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I'm giving up on doing the thirty days thing, though I'll still post here in bursts. I'm sure my recent bursts now total more than thirty, but they don't all fall within a month, so idk....
ANYWAYS I had a dream at the start of the year that I meant to make moolah at my uni by offering tarot readings. In the dream, however, I had some reservations, because I don't actually believe in the capacity of the tarot to predict the future, or even to reveal any "hidden" information outside of its function as an aesthetic object. A few days after that dream, however, someone in a religious forum I'm at mentioned seeing an Eastern Orthodox icon of which they could make neither heads nor tails, whereas I, through my knowledge of the tarot, recognized it instantly as an icon of the Rota Fortunae -- the Wheel of Fortune, although its Eastern Orthodox name is the Wheel of Time -- and this seeming coincidence has sort of reignited my love of these cards.
Indeed, I possess three historically important decks. The first one, I acquired late in high school, I believe, and it's the stereotypical Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, with its Victorian-Edwardian style and figurative number cards. While it was for some time the only deck I even knew of, it is now far from my favourite, especially after having encountered the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky and those artists whom he later influenced.
Really, while tarot decks are known to have existed since at least the 15th century (and they are certainly not passed down to us from the Ancient Egyptians, as Waite syncretically yet erroneously asserts), I believe the first complete deck to have any influence is the Tarot de Marseille of around the 17th century, a copy of which is the second deck I own. Tarot nowadays is well known across the Anglosphere as a deck for divination, but its origins, as well as its continuing use in Francophone and Italophone countries, is what one normally understands decks of cards to be used for: gaming. Indeed, gaming is the only regular use I have for my Tarot decks, although no one I physically know has even heard of the French jeu de tarot, which is a shame -- instead, the game I tend to play is solitaire, or else I remove the knights and trumps to play your usual blackjack and go fish.
There are decks still published that are specifically made for gaming, such as the Tarot Piedmontese or the Tarot Nouveau, and, to be honest, these decks, with their Arabic numerals and more symmetrical designs, are ones I would prefer to own. Unfortunately, most of the decks for sale here are ones designed for occult practice, and I find that when it comes to tarot, the syncretic tendencies of most occultists leads to their resultant decks being either artistically confused or blatantly ahistorical. The latter, as I've already implied, is my primary criticism towards the Rider-Waite-Smith, especially as it numbers "The Fool" as 0 or it switches the places of Justice (normally 8) and Fortitude (normally 11), although I also find its designs to be rather dull, if not parochial.
The last deck I own, I had to purchase online, and while this one is another occult deck it at least has the following two points in its favour. The Crowley-Harris "Thoth" Tarot, while also claiming to be descended from some kind of ancient, hidden tradition as the Rider-Waite-Smith, at least corresponds with the not-so-hidden aspects of this "tradition" by, say, not switching around trumps 8 and 12, although I think more significant are the cards' designs, being in a strikingly Modernist style that I suspect proves more aesthetically influential than its more popular predecessor. Gazing at the Thoth, at least, tends to be a more interesting, even seductive, experience for me, and because their number cards are just as abstract as those of the Marseilles, one can just as easily use them for gaming.
Still, it's the Marseilles I use the most, and it's the Marseilles on which I'd like to base our discussion. The structure of the tarot is such that it has two parts, the trumps and the number cards. The trumps are what tends to distinguish the tarot from other decks of cards, and they are collectively the part from which occultists like Jean-Baptiste Alliette began the association between the tarot and esotericism, owing to these cards' allegorical, but noticeably "irreligious", nature. The 22 trumps of the Tarot de Marseille are as follows:
Numberless -- The Fool
I -- The Juggler/Magician
II -- The Popess
III -- The Empress
IIII -- The Emperor
V -- The Pope
VI -- The Lovers
VII -- The Chariot
VIII -- Justice
VIIII -- The Hermit
X -- The Wheel of Fortune
XI -- Fortitude/Strength
XII -- The Hanged Man
XIII -- The Nameless Card (commonly called "Death")
XIIII -- Temperance/Moderation
XV -- The Devil
XVI -- The House of God (commonly called "The Tower"; occasionally called "The House of the Devil")
XVII -- The Star (or "The Stars")
XVIII -- The Moon
XVIIII -- The Sun
XX -- Judgement (or "The Angel")
XXI -- The World
I said that these cards are irreligious, but you have to understand that these cards came from the distinctively Christian milieu of Medieval Western Europe, where the trappings of religion, such as priesthood or the devil, are essentially just facts of life. Of course, this doesn't stop occultists like A. E. Waite or Aleister Crowley from renaming a card like "The Pope" to something as "neutral" as "The Hierophant", though in keeping a card like "The Devil" for what it is, Waite is inclined to betray the particular limits of his perspective.
More generally, these cards are suspected to have been designed for classical instruction -- note, for instance, how three of the four Platonic virtues are cards, with the fourth virtue, that of Prudence/Wisdom, being found in either "The Hermit" or the deck as a whole -- though how that instruction will have worked, I haven't the foggiest. What I am certain of is that these cards were never meant to hold anything "esoteric", in much the same way that astrology, during their time, was more or less considered a physical science, rather than some aspect of religion, for which see my thread on Medieval Western Astrology.
The function of these cards in gaming is a lot less debatable. Trumps, at least for jeu de tarot, are considered a sort of fifth suit, albeit the cards may be laid down in response to the other, "lesser" suits, and cards like "The Fool" and "The World" possesss certain special functions....I don't know if I explained that well enough, such that maybe I need to explain the rules of jeu de tarot in general, but as much as I enjoy such games I don't really want them to be the focus of this thread xD
Esotericists today do consider the regular number cards to have some kind of meaning, and here I'll mention a bit from what I've learned through Alejandro Jodorowksy and Marianne Costa's book on the subject. The number cards are divided into four suits -- Coins, Cups, Swords, and Staves -- each of which corresponds to a particular classical element. The suits themselves each have ten number cards -- and here it will be noted that Jodorowsky and Costa understand the trumps themselves to be divided into groups of ten, with "The World" and "The Fool" as outliers -- as well as four face cards, with these face cards being hierarchically organized into Pages, Queens, Kings, and finally Knights, the Knights being the cards that serve as the transition from one suit to another. Respectively, the suits correspond to the elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, with each element itself corresponding to some general aspect of the human experience, namely material good, emotion, intellect/spirit, and sexuality/creativity. It will here be noted that these suits are really the same as in "regular", French-suited cards, with Coins corresponding with Diamonds, Cups with Hearts, Swords with Spades, and Staves with Clubs; the Tarot Nouveau, in fact, uses French suits, just as it switches up the trumps into something more bourgeois.
For this thread to be more of a thread than just a general guide, I suppose now I have to pose some questions. And so:
1. What are your experiences with Tarot as a game?
2. What are your experiences with Tarot as art?
3. What are your experiences with Tarot in art, like how the cards are used in, say, the show Adventure Time?
4. What are your experiences with Tarot in your art, especially your roleplays? And how would you like to use the Tarot, if ever?
5. What are your experiences with Tarot as divination?
As always, your own questions, as well as general discussion not covered by the above questions, are welcome. Indeed, I'd like to answer some of the above questions myself, but maybe that'd be better as a reply, than as more words to this opener.
NOTE: Important correction, redid a couple of dates. The information here is fairly general, so I shan't bother citing.
ANYWAYS I had a dream at the start of the year that I meant to make moolah at my uni by offering tarot readings. In the dream, however, I had some reservations, because I don't actually believe in the capacity of the tarot to predict the future, or even to reveal any "hidden" information outside of its function as an aesthetic object. A few days after that dream, however, someone in a religious forum I'm at mentioned seeing an Eastern Orthodox icon of which they could make neither heads nor tails, whereas I, through my knowledge of the tarot, recognized it instantly as an icon of the Rota Fortunae -- the Wheel of Fortune, although its Eastern Orthodox name is the Wheel of Time -- and this seeming coincidence has sort of reignited my love of these cards.
Indeed, I possess three historically important decks. The first one, I acquired late in high school, I believe, and it's the stereotypical Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, with its Victorian-Edwardian style and figurative number cards. While it was for some time the only deck I even knew of, it is now far from my favourite, especially after having encountered the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky and those artists whom he later influenced.
Really, while tarot decks are known to have existed since at least the 15th century (and they are certainly not passed down to us from the Ancient Egyptians, as Waite syncretically yet erroneously asserts), I believe the first complete deck to have any influence is the Tarot de Marseille of around the 17th century, a copy of which is the second deck I own. Tarot nowadays is well known across the Anglosphere as a deck for divination, but its origins, as well as its continuing use in Francophone and Italophone countries, is what one normally understands decks of cards to be used for: gaming. Indeed, gaming is the only regular use I have for my Tarot decks, although no one I physically know has even heard of the French jeu de tarot, which is a shame -- instead, the game I tend to play is solitaire, or else I remove the knights and trumps to play your usual blackjack and go fish.
There are decks still published that are specifically made for gaming, such as the Tarot Piedmontese or the Tarot Nouveau, and, to be honest, these decks, with their Arabic numerals and more symmetrical designs, are ones I would prefer to own. Unfortunately, most of the decks for sale here are ones designed for occult practice, and I find that when it comes to tarot, the syncretic tendencies of most occultists leads to their resultant decks being either artistically confused or blatantly ahistorical. The latter, as I've already implied, is my primary criticism towards the Rider-Waite-Smith, especially as it numbers "The Fool" as 0 or it switches the places of Justice (normally 8) and Fortitude (normally 11), although I also find its designs to be rather dull, if not parochial.
The last deck I own, I had to purchase online, and while this one is another occult deck it at least has the following two points in its favour. The Crowley-Harris "Thoth" Tarot, while also claiming to be descended from some kind of ancient, hidden tradition as the Rider-Waite-Smith, at least corresponds with the not-so-hidden aspects of this "tradition" by, say, not switching around trumps 8 and 12, although I think more significant are the cards' designs, being in a strikingly Modernist style that I suspect proves more aesthetically influential than its more popular predecessor. Gazing at the Thoth, at least, tends to be a more interesting, even seductive, experience for me, and because their number cards are just as abstract as those of the Marseilles, one can just as easily use them for gaming.
Still, it's the Marseilles I use the most, and it's the Marseilles on which I'd like to base our discussion. The structure of the tarot is such that it has two parts, the trumps and the number cards. The trumps are what tends to distinguish the tarot from other decks of cards, and they are collectively the part from which occultists like Jean-Baptiste Alliette began the association between the tarot and esotericism, owing to these cards' allegorical, but noticeably "irreligious", nature. The 22 trumps of the Tarot de Marseille are as follows:
Numberless -- The Fool
I -- The Juggler/Magician
II -- The Popess
III -- The Empress
IIII -- The Emperor
V -- The Pope
VI -- The Lovers
VII -- The Chariot
VIII -- Justice
VIIII -- The Hermit
X -- The Wheel of Fortune
XI -- Fortitude/Strength
XII -- The Hanged Man
XIII -- The Nameless Card (commonly called "Death")
XIIII -- Temperance/Moderation
XV -- The Devil
XVI -- The House of God (commonly called "The Tower"; occasionally called "The House of the Devil")
XVII -- The Star (or "The Stars")
XVIII -- The Moon
XVIIII -- The Sun
XX -- Judgement (or "The Angel")
XXI -- The World
I said that these cards are irreligious, but you have to understand that these cards came from the distinctively Christian milieu of Medieval Western Europe, where the trappings of religion, such as priesthood or the devil, are essentially just facts of life. Of course, this doesn't stop occultists like A. E. Waite or Aleister Crowley from renaming a card like "The Pope" to something as "neutral" as "The Hierophant", though in keeping a card like "The Devil" for what it is, Waite is inclined to betray the particular limits of his perspective.
More generally, these cards are suspected to have been designed for classical instruction -- note, for instance, how three of the four Platonic virtues are cards, with the fourth virtue, that of Prudence/Wisdom, being found in either "The Hermit" or the deck as a whole -- though how that instruction will have worked, I haven't the foggiest. What I am certain of is that these cards were never meant to hold anything "esoteric", in much the same way that astrology, during their time, was more or less considered a physical science, rather than some aspect of religion, for which see my thread on Medieval Western Astrology.
The function of these cards in gaming is a lot less debatable. Trumps, at least for jeu de tarot, are considered a sort of fifth suit, albeit the cards may be laid down in response to the other, "lesser" suits, and cards like "The Fool" and "The World" possesss certain special functions....I don't know if I explained that well enough, such that maybe I need to explain the rules of jeu de tarot in general, but as much as I enjoy such games I don't really want them to be the focus of this thread xD
Esotericists today do consider the regular number cards to have some kind of meaning, and here I'll mention a bit from what I've learned through Alejandro Jodorowksy and Marianne Costa's book on the subject. The number cards are divided into four suits -- Coins, Cups, Swords, and Staves -- each of which corresponds to a particular classical element. The suits themselves each have ten number cards -- and here it will be noted that Jodorowsky and Costa understand the trumps themselves to be divided into groups of ten, with "The World" and "The Fool" as outliers -- as well as four face cards, with these face cards being hierarchically organized into Pages, Queens, Kings, and finally Knights, the Knights being the cards that serve as the transition from one suit to another. Respectively, the suits correspond to the elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, with each element itself corresponding to some general aspect of the human experience, namely material good, emotion, intellect/spirit, and sexuality/creativity. It will here be noted that these suits are really the same as in "regular", French-suited cards, with Coins corresponding with Diamonds, Cups with Hearts, Swords with Spades, and Staves with Clubs; the Tarot Nouveau, in fact, uses French suits, just as it switches up the trumps into something more bourgeois.
For this thread to be more of a thread than just a general guide, I suppose now I have to pose some questions. And so:
1. What are your experiences with Tarot as a game?
2. What are your experiences with Tarot as art?
3. What are your experiences with Tarot in art, like how the cards are used in, say, the show Adventure Time?
4. What are your experiences with Tarot in your art, especially your roleplays? And how would you like to use the Tarot, if ever?
5. What are your experiences with Tarot as divination?
As always, your own questions, as well as general discussion not covered by the above questions, are welcome. Indeed, I'd like to answer some of the above questions myself, but maybe that'd be better as a reply, than as more words to this opener.
NOTE: Important correction, redid a couple of dates. The information here is fairly general, so I shan't bother citing.
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