TdM Sanity - At Last

Over on Aeclectic Tarot, forum member Scion has posted a clear, succinct reply to all self-appointed guardians of the "pure" TdM. (You know the ones -- they hijack discussion after discussion with endless riffs on why [insert deck name here] simply cannot be considered a TdM.)

Bravo to Scion for articulating what I've always felt, but couldn't quite muster the energy to say.

(To see his post, follow this link and scroll down to post #187.)

Comments

[Janet]

Alas, since I was banned from Aeclectic last year for some unexplained reason, I can't access the Forum.

Can you summarize, Mark? Or anyone else? Or is it far too long a post...?

Janet

[Balakirev]

"The trouble is, there can't be an argument for purity in a tradition which is vague and undefined."

It's nice to see this said, though usually it ends up with people reacting you as though you'd entered a fancy dress ball wearing nothing but speedos. I've said as much before, and we can even take it further: tarot cards are an industry, and like most industries, they thrive upon producing new product that varies only the slightest bit, if at all, from everything that has appeared, before. (Allowing for indepedents, of course.) The result is that we are likely to see 20 or 30 new decks that are Waite clones, or TdM, or even, occasionally, Thoth clones, before a deck hits that is truly original.

And even then, the original deck may have an original take on the art, while working off a deck structure and card concept right out of Waite.

Before anybody shoots me, I don't believe this is necessarily a bad thing. Hell, I have 60+ decks, so I'm just as crazy as anybody else up here in that respect, and not likely to cast stones. But the industry assembly line approach to new tarot creation, I think, leads to a kind of belief among many tarot enthusiasts that all decks must be Waite, or perhaps TdM, if they are truly to be tarot. And that's plain silly, ahistorical, and just plain wrong. It stifles the imagination, and only reflects the state of the industry, not the nature of the tarot--which can be anything we want, as the original pseudo-tarot decks of the Italian Renaissance show.

So here's to Scion shaking things up a bit, and hopefully letting a little sunlight into the tarot factory. We need more shakeups like that, and more tarot decks that fly on their own, instead of on borrowed wings.

most decks are about as original and imaginative

[Balakirev]

Er, sorry. Got carried away. :(

[Freesparrow]

It is a storm in the Tarot Tea Cup!

The Moon is out in his pea green boat, or however the song goes.

ATF has fewer than a couple of hundred active members at any one time. I guess those who choose the traditional TDMs, mainly in Europe and South America, will always be able to buy copies.

I was one who once felt that the Marseille tradition should not be tampered with but the images are not copyright, and anything can happen. They are merely cards with a variety of uses, after all.

The Marseille patterns as they have been reproduced in Europe have a long tradition and custom to them and will survive as long as people want them.

[Freesparrow]

I remember when the Marseille type decks were a mystery at ATF, the province of just a few. It is wonderful now that many more people are familiar with them, and love what they offer in terms of history and symbolism.

I don’t think it really matters that artists create other non-scenic decks. Maggie Kneen’s beautiful ‘Old English Tarot’ is one such. There are undoubtedly others. It will be interesting to see whether they ever reach the level of acceptance and use that the various Marseille types have in Europe and other countries.

I think that ‘battles’ about these things represent other issues on forums and places like this [smiles, remembering with some embarrassment an earlier discussion about the LS Universal].

For me, now, the important thing in decks is the symbolic language and the art, and how those things speak to me.

But I think that 'battles' over the purity of tarot deck ideologies can be really confusing to new people!