Aid in learning...

I am a pixel artist (computer art drawn pixel by pixel). I recently purchased my first Tarot deck and want desperately to learn all I can.

I was wondering if creating my own deck (just for personal use of course) may help me to learn more about the deck. I was thinking, of doing a study on each card, the meaning... and creating my own card that I could relate to. Do you think this would help me to learn or would this be a waste my time that I could be learning more some other way.

All things change , and further down the track so will the home made ones change, in understandings.

By all means make a set, they may be just what is needed to awaken your talents.
Also ,On the other hand, do get into the traditional Tarot of your choice, there's a wealth of interesting information which will definetly alter your present views and enhance your designs.

Whatever works for you is fine, as long as it, they, open the doors to your inner self.

Enjoy the journey, but dont forget to 'show an tell' the others here.

By all means go for a deck of your own!! It will help you "bond" with the images and awaken your intuition even more. Now, if you feel you have time on your hands, get a look at some books that give you the basics about the cards. I would never give up on my hunches but having a "scaffolding' system does help sometimes. These two are excellent, fun and easy to read:

Tarot Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis
Absolute Beginner's Guide to Tarot by Mark McElroy

Enjoy the ride

I don't think it'd be a bad idea to make a deck based one of the traditional decks like the RWS. In fact, in the process of doing so, you would have to do a very careful inspection and analysis of the artwork even to directly copy it, which would give you a detailed understanding of every element that went into the drawings. I can't see it hurting in any way.

Thank you everyone for your replies thus far.

I was thinking that if I do this, I would start with the major cards and go from there.

re-pete-a - I am not sure what you mean by tradional tarot of my choice. Where can I find more information about this?

ana luisa - Thank you for the book titles, I will enjoy looking them over.

Strategeus - I think maybe you misunderstood my reasoning for wanting to do this. I was hoping to create a deck that I was more in touch with. Images that I felt fit with the meaning of the cards. As far as direct copies of the cards, well, I would not be doing that. The cards I had imagined in my mind, were nothing like I have seen before (doesn't mean they are not out there somewhere, but I have not seen them yet) and something I could easily understandwhen I look at them. Actually, I wasn't even going to use cards as a reference, I was just going to read the reasoning behind the cards. I hope that makes sense. I don't know, maybe I am going about it all wrong, who knows, but that was my original plan.

Nocturnica said:

Thank you everyone for your replies thus far.

I was thinking that if I do this, I would start with the major cards and go from there.

re-pete-a - I am not sure what you mean by tradional tarot of my choice. Where can I find more information about this?

ana luisa - Thank you for the book titles, I will enjoy looking them over.

Strategeus - I think maybe you misunderstood my reasoning for wanting to do this. I was hoping to create a deck that I was more in touch with. Images that I felt fit with the meaning of the cards. As far as direct copies of the cards, well, I would not be doing that. The cards I had imagined in my mind, were nothing like I have seen before (doesn't mean they are not out there somewhere, but I have not seen them yet) and something I could easily understandwhen I look at them. Actually, I wasn't even going to use cards as a reference, I was just going to read the reasoning behind the cards. I hope that makes sense. I don't know, maybe I am going about it all wrong, who knows, but that was my original plan.

Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood what I was getting at. I said "EVEN to directly copy it" as in...even doing something as mundane as copying the cards would force you to look at them closely. That is to say, even if the only thinking you did was enough to copy existing work, it would be helpful. If you plan to make your own entire deck from scratch using your own personal images, I think that'd be a wonderful way to explore the meanings of the cards and would truly deepen your understanding of Tarot as a discipline and an art. Go for it!

Ah yes, I did misunderstand, thank you for letting me know. I see what you are saying now, and yes, thank you again!

Traditional tarot of your choice , look into the forums for info, theres also a history section, but you may need to be a subscriber to open other sections avail on this site.

Enjoy the journey!

OK, thank you very much!

Nocturnica

Nocturnica said:

I am a pixel artist (computer art drawn pixel by pixel). I recently purchased my first Tarot deck and want desperately to learn all I can.

I was wondering if creating my own deck (just for personal use of course) may help me to learn more about the deck. I was thinking, of doing a study on each card, the meaning... and creating my own card that I could relate to. Do you think this would help me to learn or would this be a waste my time that I could be learning more some other way.

Click to expand...

I think personally that you would need to know a lot about Tarot to create a deck. I think you would have to do the study first then create a deck.

First thing to keep in mind. As for doing a study in each card and its meaning...cards do not have set meanings. Even if you tend to use book meanings, you can look in 10 different books and find 10 different meanings for any given card. Even the traditional meanings change somewhat from book to book.

As well of course, even if you were to pick one book as some type of authoritive source on the exact meaning (and no book could be that) the meanings change so much because of the variables involved in a reading: the question asked, the position of the cards if you use a spread, surrounding cards, common themes between cards....etc and so forth.

Add to that that the image itself gives a good part of the meaning as does one's intuition.

My point being, that if you want to study "the" meaning of each card, to me that would involve studying as many meanings for each card as you can find from many sources. And then coming to some kind of decision of what you personally want it to mean to you, before you could create each card.

There is no set meaning for each card. And as well different decks have different meanings for certain cards. I must have over 30 Tarots by now and each "thinks" differently.

Those are my thoughts.

Babs