HI, New here. Designing a deck and pretty much stuck

[lyredragon]

I found this forum looking for all sorts of templates, both book and deck. Somehow a degree in Digital Entertainment and Game Design didn't precisely prepare me for making physical decks.  But for now, am happy I found this forum while I try to give my drafts a more consistent organization strategy. So much to do, so much to design. So many questions. It's already taken three-ish years to design just for the first draft of the book, which means lots of cleaning up still.  But the important thing is that the ideas are there now,

 

A bit of background on me won't dredge up much in the way of a qualifying background. I picked tarot up, probably like most people do, supporting a friend who was into it. I was more into western Occultism in general as a scholarly hobby with a special interest in Gnosticism, esoteric alchemy, and chthonic practices. And when I started into cartomancy to support a friend at work, I found that understanding the cards came very naturally because of that. I find that it is a good meditative focus, but I am not too serious about spreads for that. I basically choose how many cards I want to pull and then just go for it. At this point I don't have anyone to practice with and mostly, I don't have too many of the burning questions most people go to a reader for and the questions I have. I have read for a few people to very satisfying results but I've never asked money for it. Anyways, Still lacking confidence in the performance department. Lots to learn and very alone at the moment for a practice that is supposed to be highly interactive.

 

So basically, hi, how is everyone. I'm new here.

[JoyousGirl]

  Lyre.

 

Everyone here loves checking out which decks we all have, so I'd put them in your profile to start with.  Those decks are the best place to start with your project. You can practice here, through exchanging readings, asking questions on your own, engaging on the board generally and posting pics of your spreads for discussion.

 

What is your art style and hope for your deck? 

[Rose Lalonde]

Welcome, @lyredragon. 🙂  In addition to the exchange readings joyousgirl mentioned, the forum has a deck creator's lounge where you can show some pics, ask for advice, or create a journal about the process. -- (Some areas of the forums require you to have comment or post 5 times before you can access them.) I'm always interested in what type of deck people are working on. And like you, I tend to read a line of 3 or 5 without spreads. Hope you enjoy it here. There are lots of places where you can take part even if you don't have burning questions for readings. 

[lyredragon]

The style is mostly going to be Pamela Coleman adjacent, mostly because it's a five suit expansion. I wanted it to be recognizably tarot plus these others. Technically that makes it an oracle deck, but that's on technicality because while I am running off of 102 cards rather than 78, it's thoroughly connected to the traditional Tarot. In addition to the fifth suit, I am reintroducing the Maiden and the Lady positions that were present in the early decks like Visconti-Sforza because I wanted to align the court cards better with a balance of gender. 

 

The style I want to go for is graphically cleaned up but still recognizable as a Tarot deck. I pulled it all the way back to pre-Socratic philosophers like Anaximander from the Milesian school and shifted the arche to air instead of fire, and then the minor arcana concludes with Aether, concentrating on the cycle from the point of view as a boustrophedon, a waveform rather than as the traditional circle of four physical elements expressed through the four traditional suits. It's going to read according to another old tradition, with straight suits being read in ascending order and round suits in descending order, and then Aether being read in both directions. For the Major Arcana, the story is not on the emphasis of an ascending hero story, but on the Cththonic hero story, emphasis on classical cththonic heroes like Odysseus and Orpheus. Strikingly, the major arcana of this does not change much in its cards, but in the nuance of them. There is much much more going on technically though that I decided the art style should be kept to reasonable illustrations.

[lyredragon]

Sorry, ran out of word count. But I geek out when I talk about what this is. I wanted the deck to de-emphasize the connection to Kaballa. I can't strike it out completely, but where it is kept it is honored. One large hang up I do have with tarot is its connection to, frankly, culturally appropriated content slapped in there by Victorian men for edgy reasons. They had their reasons in a long tradition through Western Esotericism. It's an unease with it that goes back to me reading through Cornelius Agrippa's works on the subject and getting really annoyed with him for the same thing. But i still do love the Raider-White-Coleman deck for its theater connections and contributions to literature all the same. TBH I don't know why they don't market the Golden Dawn deck with "From the theater company that also brought us Dracula"

 

Anyways, interpretations cleaned up, concepts cleared up, which, despite the changes should make it much easier to read as a deck. Cththonic in emphasis rather than Ouranic, which means it focuses not as specifically on the definitive answer to query, but speaks to the tests surrounding it. It follows the same pattern that cththonic spirits and deities often use, giving illumination upon the test that's being brought via the query rather than answers to the query. Because sometimes you don't need to know the top down answers to something unknown that bothers you, sometimes you need to know the bottom up questions first.     

[DanielJUK]

Welcome to the community @lyredragon 

This section is really just for welcoming someone to the forum. I second @Rose Lalonde's suggestion about check out the Deck Creation area, it's the area aimed for you.

When you get to 5 posts, you have fewer restrictions on posting and also there is a section of the Deck Creation area which has member's more personal deck creation threads which will then be viewable to you.

 

You might want to post about this in the deck chat section of the area, start a new thread about your deck plans / suggestions needed.

[joy]

Hello @lyredragon welcome to the TT&M Family