grand-duc:

thebibliosphere:

underthepleiades:

myoldurlmademecringe:

underthepleiades:

who-is-page:

gerudo-witch:

resonance-of-libra:

grimoire333:

unpopular opinion

stop making tarot cards with pictures that don’t inherently represent the original image of the specific card. Don’t draw “death” as a butterfly, or “the high priestess” as an acorn. The pictures on the cards are symbolic and the meaning of the card heavily depends on what scene is playing out through them. that’s literally what tarot is all about. The cards tell stories, and you can’t just put your favorite sea creature on them and claim it means the same thing, and personally i dont think you should even call it a “tarot” deck.

We should probably go back to Olde English too because Words Mean Certain Things and ideas don’t evolve.

The thing is, though

Those ‘faux’ meanings can relate to the cards you paired them with. One of the most common interpretations of Death is intense and irreversible change, especially in terms of self, and that can absolutely be symbolized in the caterpillar/butterfly transition. The High Priestess often symbolizes the far-reaching subconscious and spiritual nurturing, which again can be implied in an acorn knowing that with the proper care it could one day be an ancient tree with roots as big as its branches extending across the entire forest in one huge biological neural network (not unlike the spiritual)

Specific symbolism isn’t going to be the same for everyone, and that’s ok. What works for someone isn’t necessarily going to work for you. That doesn’t mean the tool itself has changed to the point of being useless

Also, butterflies are considered psychopomps in certain cultures/religions, so like…  even if someone DOES have such a traditionalist and stubborn viewpoint as believing that the pictures MUST relate to what the original cards were meant to represent, it would do people well to remember that a lot of the times associations are not always apparent. You can end up looking pretty foolish for needlessly critisizing something out of ignorance, rather than coming from an actual educated and informed opinion. Sometimes it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie. 

And let’s be honest, a lot of the symbolism in the Rider-Waite deck is heavily influenced by a bastardization of Kabbalah and Christian-flavored ceremonial magic that many tarot readers aren’t exactly following as-written anyway. The “traditional symbols” are too solely white and too close to a magical praxis that makes me uncomfortable for me to be “at home” with them.

(Don’t believe me? Let’s have a long talk about the pomegranates on the High Priestess someday. Among Other Things.)

i’m not saying you can only use one specific tarot deck but if you’re using the meanings/key of the rider-wait deck on a deck filled with butterflies i feel like it just isnt the same

Your feelings are irrelevant to the relationships the rest of us have with the tarot cards.

That is to say, your unpopular opinion is, indeed, unpopular, and many of us disagree strongly with it.

I’m looking forward to getting this deck full of skeletons and flowers in my house, because it’s very non-standard, it’s not white at all, and it fits into an area of my personal magical praxis that no other deck has! And I’m sure certain cards in this deck will have symbolism that makes me think about cards in new ways, but there’s certain things I carry from my 15 years of reading tarot, more about my experience with the cards across many decks.

I dunno, I guess I think that someone telling people to stop making things that aren’t for you is a shitty way to go about life?

Also, just to piss in everyone’s cheerios like the old crone I am: tarot cards, original tarot cards, much like the Ouija board were a game.

A literal to honest goodness card game you might play with your friends down ye olde pub. Their name meaning, thought to be from 15th century Italy, was
taroch

which was another word for “foolish”. It’s basically considered to be a complex version of snap meets poker. And if you look this up on wikipedia, it’s right the hell there in the opening paragraph.

There’s lots of wildly inaccurate claims made by occultists who want to sell you fake meaning, and will tell you that they date back to ancient Egypt and beyond and that the words and imagery held therein are sacred. But when you look at real, actual accounts from history, the tarot as we know and use it today, was not formalized until the 18th century when the French decided their old cards weren’t quite so pretty and wanted something a bit more stylized, a style which we haven’t really varied from since. Also they’d just discovered Egypt (read: started raiding and stealing from tombs) and people went nuts for Egyptian mythology, and started assigning meaning to everything and anything, including their tarot cards. Which conveniently for the occultists, had just been released in a pleasing new aesthetic. How profitable.

Before that point in time, people were using any old deck they had, or even one they had made themselves. Or heck, they probably even just used regular playing cards. I know I have. Nothing quite like an impromptu reading to throw the other players off their game.

Using props and tools to divine is nothing new. It’s as old as the dawn of time itself. But attributing sacred meaning to a pack of playing cards is downright silly. Sacredness is in their meaning to you. And you don’t get to decide that for someone else.

I’ll had that it didn’t “use to be” a card game, it still is. My French family certainly ropes me into playing a few hands often enough.

Our deck looks like this: