donnalee
I find myself more and more disappointed with the Lo Scarabeo deck and its cartoonish version of so many cards. I bought it a few months back since it purported to combine the main three traditions and I wanted to be open to that in a deck. Now, though, when I see the knaves (called knaves on the cards, which they call princesses in the LWB) looking like either stoned anime dolls (pentacles) or appearing so stupid as to be losing clothing while standing there looking too stupid to keep clothes on while wielding a sword (swords) (do you hear that I keep seeing it as stupidity resulting in nudity and danger, whereas they call it 'practice/pretense'?), or The Tower looking sort of 'golly gee cartoon characters are falling down uhoh', or the surfer-dude knights, I feel nothing in the reading but criticism at the banality of it. I like a few of the cards, most notably the four of cups and its presentation of an ideal four of cups on the wall, and the five of wands and its disputatious fellows, and The Fool, and the eight of chalices, and the cutoff heads on the queen and king of swords, and a few others, but more and more I never want to see some of these foolish-appearing cards again. I combined this deck with the Universal Waite to pad it out and increase the choices, but I still feel like shredding some of them like a crazy person right now. Has anyone else run into this? I do actually like some of other decks that have a could-be-seen-as-cartoon art, like the Pagan Tarot or Dark Angels or other artsy ones. I may dislike the look of some of the Universal Fantasy cards as visually ugly to me, but I do not find it so trite and to be banal and babyish to me, as I do with the Lo Scarabeo.
Anyone else?
EDIT TO ADD: I do not feel that it is the instinctive right thing for me to then read the cards that bug me in the sense of (one example only here)'the knave of swords comes up, so be careful about situations where your, um, skill or lack of skill with a sword or brains could lead you into losing your hat and showing your breast and looking vulnerable'--it just doesn't feel to me like 'a card of vulnerability and whatever', so much as a card of 'huh, I've seen a lot better cards and this one just gives me nothing other than "what the hell is wrong with you, cartoon character?" ' and that applies to too many of the cards in this deck for me now. I have looked at them openmindedly and done readings of the cards I dislike out loud to myself, and they do not seem to be huge deep meaningful things to me so much as pissing me off and making me feel like the 'modern' versions of these cards give me nothing of personal meaning. Maybe it's as simple as 'not my thing and I'm disappointed because I tried and bought it and some of it is good and some isn't, just like real life'. Now I am trying to figure how to use the partial deck which I do find meaningful, but feel like it makes no sense at all to create a stacked deck for any reason--
Anyone else?
EDIT TO ADD: I do not feel that it is the instinctive right thing for me to then read the cards that bug me in the sense of (one example only here)'the knave of swords comes up, so be careful about situations where your, um, skill or lack of skill with a sword or brains could lead you into losing your hat and showing your breast and looking vulnerable'--it just doesn't feel to me like 'a card of vulnerability and whatever', so much as a card of 'huh, I've seen a lot better cards and this one just gives me nothing other than "what the hell is wrong with you, cartoon character?" ' and that applies to too many of the cards in this deck for me now. I have looked at them openmindedly and done readings of the cards I dislike out loud to myself, and they do not seem to be huge deep meaningful things to me so much as pissing me off and making me feel like the 'modern' versions of these cards give me nothing of personal meaning. Maybe it's as simple as 'not my thing and I'm disappointed because I tried and bought it and some of it is good and some isn't, just like real life'. Now I am trying to figure how to use the partial deck which I do find meaningful, but feel like it makes no sense at all to create a stacked deck for any reason--