From petrie@lcalor.enet.dec.com Fri Nov 12 14:17:35 1993 From: manos a la obra! 12-Nov-1993 1252 Subject: Musings and some suggestions Ed, I've been mulling over your posting in alt.magick about the OTIS synergy:arcana project to create a Tarot deck - it sounds like a fascinating undertaking. For what they're worth, here are some thoughts and suggestions that I hope will be helpful. 1. I know nothing about the OTIS group, so I'm going to assume that its members aren't necessarily familiar with the Tarot already, or symbolism and/or mythology. If they *are*, your project gets a major boost in efficiency and effectiveness. If not, it shouldn't hold your efficiency back too much if your artist-members are good with their imaginations and you have a *lot* of contributors. 2. The Tarot in a nutshell: (I wrote this before seeing your posting from the library research. They go reasonably hand- in-hand. BTW, there is a fair amount of speculation about how the cards came together; the "evolved from playing cards" approach is actually backwards -- *some* sources speculate that playing cards (as well as the game of Tarocco) evolved from the other uses of the deck. There's a recent book with an excellent tracing of Tarot history (and it's short) called "The Tarot: History, Mystery, and Lore" by Cynthia Giles.) The deck has 78 cards, divided in 2 major groupings. The Major Arcana are the 22 cards traditionally numbered with Roman numerals; they represent basic archetypal forces. The Minor Arcana, the other grouping, consists of 4 suits of 14 cards each. The suits may have some variation in names from deck to deck, but the underpinning philosophy is that they refer to the 4 realms of the human personality: Identity/spirit/creativity -- Wands (also, Batons, Rods) The non_rational/emotions/relationships -- Cups The rational/intellectual/worldview -- Swords Grounding/security/action_in_the_world -- Pentacles (Disks) Each suit has 10 "pip" cards going from ace to 10, and 4 "court" (people) cards. In many decks, the pip cards only show an arrangement of the item (3 cups, for example) -- the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was one of the first to show scenes symbolic of the cards' meanings. Where it's just the suit items, I have yet to see a deck that didn't arrange them in exactly the same patterns...I'm not sure if these come from numerology, geomantic figures or the Kabbalah, but something sturdy underpins the design. The pip cards indicate where you are in the development of some situation. The court cards are King, Queen, Knight and Page/Princess. As with suit names, the "persons" may take different names from deck to deck; there is a definite philosophy for each category. These cards generally indicate the style or aspect of personality that's in operation; could be of the person being "read" about, or of a different person in his/her life. 3. Capturing the cards' meaning: there are lots of books around that will give you "cookbook" meanings for the cards. IMHO, these are about at the same level with the joke about the guy who says "This speed-reading course I took was wonderful! I read 'War and Peace' in 30 minutes! It's about Russia." :^) The difficulty I foresee in your project is that the Tarot is a sophisticated symbolic system designed to interact with the unconcious mind. You are correct that it's a bunch of artwork on cards; at its most basic, I believe a person will find in reading a card what his/her unconcious wants to say to him/her at the time. If you accept Carl Jung's premise of a collective human unconscious, and then Joseph Campbell's associated work on the universality of certain myths, it becomes easier to see how the Tarot symbolism works. But Campbell goes on to say that myth motifs are universal; the symbols used to convey those change according to culture. I believe you're trying to be sure your artists stick with the card meanings when you ask for a list of usual symbols on each card. That's part of the answer, but IMHO it's like learning to sing a song in Russian by rote. To give you an example, there should be a veil in the High Priestess's card. Stating that doesn't begin to explain the purpose of the symbol -- the ancient awe of the Goddess who said "no mortal can look behind my veil and survive", or why the Priestess is considered virgin, or why her robe dissolves into water. While each card does have a (range of) meaning that applies to everyone, the particular symbols in a given deck affect different individuals very differently. Even for the established traditional decks, that's why you find one person crazy about using the Rider-Waite-Smith, and another swearing that only the Thoth deck suits his needs and R-W-S is "cold". (Giles, by the way, groups the various decks available from US Games in her "Lore" section. Her paragraphs of discussion on why she puts x,y,& z into a given category is on the mark IMO) Many people who seriously study the Tarot eventually try to create their own deck to express the meanings of the cards using their own personal symbology. It can take a long time to understand the cards deeply enough to do this. This is probably why you're getting flak from the alt. groups -- it sounds a bit like "Profound Authentic Mystic Experience in 10 Days!" :^) You've a very short time to design a deck; not clear how much prior grounding your artists will have. This could make judging the Tarot value of the final cards very difficult - or far too simple. Instead, you may want to consider this as the first pass in an evolving deck. Personally, I don't think you'll get a publishable-quality deck in 1 month. Now that I've sounded discouraging, here are some ideas and suggestions for how to get it done -- I *do* think the project is approachable and worthwhile if it's taken seriously. (And besides, who am I to say? :^) 4. Here are a few ways to get a decent cut at the cards' real meanings as well as the important symbols. (Doing a lot of reading isn't practical for a 1-month project & it probably gets in the way at the start.) a) Suggest each artist work on only one card. There is plenty to keep someone busy for a month in 1 card, and results will be more profound. (Unless you are expecting a flood of entrants, you may even want to limit the project to just the 22 Major Arcana cards) b) Have several decks available (electronically or un-) If Artist X is going to focus on -say- the High Priestess, give Artist X a copy of the High Priestess from each of those decks. This way, the person will be able to identify common symbols that appear in each version as well as consider the nuances of meaning that different versions will show. (Once some key symbols are identified, I'd highly recommend the artist poke around the Mythology section of the library and read some of the legends.) c) Have the artist color an existing black & white version of his/her chosen card. I found this to be a remarkably effective exercise: it focused my attention on *why* a particular color was called for, the details of the card, and led to some interesting associations. I used the B.O.T.A. deck; simply following their instructions a la paint-by-number was surprisingly meaningful. d) Use active visualization techniques on the card. Mary Greer's workbook "Tarot for Your Self" has a discussion on how to do this - in essence, examining the card until you can mentally "see" it, then mentally expanding it to life size and stepping into the scene to use your senses and talk to the figures. Done well, it has the quality and unpredictability of a dream. You can also "ask" what the meaning or purpose of a symbol is, and the card (ie, your unconscious) may dumbfound you with its reply. e) Greer also has an interesting exercise for the court cards which might be expandable for all of them. She asks a series of questions "if this person were a color, what would the color be? If a body of water, what kind? What temperature? If a piece of music,what kind? What kind of animal? Plant?" You get the idea...it's playful and fun, but illuminating. When I caught myself saying the Page of Cups would be a can opener if it were a tool, I had one of those "aha!" moments about the card's essence. I do believe that the symbolism used in the Tarot is already meaningful to the unconscious mind (of Western civilization, anyway) - with some attention and play, your participants should be able to find personal and universal meanings in the cards without ever touching a book. As I said in #3, expressing those meanings in an original card - which somebody else could use - is an entirely other creative step. You might not come out of the project with results that are universally meaningful or fully fleshed, but they will be valuable expressions of personal reaction nonetheless. IMHO, it's the journey that's important with the Tarot, not the end product.