blue_fusion
A bit late, but: Congrats Bill. They're really beautiful. You must feel so proud of them.
I am a subscriber so I've got the notification about The Little World and read it this morning. I posted here about it, but I don't see the post. No idea what happened. So if I posted it somewhere else by mistake my apologies that I am repeating myself.
Basically I was saying that I was so touched by your post, it's written with so much thoughtfulness and so much love and that everyone who is into tarot should read it. Really. Your post seemed like a poem to me.
I was also mentioning that in the LWB of the Kazanlar tarot there is a reference to a tarot spread described by Alfonso X, el Sabio, 12th century. I was wondering about this for a long time. Was Alfonso X, el Sabio really referring to a TAROT spread in his work? Because if he was that would change the wide believe about the history of the tarot (which is that tarot appeared later).
Nice blog posts, thanks for sharing them. You always do have a poetic way about you, even when you're simply posting in a tarot forum. I loved the first one and how it came full circle to the Tournant. It overlays even more poetry into the deck, especially those amazing pips. It gives us a hint at what you intended when you created them and what you felt you wanted us to see in them, as we stared up at the night sky with you. Beautiful.
I once said that the actual painted deck was pretty much an afterthought to the thinking part of the project.
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As far as I know Alfonso X never referred to a tarot deck in any way. I don't know that he even referred to any card games at all, as he was quite early, and writing before paper & printing took off in Europe. He talks about the differences between "outdoor games" (athletic, sporting, physical, etc.) and "indoor games" (Intellectual, strategic, thinking, etc.) He talks about the benefits of things like luck, strategy, prudent behavior, etc. And he describes a lot of variations on checkers, chess, backgammon, etc.