Another Tarot Deck Pet Peeve

[Misterei]

On 5/16/2024 at 2:47 AM, Akhilleus said:

That really should go without saying. As a reader, she should have known that the cards align themselves according to the reader's schema and not the querent's. Unless of course if the inviting the latter's feedback is part of the former's MO. 

LOL thank god it wasn't a paid 1-hour reading. It was a trade and she had given me a LOT of accupuncture ... so I didn't begrudge her the extra time ... but it took 2 hours to do a 1-hour reading. Oy!

 

She's one of those ppl who's used to being in charge. Very sweet lady, but wants to call the shots. To her credit she accepted my explanations. She didn't disagree ... but she had to know WHY it was different than her method. For. Every. Card.

[ilweran]

On 3/13/2024 at 5:32 PM, Misterei said:

OMG! So true. 🤣

I'm grateful for the flip through vids but also wonder about the creators who must have hundreds of decks they bought just to do reviews??? Wow!

Its better than the bad old days where you might see a deck in a catalog and have no idea what it's really like.

Back in the day the bricks & mortar stores often had open box "sample decks" you could see every card ... obvi the selection was limited. It's truly a different world now. The flip through vids have saved me countless times.

 

The OP touched upon a trend that's a pet peeve for me. The modern decks with all the graphic design software ... many are starting to seem soul-less or watered down. Non-illustrated Pips that seem lazy and lack character feel part of this larger trend to me: Modern style decks which lack character or feel shallow. Lightseers I really like. But now it feels like there are a bunch of decks using this illustrative style, but lacking the depth of Lighseers so that they all sort of become generic and antiseptic. No character. The ones with non-scenic Pips even moreso. Let's just photoshop cut & paste a bunch of coins/cups/wands/swords to make the Pips and see if we can sell it on kickstarter.

 

I think the laziest I've seen - and I'd probably have bought the deck anyway if I's known as I like the Majors, but it didn't stop it being disappointing when I got home - was The Dreampower. Just an image of the element and a keyword. I use the deck, I don't use the pips, just the Majors and Courts.

[Tom]

@ilweran I completely understand. It’s always a risk to buy a deck without previewing it first.  The sample cards on Esty’s and Amazon often don’t anything but Majors.  So the pips are always in question then.  I use YouTube to do a deck walk through if I have a doubt as to whether I’ll like a deck or not unless it’s a spontaneous purchase.  YouTube even has some Indy decks.  I didn’t, for instance, buy the Tarot of the Great Outdoors because the minors are more like oracle cards and the scenes don’t correlate to standard RWS.  The pips depict outdoor activities, many of which don’t seem to have anything to do with the meanings.  It’s a beautiful deck in many ways, but not a good deck for me for reading.

Edited June 15, 2024 by Tom
Correction

[Natural Mystic Guide]

1 hour ago, Tom said:

 I use YouTube to do a deck walk through if I have a doubt as to whether I’ll like a deck

This is such a good tip, thank you.  I've had some disappointments.  I like to purchase nice RWS clones to use for group reading situations.  But recognizable pips are a must.  I have several recent purchases that are disappointments in this regard.  Yes they are aesthetically pleasing...  but I need work horse decks that I can use.  Yes, I can now admit that I am a collector.  But, I must justify my deck purchases because of their utility.

Edited June 15, 2024 by Natural Mystic Guide
grammar

[ilweran]

1 hour ago, Tom said:

@ilweran I completely understand. It’s always a risk to buy a deck without previewing it first.  The sample cards on Esty’s and Amazon often don’t anything but Majors.  So the pips are always in question then.  I use YouTube to do a deck walk through if I have a doubt as to whether I’ll like a deck or not unless it’s a spontaneous purchase.  YouTube even has some Indy decks.  I didn’t, for instance, buy the Tarot of the Great Outdoors because the minors are more like oracle cards and the scenes don’t correlate to standard RWS.  The pips depict outdoor activities, many of which don’t seem to have anything to do with the meanings.  It’s a beautiful deck in many ways, but not a good deck for me for reading.

The Dreampower is an old deck now, not so many options back then, and certainly no smart phone to check out the cards while standing in the shop! Even now image searches don't bring up many of the pip cards, I assume they're too uninteresting for people to include them in photos!

[Tom]

@Natural Mystic Guide I understand about costs, I have spent a lot of money on decks over the years.  It is good if you can try to avoid mistake.  The Universal Monster Tarot was a complete disappointment me to me because the minors feature weird architectural details.  No cups, wands, sword, pants, but a title like 2 of Cups.  I wish I’d looked that one up before I’d bought it.  The Majors are nice though.  There are some decks I will probably end up putting up here for sale or trade—including that one.  

 

@ilweran yes it is tough to find them sometimes Googling them I always go straight to the Images tab. I just want enough information to indicate if they are scenic pips or not.  If you can wait to buy them—YouTube is your best option as I said.  I can’t say I that I’d not been so excited about a deck from the box that I haven’t made impulse buys.

[Rootwood]

I post here as new to the forum and about only 2 years into tarot. So, new.

A pet peeve of mine are decks that utilize existing art. Like, the paintings of the Italian masters, for example. Some of it works very well.  But in other instances (none of which come to mind at this moment) it feels like the illustration used was a long shot, a tight fit, a little forced. Like Cinderella's sisters jamming their fat feet into her glass slipper. The foot goes in but it's just not a good fit. Those decks make me feel awkward and I think those made-to-fit cards break the flow. For me, flow is HUGE! Which I think is why I have so few decks.

Also I see some decks in flip throughs (I have watched many, many flip throughs!) and I wonder, did the creator of the deck have any idea at all about tarot? And since I myself have only the sketchiest idea about tarot, that's saying something. Sometimes I think a skilled artist discovers tarot and thinks hey, I'm gonna make one of those! So they churn out 78 pieces of  artwork after developing only the most surface familiarity with tarot and to me the deck shows it. Again, no examples comes to mind. But I know I've watched flip throughs that, art wise, were amazing, but left me thinking the artist just didn't get it.  Very skilled with pen and ink but the deep grasp of the cards just wasn't there.  In my not very experienced opinion.

[Chariot]

On 6/15/2024 at 1:26 PM, ilweran said:

 

I think the laziest I've seen - and I'd probably have bought the deck anyway if I's known as I like the Majors, but it didn't stop it being disappointing when I got home - was The Dreampower. Just an image of the element and a keyword. I use the deck, I don't use the pips, just the Majors and Courts.

OMG, I'm not alone!  I absolutely LOVE the illustrated cards in The Dreampower Tarot, although they are not really related to the RWS system at all.  But the pips?  I threw them away.  You''re right ...lazy is the word.  However they have been around a long time.  Maybe they should be re-released as an oracle deck without the pips.

I use these cards mainly for meditations.  I pull ONE card and spend a lot of time looking at it, and letting my mind wander wherever it will.  

[DanielJUK]

3 hours ago, Rootwood said:

I post here as new to the forum and about only 2 years into tarot. So, new.

A pet peeve of mine are decks that utilize existing art. Like, the paintings of the Italian masters, for example. Some of it works very well.  But in other instances (none of which come to mind at this moment) it feels like the illustration used was a long shot, a tight fit, a little forced. Like Cinderella's sisters jamming their fat feet into her glass slipper. The foot goes in but it's just not a good fit. Those decks make me feel awkward and I think those made-to-fit cards break the flow. For me, flow is HUGE! Which I think is why I have so few decks.

Also I see some decks in flip throughs (I have watched many, many flip throughs!) and I wonder, did the creator of the deck have any idea at all about tarot? And since I myself have only the sketchiest idea about tarot, that's saying something. Sometimes I think a skilled artist discovers tarot and thinks hey, I'm gonna make one of those! So they churn out 78 pieces of  artwork after developing only the most surface familiarity with tarot and to me the deck shows it. Again, no examples comes to mind. But I know I've watched flip throughs that, art wise, were amazing, but left me thinking the artist just didn't get it.  Very skilled with pen and ink but the deep grasp of the cards just wasn't there.  In my not very experienced opinion.

 

Totally agree with you @Rootwood

I don't know if there is a good classic art deck, it's possible, but the ones I have seen have the art shoehorned into the tarot meaning of the card. I have the Golden Tarot of Klimt and I love Klimt's art. They take different pictures and make collages of parts of artwork / symbols to fit the card. It's very strange to read it. I guess if you really love the artist's work, it's nice to have a tarot but for me, they are manipulating and changing the art and the artist often never made a tarot. Some artist's did make their own tarot from their work. It's possible there are some good examples of this but collaging famous art doesn't really work for me as a reading deck.

[Tom]

Regarding deck art, some artists reinterpret it using less common meanings for cards and their own meanings as well. If the art has something of a RWS meaning or symbols I don't mind.  What I do mind as I've said before, is instead, that don't have any semblance of the meanings at all.  The Great Outdoors Tarot is like that.   Beautiful art, but yikes the illustrations didn't jive with tarot meanings I know.  I've always said these artists should make Oracles instead because they can make up their own system.

[Laura Borealis]

I've seen a deck mod video where someone was dissatisfied with the choices of a curated art deck like that, so she changed the cards around to suit herself. She cut the titles off and re-titled them in the new arrangement. A pretty good solution, if you can find appropriate art within the deck for all the cards.

 

I've also seen one where she weeded out cards she didn't like and converted a tarot into an oracle. I've thought of doing that myself. I've got a deck I don't use because I really don't like a couple of the cards, and the creator renamed the suits and courts in a way I can't get used to. But if I cut the titles off and got rid of the cards I don't like, it would make a nice oracle. Also it has gilded edges that feel scratchy and frankly look a bit tacky. They need to be removed as well. I just have never liked my own trimming efforts so I haven't been motivated to modify it yet.

[Tom]

4 hours ago, Laura Borealis said:

I've seen a deck mod video where someone was dissatisfied with the choices of a curated art deck like that, so she changed the cards around to suit herself. She cut the titles off and re-titled them in the new arrangement. A pretty good solution, if you can find appropriate art within the deck for all the cards.

 

I've also seen one where she weeded out cards she didn't like and converted a tarot into an oracle. I've thought of doing that myself. I've got a deck I don't use because I really don't like a couple of the cards, and the creator renamed the suits and courts in a way I can't get used to. But if I cut the titles off and got rid of the cards I don't like, it would make a nice oracle. Also it has gilded edges that feel scratchy and frankly look a bit tacky. They need to be removed as well. I just have never liked my own trimming efforts so I haven't been motivated to modify it yet.

I don't want to alter a tarot deck, some people cut the borders off them because they prefer borderless, but I'd never get things to align properly.  In a deck like you're talking about I would read them intuitively and not try to follow the rules.  I've already mentioned I love the artwork in the Tarot of the Great Outdoors, but the images have little to do with RWS meanings.  If I bought that one, if I wanted to read it, I would read it intuitively and treat it like an oracle.  I can ignore the titles, they changed the suits into other things too, like Pentacles are Stones in this deck.

 

If you're very crafty, good for you!  Make that deck work for you somehow.

[Morwenna]

Regarding pips: there are some decks that have only partly-illustrated pips, or pips with just a hint of the usual contents of illustrated pips. Right now I'm thinking of the Cruel Thing, but it's not alone. What did we use to call these? Enhanced? Embellished? something like that... Anyone else remember the term?

 

IIRC (my deck is buried), Medieval Scapini does something like that too. 

[Misterei]

20 hours ago, Morwenna said:

Regarding pips: there are some decks that have only partly-illustrated pips, or pips with just a hint of the usual contents of illustrated pips. ...

I call them Hybrid decks. They aren't fully scenic pips--but more going on than non-scenic. I have mixed feelings about this. In Rose Tarot i like it. In Dame Fortune's Wheel it messes me up b/c the pip illustrations reference Eteilla. Thoth was the original hybrid style and does it well, yet I seldom to never read with Thoth. I tend to like one or the other [i.e. fully scenic or NON scenic] as each type suggests a different reading style to my brain.

[Tom]

28 minutes ago, Misterei said:

I call them Hybrid decks. They aren't fully scenic pips--but more going on than non-scenic. I have mixed feelings about this. In Rose Tarot i like it. In Dame Fortune's Wheel it messes me up b/c the pip illustrations reference Eteilla. Thoth was the original hybrid style and does it well, yet I seldom to never read with Thoth. I tend to like one or the other [i.e. fully scenic or NON scenic] as each type suggests a different reading style to my brain.

I see your point.  Some of them only have the elements on them.  I can read with them but when they change things up to much my brain has to translate those unfamiliar images.  They say you can't read Marseille style decks with RWS meaning, but I have done it successfully. As long as you tell the cards you're reading them with RWS meaning the Higher Forces will bring up the right card combinations that make sense.  

Edited July 9, 2024 by Tom
Typos

[Misterei]

33 minutes ago, Tom said:

... They say you can't read Marseille style decks with RWS meaning, but I have done it successfully. As long as you tell the cards you're reading them with RWS meaning the Higher Forces will bring up the right card combinations that make sense.  

Yes. I *can* do this --exactly as you say-- when I intend to. God knows I've got my RWS well and truly memorized 😇

But to me the whole point of NON scenic Pips is to let my brain go in a different direction -- more numerology and Pythagoras. I will never be 100% free of RWS meanings. Those are baked-in to my brain at this point. But i find my non-scenic pips allow for different ways of reading which I quite like as a freedom from the prison of illustrated pips.

 

Back on topic--I suppose it's a pet peave when a hybrid deck forces me to consider the illustration but then doesn't give enough information to solidify the meaning. Or as with DFW, it's illustrating an Eteilla pip meaning in a deck with standard Tarocchi trumps. Like, "Pick a lane! Are you Eteilla or Tarocchi? Are you scenic or non-scenic?"

Edited July 9, 2024 by Misterei

[Tom]

@Misterei yes you can definitely use directionality, colors and numerology for use interpretation for Marseille type decks. Ciro Marchelli loves to make hybrid decks.  I have 4 of his and that's enough for me really.  It want anyways this easy but he's been blending RWS and Marsellies decks together for a while now.  I really do like his Leonormand deck though.  Even there he added extra cards but they're at the end of the deck so you don't have to use the extra cards if you didn't like them.