Beyond Bizarre cards – what were they thinking?!

[Strange2]

In browsing through the decks in my collection recently, I ran across several truly bizarre cards that caused me to wonder: just what were the artists thinking when they came up with these unusual interpretations for Tarot imagery?!

I know there are entire decks that can be considered strange and unusual, but I thought it would be fun to find specific cards from decks that are just outright bizarre.

I’ll start off with a card from an odd deck with the unwieldy title of Love Is In The Earth – Crystal Tarot – THE Tarot For The Millennium. This is a Thoth-inspired deck that would make Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris spin in their graves.

Many of the cards from this busy deck are quite bizarre, but the most unusual has to be the Hierophant, riding a white cow or bull with crystals in place of its legs and horns!

Click the attached image, if you dare!

 

[Ace]

It is weird to me too, but art in in the eye of the artist, I think. So maybe the artist has a particular message to get across there. Something He/she wanted to say, that saying it like that pleased them. What do the tarot creators here say?
Ace

 

[tarotbear]

It's kind of like watching 'Yellow Submarine' - I was alive in the 1960s and I don't think I can explain half of what is going on in that movie to anyone who wasn't born until 20 years later. Perhaps these artists scored some good weed? Most of Yellow Submarine was meant to be watched stoned ....

Remember - whatever the artists were thinking is what they were thinking - it doesn't have to make sense to the rest of us, nor are we required to use their deck.

There once was a thread about 'non-existant Tarot decks' - or something like that - where people 'created' a deck based on some off-the-wall idea. Someday those decks could become a reality! My favorite was the 'Doggy-Doo Oracle' where you read the future in the shapes of dog doo on the sidewalk. There is nothing to say that such a bizarre deck could not become a reality. {Or be illustrated with digital photos either! Ugh!}

 

[MercyMe]

Ha! I got a hole in me pocket!

~Mercy

 

[Grizabella]

I think with a lot of the decks, the imagery might possibly only have meaning to the authors of the decks. Maybe some of the publishers should research tarot before buying the decks and publishing them. I think that's part of the problem. Publishers aren't experienced and knowledgable enough about tarot so they publish decks that don't really work.