Assumptions

All too many Tarot decks released over the last twenty years are derivative — imitations of imitations of imitations. 

It’s easy to lay this at the feet of lazy writers, designers, and artists. But this state of affairs also reflects a simple market reality: decks that stray too far from the look and structure of the Waite/Smith Tarot never sell as well as those who stick to the tried and true.

There’s precious little money in Tarot deck publishing to begin with. Cash-strapped publishers know a deck featuring cute characters in Waite/Smith poses will generate a lot more income than a deck that transcends (or defies) tradition. 

My personal tastes run in another direction: I love books and decks that question assumptions and turn some aspect of Tarot on its head. 

One of these assumptions — that the basic unit of Tarot is the card — is beautifully challenged by Emily Carding’s exquisite Transparent Tarot. Instead of being printed on card stock, the deck is printed on sheets of clear acrylic. Because the cards are transparent, the reader may lay two or more cards on top of each other — and, thanks to clever to design, the illustrations, instead of merely overlapping, merge together, creating an ever-changing library of evocative images. 

The result? Instead of a deck of seventy-eight static images, the Transparent Tarot, while honoring traditional Tarot themes and structures, can generate thousands of symbolic illustrations. Simple … powerful … exquisite.

While not a Tarot, the OH! Cards are another assumption-breaking collection of cards. The OH! Card deck is a double deck — larger cards emblazoned with keywords, and smaller cards featuring color illustrations. It’s amazing how changing nothing more than the keyword at the bottom of a card changes our perception of the illustration above it. An image of an elderly woman leading a child down the street means one thing when paired with the keyword “Protector” … and something else entirely when paired with the keyword “Predator.”

Try this exercise, inspired by the OH! Cards: see how your reading process changes when you use the card title from one deck ... and the illustrations from another.

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The next time you pick up a Tarot deck, consider the assumptions built into it.

Tarot decks are supposed to be square … so I’m curious about round decks, like the Tarot of the Cloisters or the round Tarot of Marseilles. (Round decks also open up intriguing possibilities for a more complex theory of reversals.) Tarot decks are supposed to have four court cards, so I’m interested in decks like the Transformational Tarot, which adds two additional courts to every suit. Tarot decks are supposed to be Waite/Smith-ish or Thoth-ish or TDM-ish, so I’m intrigued by decks (like the Mona Lisa deck) that defy these traditions entirely.

Tarot books, too, can defy traditions. Most are cookbook card dictionaries: keywords, meanings, and sample interpretations for every card in the deck. Some of these are better than others … but at this point, does anyone need yet another cookbook?

Beyond the cookbooks, there are the essay collections (one essay per card, longer essays for the Major Arcana, shorter ones for the Minors) and the books of spreads (like Power Tarot).

So I’m excited about the few books that attempt to do something more, like What’s in the Cards for You (a hands-on, experimental approach to learning to read Tarot), 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card (a book that gives readers strategies for exploring meaning), and even the Back in Time Tarot Book (which uses Tarot to tell the past instead of the future). 

What kind of reader would someone turn out to be if he or she had never seen a cookbook? What if someone learned to read strictly by doing, without ever memorizing a single meaning? What if someone learned card meanings strictly by matching the cards with moments from his or her own past … before ever even trying to generate glimpses of the future?

Must readings consist of one card, or three, or ten? What might a 78-card spread look like? Would it be more accurate than a spread built with a sub-set of the cards? Must you always deal from the top? Must readings be reverent? Must cards always be drawn? Is there such a thing as a reading … without an interpretation?

What assumptions are built into the deck?

What assumptions are built into your reading process?

What assumptions are built into you?

These things interest me these days, in ways that a brand-new copy of “Tarot of the Grinning Goblins” never will, no matter how Waite-Smith poses its cute cast of characters can strike. 

Comments

[James D. Wickson]

"Tarot decks are supposed to have four court cards, so I’m interested in decks like the Transformational Tarot, which adds two additional courts to every suit." The above paragraph caught my eye. I'm reminded of the Cary-Yale Visconti deck.
http://www.tarothistory.com/caryyalevisconti.html

[Mark]

I enjoyed the link, thanks. It's always fun to find a historical precedent for an "innovation."

The more prevalent, 4-card courts -- cast, as they often are, with a male King, female Queen, male Knight, and male Page -- always felt unbalanced to me. The gender symmetry of the six-card court is more appealing -- though I freely admit that appeal is rooted in a viewpoint that was unlikely to have influenced anyone producing card decks in the early 1400's!

I enjoyed the images of the Virtues -- particularly the way the (female) Theological Virtues are literally positioned as being "above men." This allows Judas' betrayal (if the figure on the Hope card is, in fact Judas, as he seems to be) to be read as the foundation or seed of hope -- a theologically sound message, given that his betrayal of The Christ was the trigger for the sacrificial crucifixion.

[R.K. Foster]

Long ago I also got tired of the cookie-cutter approach that so many decks seem to take. I'm an artist so a lot of decks I bought just for the art, but now I always look for decks that explore new ground or open up new areas of meaning. I like my decks to make sense as a system but innumerable iterations of the same system can become boring.