefit of Elven, mythos, and everyone:

"If the images represented the steps between man and God, then man could pass along these steps by focusing on each image in turn. Thus, it was important that the planetary spheres, the basic steps between the world of matter and the Anima Mundi, be represented in the Tarot. The roadmap must be accurate if one is not to be led astray.

The critical final step in the logic comes when the Magus can envision all of the symbols simultaneously in imagination. Holding in imagination a series of images which represents all of reality will bring all of reality into his mind. The simultaneous experience of all of reality is precisely the experience of the One. The images finally merge and fuse into the vision of the One...

... If you can embrace all things at once in thought, including time, place, substance, quantity, quality, you can understand God!"

The above passage is from the chapter titled "The Art of Memory" With the art of memory it was always stressed that images created by the user were more potent than existing or provided images. This will perhaps make it clearer why I encourage everyone interested in tarot to create their own deck. It also helps put the idea of numbering and order of the trumps in perspective.

.traveller. said:

The "deck" I am creating (slowly, oh so slowly) consists of traditional symbols and numbering and will be executed as 22"x24" woodcuts. The process of creating the imagery and then carving those images into the wood becomes a meditative process of unifying the spiritual with the mundane.

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Please, please, please start a thread and share some images from this tarot deck you are creating.

FearfulSymmetry said:

To me tarot is an archetypal pattern or myth expressed in art, word and number.

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Thanks for this Marie. You and I aren't so far apart in our views.

Major Tom, THANK YOU for quoting from the O'Neill book. I still plan on reading it, but have not found it at any of the local libraries so have to wait to get it off Amazon. Now I understand WHY some believe that only specific images work for tarot.

That being said, does the book answer how the first deck creators understood creation and the One enough to know what images to make? I'm sure it does, but I'm wondering if it involves alchemy.

a little clarification

Mr Major-- it's nice to have flown back in

"I don't consider tarot's primary purpose to be divination, so cannot agree with your analysis. For me, tarot is more than an oracle which can take the form of almost anything - from cards or tiles or stones to the entrails of a sacrificial animal. Paul Foster Case considered the use of tarot for divination 'frivolous'. I don't go quite that far myself. "

(somehow I obliterated the qoute box. The preceding is a quote from Major Tom)


Guess I was FAR fom clear here. I was looking at oracle in the sense of a set of cards-- a rather limited view, I fear. So, within that framework...

To me, an oracle deck is an illustration of a particular angled view-of-reality framework. Two oracles that I work with are the Tao Oracle and the Symbolon. I don't use either of these decks for divination. I don't use Tarot for divination.

I don't do divination. I'm trying to figure out reality.

Tarot as I see it is part of a triune system of consisting of Kabala, Tarot and Astrology. And this system hangs on the Tree of Life.


hope this clears thing up a bit
fly well
Raven

Major Tom said:

Allow me to quote a passage from Robert O'Neill's Tarot Symbolism for the benefit of Elven, mythos, and everyone:

.

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Thanks Tom ... time to re-read Tarot Symbolism methinks. I got so sick of reading varying journey's of the fool which all seemed forced to me, and I had forgotten about the majors as symbolic steps on the road to 'god'. Well, not forgot exactly, just felt that the Jungian-based version had too many holes in it, in spite of the fact that Jung drew so heavily on the works of the middle ages alchemist's and so on.

I think that the problem is that Jung is quite explicit in using prior bodies of work to develop his theory of human psychology and psychopathology including the presence of the 'religious function'... rather than, as explicitly, expressing a a map of the road to 'god'. The overlap is there, of course, ... it is inevitable that it would be given Jung's extensive research, his theorising and his own background (which does colour his perceptions - and he is aware of this).

Like all attempts at applying the theory of correspondence to the majors, there are going to be problems of trying to create a 'perfect' fit. I'm not saying that there aren't correspondences between alchemy, astrology, kabbalah or Pythagorean (or any other symbolic) number theory etc and tarot majors, I am just saying that, while all those influences are present in tarot, they are NOT tarot, and we need to be aware of that. In the synchretic environment in which tarot arose it is inevitable that overlaps and interactions will and do exist. I just have problems with hard and fast rules.

As Ars Memoria of the steps to god, yes, indeed, the majors warrant numbering. However, it could be equally argued that there are many roads to god; and many of those roads went unexplored because of the time in which tarot arose. In our more ecumenical times, the pilgrimage route - both exoteric and esoteric - is both less defined and more varied. The destination, esoterically, is the same but it isn't exoterically.

On the other hand ... I might just be expressing a personal dislike of hierarchical models and their implicit assumptions of inequality. That'll teach me to do organisational psych LOL. Or I might be merely exposing my labyrinthine and messy mental processes.

Whichever it is, I am finding this discussion particularly useful - given that I am creating a set of majors currently.

Edited to add: And, on purely practical grounds, not numbering the majors solves the 'where do I put that dratted fool problem?' and the 8 vs 11 of Justice/Strength.

mythos

Major Tom said:

Please, please, please start a thread and share some images from this tarot deck you are creating.

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I will be happy to once I have something worth showing. Right now I only have concept drawings of several of the minors. I meditate on a card for months before I even begin to draw, let alone the carving. I should have something interesting in a month or two for everyone's viewing enjoyment.

Ravenswing said:

Tarot as I see it is part of a triune system of consisting of Kabala, Tarot and Astrology. And this system hangs on the Tree of Life.

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Thanks for the clarification Ravenswing. I must admit I'm not familar with the oracles you use. I'd like to recommend Robert O'Neill's Tarot Symbolism for you too because he mentions in some depth many more syncretic elements that contributed to tarot.

mythos said:

However, it could be equally argued that there are many roads to god; and many of those roads went unexplored because of the time in which tarot arose. In our more ecumenical times, the pilgrimage route - both exoteric and esoteric - is both less defined and more varied. The destination, esoterically, is the same but it isn't exoterically.

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You won't get an argument from me about there being many roads to God. Tarot has often been called The Royal Road.

.traveller. said:

I should have something interesting in a month or two for everyone's viewing enjoyment.

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Ah, so you're just starting then? I for one would find concept drawings interesting, but can wait for a month or two.

"Tarot is not primarily for divination."

Doesn't that depend on what you mean by divination ? It ISN'T just foretelling the future; it can equally well mean self discovery etc.

Here's one definition of hundreds like it:

Perhaps the simplest definition of "divination" is that it is an attempt at obtaining "divine" knowledge, that is, knowledge that would not normally be obtainable my mere mortals.

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Or

The generic term used to cover the collective arts by which esoteric knowledge is obtained.

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Or indeed

From the earliest stages of civilization people have used various means of divination to communicate with the supernatural when seeking help in their public and private lives.

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Like so many things - it means what we want it to mean.