Three Questions

A couple of (well, three) things I've been pondering - I have some tentative answers but will post them later as I don't wish to prejudice any debate.

1. Why is there no "Birth" card in the trumps, to balance the "Death" card? There are several cards that cover rebirth but not birth.

2. There are lots of characters in the Major Arcana but why no "Human" card?

3. Why are the Tarot images predominantly Caucasian males?

What do you think?

Light and Love,

Nic

Welcome to Aeclectic!

In some sense, the Fool is the "birth" card. Just as Death can be seen as being more about endings than actual "death", the Fool can be seen as being about beginnings more than actual "birth".

I don't understand what you're getting at with the "Human" card.

As for the composition of the races in the deck, I think that has more to do with the deck's European roots than anything else. But in this day and age you can find many decks with a better mix of races or that include images of a single race or ethnic group.

Rodney

1) "Death" in tarot doesn't represent the opposite of "brith" the the classic sense. Rather, this card represents endings, the precursor to new beginnings (in some instances, it can also represent birth!). What do you want a birth card to mean? There are other cards in the deck that would probably signify what you are aiming for.

2) I don't understand this question. The trumps signify broad, archetypal ideas, most of which are shown as human characters. If you need a card that signifies humanity in general, look no further than The Fool.

3) Because the Tarot was a neo-Platonic Christian creation from Medieval Europe.

Healing Spirit said:

1. Why is there no "Birth" card in the trumps, to balance the "Death" card? There are several cards that cover rebirth but not birth.

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I could easily see the Fool and the Empress as "birth" cards. But Death in the tarot has a symbolic mean, of "ending", "cutting", not death as opposed to birth. And Death is not the last card, so the whole archtypical journey of tarot goes beyond death.

Healing Spirit said:

2. There are lots of characters in the Major Arcana but why no "Human" card?

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The Major Arcana is basically made of archetypes... in a sense, all of them are "human", or present inside the "human mind" (and the collective unconscious, if you follow Jung). So why would tarot need a card to represent "the Human", if all cards already do that to some degree?

The collection of archetypes live inside the human mind - you could say that the whole Tarot is a "Human deck", so there's no need for one card to symbolize that. Specially because the very idea of "Human" can mean so many things...

Healing Spirit said:

3. Why are the Tarot images predominantly Caucasian males?

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Because tarot was (probably) created by caucasian males, in the Christian Europe of the late Middle Ages...

Just my opinions for you...

Healing Spirit said:

1. Why is there no "Birth" card in the trumps, to balance the "Death" card? There are several cards that cover rebirth but not birth.

Click to expand...

Death = Birth. It's when you cease to exist in spirit alone, and that spirit enlivens flesh and bone.

2. There are lots of characters in the Major Arcana but why no "Human" card?

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The tarot itself is representative of a human and all that a human is made up of.

3. Why are the Tarot images predominantly Caucasian males?

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Looking at RWS I always thought everyone looked kind of pink if you ask me. Maybe it's to represent how we're made up of love...

-nah, that's probably b.s. I'm making up.

I have no idea about this question. Wasn't Pamela Coleman-Smith a woman of color? That is curious... why would a woman of color make all her art people white males...? But... was she a commissioned artist? Paid to do what a white man wanted in the art...? And that was a long time ago... when white males modeled everything after themselves and made it "standard"... just thinking out loud now I guess...

Amanda_04 said:

Wasn't Pamela Coleman-Smith a woman of color?

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She was very much a white English woman.

Pamela Coleman-Smith

Born in Pimlico of American parents, according to Wikepedia

1. I was going to say, if you are holding a deck of Tarot cards in your hands, you have already been born, but you haven't died yet. However, I like this answer better:

Amanda_04 said:

Death = Birth. It's when you cease to exist in spirit alone, and that spirit enlivens flesh and bone.

Click to expand...

2. I agree with the other answers, the Tarot is human. You don't see a card specifically representing the animal or plant kingdom either.

3. Aren't caucasian males all that matter?

I don't know the answer, so I will just propose a possible theory, it may have more to do with how "male" and "female" are generally represented in mystical terms. In the Yijing (I Ching) the "male" principle is the idea, the formless concept, and the "female" principle is the manifestation, the idea given form. Using those definitions, the Tarot would use males when representing an abstract idea, and females when representing the manifestation of "something".

ETA:
Caucasian because the Tarot predominatly uses European artwork.

Healing Spirit said:

3. Why are the Tarot images predominantly Caucasian males?

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Well there are Caucasian females in them too.

However, other than providing the same answer that others have in regards to the history, my current guess why it continues to be mostly white is a reflection of who runs the publishing industry. And not just who runs it, their target market, regardless of the reality of changing demographics of the last few decades. Granted, I'm only thinking of books and mass media at the moment, but divisions that produce Tarot and other cartomancy decks are often owned by book publishers.

Healing Spirit said:

1. Why is there no "Birth" card in the trumps, to balance the "Death" card? There are several cards that cover rebirth but not birth.

Click to expand...

Tarot started developing in the Middle Ages, where death stalked the land. A cold could kill you. Plague was rife. Syphilis killed as many people as Plague, but people didn't know how it spread for a very long time, so didn't refrain from physical contact. A broken leg would mean permanent disability if you survived, and often you wouldn't survive. A shallow flesh-wound would more than half the time lead to an infection that would become systemic and kill you. People died in their homes. People died in the streets. People weren't quarrantined to die invisibly in palliative care unit so as not to disturb the relatives - and in poorer homes, perhaps many people would be sharing the bed with the dying person, diarrhoea and all.

Birth happened. Any woman and her dog could give birth - but frequently the woman, baby, or both would die in the process.

Is it any wonder Death was a major archetypal symbol?

Healing Spirit said:

2. There are lots of characters in the Major Arcana but why no "Human" card?

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What would this represent to you? Are not all the other cards aspects of what is vitally important to humans?

Healing Spirit said:

3. Why are the Tarot images predominantly Caucasian males?

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They're not. I have scads of decks focussed on different races, on women, even on animals. And plenty where the characters are a blend.

What decks do you own? - perhaps this is something to do with your selection of decks.