Coloring tarot

I am currently coloring my own Rider Waite tarot I printed them off the net and looking at the actual colors of each card and deciding if I like that color or a different color. Quite a few cards I think have odd coloring such as yellow for sky color white sun on the fool card ect so I have done them what colors they should be and think it looks better. Has any one else done this and do you think of the colors on them. Also will reading with the self colored cards be accurate.

Brilliant!

Hey

Sounds very interesting, I find the colouring of the cards somewhat weird, love reading with RWS but they are not the most appealing to the eye, im sure it would be fine reading with your own coloured cards, unless you use the colours in the cards to depict certain things do you??

I only change colors on cards that I know should be different color like grass on some cards is yellow so I do it light green or the sky blue instead of yellow the 3 of swords is mainly grey apart from the heart and swords so I've done the sky dark blue pale grey clouds and darker grey swords just stuff like that and moon card I've used dark blue sky as the moon is normally in sky mainly at night.

I think the Rider Waite has good pictures just spoils it with odd colors.

I totally agree think the colourings of some of the cards are very strange, but they must have meant something to the author at the time

Hey gang,

Recoloring is a perfectly valid choice, but the original choices weren't accidental. As with most things on the Waite-Smith, the idiosyncratic coloring was carefully considered and follows a pretty clear path down the Golden Dawn Tree of Life. The color keys were simplified in many cases because of the printing technology of the time, but the intent is there. For a better sense of a straight use of the Qabalistic coloring, look at the Crowley-Harris Thoth.

For more information, check out Wang's Qabalistic Tarot or any of the copies of Book T available online. And I thing lelandra's site has a couple pages comparing GD cards of varying stripes against the qabalistic palettes of several cards.

In any case, good luck coloring and enjoy the process of exploring the cards!



Scion

I agree with Scion.

It is of course up to you what colours you use when recolouring your own deck but I would bear in mind that the colours in the RWS deck actually mean something.

Yellow for example is the colour of the intellect so in cards such as the 7 of Swords, the yellow sky indicates that the intellect should be used when solving a problem.

Sulis said:

I agree with Scion.

It is of course up to you what colours you use when recolouring your own deck but I would bear in mind that the colours in the RWS deck actually mean something.

Yellow for example is the colour of the intellect so in cards such as the 7 of Swords, the yellow sky indicates that the intellect should be used when solving a problem.

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true, however, someone who has a more aggressive or even warlike nature might relate to a background painted in shades of red and black. a sensualist might prefer the fluids of the Ace of Cups to reflect the hues of wine rather than water. it would be interesting to see how different people approach this.

Papageno said:

...it would be interesting to see how different people approach this.

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How true that is. Isn't that why we all decide at some point to create our OWN Tarot deck? We keep the symbolism/colors/etc. that mean something to US, and add our own twist. Whether it works for everyone else only matters if you want to market and SELL your deck. If it's for your own pleasure and interpretation, I say GO FOR IT! And enjoy coloring and designing it YOUR WAY!

I still do and always will swear by the Universal Waite deck. I just love mary-hansons colors. Perhaps they look more appealing to you? It's just like the RWS original with softer colors but still with the match-ups of the original.

Here's what I think you're looking for

tarotreader2007

**PEACE**

I did a Tarot course several years ago where the tutor had us choose the card that we disliked the most, for whatever reason- then she gave us large B and W copies of the card to colour... just to see if one of the things that gave us a problem with the card were the colours.

It is an interesting exercise to try- often it's possible to get insights into a card by changing it like that, because in my case I discovered that the colours that were annoying me weren't really the problem after all!

elnor