Tarot & Theme Decks - When is it not Tarot?

[Sinduction]

However, most oracles are structured, as are playing cards and Lenormand too. All of my oracle decks came with a full companion book while less than half of my tarot decks do. So I don't see the difference here.

I still think it's about judging what is "right" and I don't think that has anything to do with tarot or divination.

 

[Londubh]

I think that if you take the stance of literalism in tarot, you loose the essence and soul of the tarot.

Religion falls prey to this issue. Do you follow the words or the essence of the words?

One of the beautiful things about the tarot is that there is a base structure which then can be interpreted in relation to the situation. This makes them fluid and malleable, alive.

 

[kittiann]

Sinduction, I totally agree that oracles and lots of other forms of divination can be very structured. But their structures are not the tarot structure, and that is what I think makes tarot tarot. And reading without taking that structure into account in some way, while certainly not wrong; is not tarot.

It's not about right or wrong; it's about defining what is and is not. There's nothing wrong with sleeping on a comfortable mattress, but it's not a waterbed.

 

[zephyr_heart]

Most of all, tarot IS complex.

Its use ranges from fortune telling, prediction, giving advice, philosophy, memorizing, language, culture, art, history, faith, etc,etc, the list goes on and on, name it yourself.

Its scope of meaning can range from the 'oh so good ' to the 'oh so bad ' with a neutral meaning in between

Its system of interpretations ranges from your own intuitive interpretation, esoteric meanings proposed by esoteric organizations in the past that form a system, or mixed a little with astrology, or kaballah or even your own system- as long as it's worked for you.

It also consisted of 78 cards-22 major-56 minor-4 suits, each 14 cards, with 4 court cards in each suit; although the numbers not necessarily must be fixed in such amount.

See? It IS complex. Learning tarot means that we are dealing with so very myriad things.

 

[Lillie]

Your sentence about what the artist intended for the meaning. So those lwb's that are more reviews or their thoughts when not written by the artist, they may be great at provoking thought, but they mean little re the meanings if not written by artist, or at least very in tune with the artist's conception?

Sorry, was that a joke?
I mean, under the circumstances it's quite funny, but if it was a pointed comment at my own efforts in that direction, just say so.
I don't mind criticism, but what I really don't like is when I'm not sure if I am being criticised or not.

I would not presume to judge any writer of a LWB and how well they knew the deck they were writing about.

I can only speak from my very limited experience. I assume that when a publishing house commissions a deck they will either get the creator or artist of the deck to write the LWB, as in the case of the Shamen Tarot by LS, or employ a writer they feel is in tune with the deck, such as the companion book for the Vampires of the eternal night written by Barbara Moore.

I'm sure that a tarot publisher knows what they are doing, many artists are not writers, many creators of decks are the person who designs it and not the artist who is employed to draw it.

Such as Crowley who employed Frieda Harris to draw under his direction, and Waite who employed Pamela Colman Smith.

Now, although I am interested in what Harris had to say about her art, and because of this I love the USG LWB that includes her own writings on this deck, it it Crowley's book of Thoth that is the really explanation of the creators thoughts.

By the same token, if a third person is employed to write the LWB or the companion book for a specific deck they will have been chosen for that task with a reason. Just as the artist, Harris, Colman Smith and others are employed to interpret the creators ideas thorough art, so is the writer of the companion book employed to interpret the creators ideas through words. If it was not felt that the book was suitable for the deck I would hope that another writer would be chosen instead who could do more justice to the task.

 

[Le Fanu]

I feel more and more these days as if I don't really believe in the intuitive reading of post-GD decks that very clearly fall into the WS or Crowley patterns. There are definitely official meanings to the cards, as it were. The Golden Dawn came up with all this stuff, didn't they? The question of why the cards look like they do is an important one that doesn't seem to get asked nearly as much as I would assume it should. Every time you do a reading with a post-GD deck, you're using, or at least accepting, everything that the GD put into choosing the meaning behind the image for that card; things like astrology and kabbalah and so on and so on-- its all there whether you choose to see it or not

But what if you believe - as I tend to - that they might have got it wrong? They may have been gentlemen dilittantes, enamoured (as I am) by magic & mystery and ancient erudition. I'm not sure that all they propogated in their studies is as consistant with ancient history as we would like to believe. I'm not saying their meanings are random, but I do think the commmonly accepted RWS meanings which novices try to learn with keywords &c are an informed type of random.

In almost all aspects of culture, art, literature, whatever, people have broken with that gentlemanly Victorian past, the world of exclusive gentlmanly clubs & leisurely learning. Modernism wouldn't have happened without that angry rupture with these late Victorian gentlemen. Oddly though, it hasn't happened with tarot. People still accept what they said and try & learn it by rote. Heavens, if Virginia Woolf & Co hadn't angrily rejected all those Victorian gentlemen, literature wouldn't have gone anywhere. Tarot also has to break a little from the past. Tradition is one thing, but learning from a recent (i.e 1909) reinterpretation is something else.

Why do we still blindly accept what Victorian gentlemen said? That doesn't mean I think we should just make everything up, but I think it's alright to be questioning & critical of so-called GD meanings. And most of all, doubt them. And doubt them a lot, and try to get a sense of how things were before they came along, get a sense of a wider scope and build on them ourselves from there.

I also think that this whole "if it ain't tarot then it must be an oracle" is a bit overstated. Oracles as we know them (here I mean fancy thematic cards with which you just do what you feel like; I'm not talking about Delphi & animal entrails ) are such a modern invention. Sure people like them & that's fine but I hear people say here that if it isn't 78 card with stipulated meanings then it must be an oracle. Why? Who decided this? I know it's convenient, but I don't remember anyone telling me this 25 years ago.

Hope this doen't read crankily. I've just woken up with a hangover after a great night out.

Interesting thread though...

 

[Owl Song]

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Generally a Tarot deck should consist of 78 cards. Of those 78 you have: 22 Major Arcana. 16 court cards. There are 4 suits; each suit usually has its own theme and quality. Key word is generally.

Beyond that, I don't really have any other stipulations that I feel make one deck more Tarot than another. And just as there are a myriad of Tarot decks, so are there a wide variety of approaches to reading the Tarot. Some people read purely intuitively while others like having a structure to follow (color, numerology, symbols, astrology, dignities, etc.) Many readers use a combination of both. And sometimes we read differently, depending on what deck we are using or the question asked.

Tarot is a language, really. And like all languages, it is mutable and fluid. It has several different dialects but who really has the authority to say which one is the "standard?"

In the end--does it really matter? As long as we continue to seek wisdom through those ineffable cards, as long as we have tales to tell and stories to sing and visions to imagine, need we qualify it? I'm not intimating that this isn't interesting or worthwhile to discuss; this is just my personal take on it.

 

[zan_chan]

Why do we still blindly accept what Victorian gentlemen said?

Absolutely agreed with all that, LF. But they came up with those meanings from wherever they did (all that stuff) and tarot artists today continue to create their decks based on what they came up with. (How many tarot artists have no idea why their own images have the meanings they do, do you think?) In so very many ways, the Greenwood isn't the least bit original in terms of the actual meaning of the cards. There's lots to study and lots to see, but in an actual reading, the Greenwood isn't much less Victorian than the RWS, is it? Just look at the 3 of swords.

I think it's a bit odd, as you said, that tarot hasn't really gone anywhere in all this time. It seems to continuously require rediscovery, first by the occultists, then again (in a way) in the 70s, which could be hampering its ability to advance much.

But don't you think that as long as tarot images (which, as I said, are rarely that difficult to figure out) continue to lead a reader to the same meanings ascribed by those Victorians, then we have little choice but to continue reading (if we choose to use modern decks) as they had intended us to. Otherwise we're just ignoring what's there. No?

Like anything else it would come down to sales, wouldn't it? When Poppy Palin tried to make an interesting oracle of Waking the Wild Spirit, she was told to turn it into a somewhat recognizable tarot instead so it would sell better (that's the story, right?). If you tell someone that the 3 of Swords means happiness and sunshine, they're most likely going to tell you that you're wrong, so if you design a deck with a new system, no matter how ingenious it might be, good luck selling it.

"When is it not tarot," this thread asks. Perhaps the answer is, When it has no chance of being published for assumed financial implausibility?

(As with your disclaimer, I hope I don't come off as too know-it-all-y. These are all questions I'm asking myself as well as the group...)

 

[Le Fanu]

I think it's a bit odd, as you said, that tarot hasn't really gone anywhere in all this time. It seems to continuously require rediscovery, first by the occultists, then again (in a way) in the 70s, which could be hampering its ability to advance much.

I suppose what I mean is that 99% of new tarot (ok, 97%) is window dressing on a RWS theme. I was thinking about meaning. I think the uses and the way tarot is seen have changed enormously over the decades.

What always surprises me when people learn I'm into tarot is that they think it is this ancient, mysterious system which has remained constant over centuries & centuries and I - in my head - think of tarot as we know it to be relatively recent.

 

[Aerin]

I think that the test of whether it is a Tarot deck is whether you can play the game with it. If no, it isn't Tarot. I'm also happy with a 22 Majors deck being called a Tarot Majors Only deck as it does what it says on the tin.

I am not happy when a deck without the structure allowing you to play Tarot (by which I mean Majors/ Courts/ Pips in the appropriate numbers) is called Tarot. If I can't play Tarot (suppose extra cards is OK e.g. Minichiate which I presume had its own game) then for me it isn't Tarot and should go call itself something else. (I'm aware that some tarock games use 54 cards, and I can see that might be an interesting deck to work with http://www.pagat.com/class/itarot.html and http://www.pagat.com/class/ftarot.html.)

I also wonder why anyone would want to call a deck Tarot if they didn't make some connection between what they do and a Tarot structure (unless it is to fool people into buying it).

As for reading it, unless I am using some kind of knowledge of Tarot as at least a backdrop to my reading then is it tarot reading? Well, only if the reading is related to the cards that have been drawn. Otherwise why bother - why not just use any old thing?