It’s one of those great debates that circles around, disappears, reappears and returns in some sort of haphazard cycle in the world of Tarot, that occasionally catches my eye and I pause for a while and listen to the thoughts and words unfurl and then wonder just why people get so vocal about it…
What makes a Tarot deck? When is a Tarot deck not a Tarot deck? When does it become an Oracle deck?
And so on and so forth…
And part of me thinks… whatev’ they’re nothing but a bunch of cards… and a rose by any other name… why are you asking me… haven’t you heard of the Google Oracle…
Yet a large part of me acknowledges that Tarot as a system, does possess a certain kind of skeleton and that it comprises of the 22 bones of the Major Arcana, and the 56 bones of the Minor Arcana (16 of which are the Court bones…)
Now admittedly, I may be taking a shallow view… but how that skeleton is dressed and fleshed out to seduce me is where my attention is swept…
Yes… I do like to know why people have chosen different names or structures to ‘traditional’ styles (though even that can cause debate depending on what you view as being your tradition…) but, I’m a visual creature and I can tolerate and even cheerfully ignore all manner of labels, if the art work floats my boat.
Art work is my deciding factor but even then it’s not entirely based on prettiness… It has to have a style that appeals to both my eye and also my methods of reading… There are many decks that I find visually not to my taste regardless of how well they are constructed and then others that I find too beautiful to work with and more pieces of art work than gigging decks that I want to let into the hands of others or risk ruining or losing on my travels…
I often find Tarot and Tarot readers to be similar to Music and Musicians… Maybe it’s the talk of keys and Majors and Minors… maybe it’s years of music lessons… or maybe living with Mr S and his constant stream of guitars and reincarnations into various bands etc…
Tarot and Music… lots of styles… the scholars and theorists… the naturally gifted… the mixes and blends of all the combinations between the two extremes…
I like variety… what a dull life to only ever listen to one kind of music… to dismiss anything as not being old school and therefore not worthy of playing…
In Music, I think there are people who play instruments and then there are true musicians… And then the genius of great musicians, who know all the rules and how in theory, certain things should work… but then they have that intuition that unleashes things that shouldn’t work, that break all the rules and just blow you away with sheer awesomeness!!
I’ve sat with many musicians over the years and listened to them jibber jabber and sometimes get hot under the collar… and I’ve discovered two phrases that can close down any musical argument…
A casual sigh, followed by…Mmmmm… all music’s derivative man…
That will get them staring into space in silence…
The other one, I save for when asked for an opinion… I reply…
Mmm… I don’t really know… Maybe try tuning your bass to DGAF…
😉
The pure and blessed way 