picture of symbols vs. symbolic picture

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 06 Feb 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

firemaiden	06 Feb 2003
There has always been something that bothered me about the RWS deck, something, for all its beauty and symbolism, something that I find disturbing, something...well...cloying and icky about the cards. I have been trying put it into words for a while, and have come up with this. In the Marseilles Deck, looking at the Magician, I see a picture. There is a recognizable character, the bagato, the bateleur, he's a guy you see in the train station, on the streets of Paris...he's a gypsy, an african "marabout", a panhandler. He belongs to ordinary life, and is loveable, as a recognizable human, with cute and funny foibles. Yet if you look deeper, he has magic powers. He is perhaps a trickster god in disguise as a human. I look at the toys he has - the dice, the cup, knife, wand, and top, the suits, all perfectly ordinary objects that fit in with the ordinary picture. The picture resonates comfortably in two worlds. When I look at the Rider-Waite Magician, on the other hand, I see a composition of self-conscious symbols organized into a picture. But every symbol shouts "I am a really important, deep and meaningful symbol"...I don't get any kind of feeling of the ordinary reality, or of cute, imperfect humanity. That is missing, completely missing. Same with the Fool Card. The Marseilles, and the Oswald Wirth fools are funny, human, grotesque but human. He might win one of those "ugly contests" in Italy that are so beloved. The RWS fool on the other hand is a prince, all too balletic and graceful, beautiful, but icky. Whereas the Marseilles magician, and fool are powerfully symbolic without insisting on being so, the RWS cards remind me of novels written by literary critics...which self-intrepret along the way. Self-referential, interesting, they do not hold the same power as an honest human story. The RWS deck, like many after it, is banking its magical effect on the belief in the power of a **symbol** to be magical in and of itself. Literary critics, myself included, love to analyze symbols...it gives me something to say. The hope is that the symbol should lead eventually to some deep secret knowledge....somewhere along the line of connections of metaphors to clusters of metaphors. And yet without the human story to give them body, the symbolism just turns around itself it a sad little swirl of smoke...

Baneemy	06 Feb 2003
firemaiden, you just put the words in my mouth! My first deck was an RWS and I just absolutely hated it. I could never put my finger on quite what was wrong with it, but you've expressed it perfectly. -Baneemy

Macavity	06 Feb 2003
I rather like the Univeral Waite. On the other hand I cannot escape from a permanent mental image of John Travolta in the "Saturday Night Fever" pose every time I see the magician card. I also have an irrational urge to punch (both?) the five and seven of swords - and I'm not a violent person :)

firemaiden	06 Feb 2003
Thank you Baneemy! That's funny Macavity. It might be an irrational urge for you, but not for a cat :D

RiccardoLS	06 Feb 2003
Hello Firemaiden, it seem we share many similar points of view :) I call the difference You had explained as a division between Symbolic decks, and Evocative decks. One reason I don't like the RWS as a beginner deck, by the way, it's that it's massive use of symbols, blind the newbie to the evocative part of any reading or of any deck. Both style I think have their own way for "talking" and rarely it's possible to judge a symbolic deck with the meter of one evocative, or viceversa. While I'm much fonder of evocative decks (it's my style), I found so many people, the majority, totally for the symbolic - that they realize it or not - If you look at the most learned and advanced reading styles - such as the elemental dignitis, for instance - they were developed and works incredibly fine with symbolic decks. Cabbala, astrology, and most other esoteric correlations also, links better with the symbolic. I think the evocative styles of reading had been developed with much less attention, care and competence. That I know, just the Comparative method, works better with Evocative decks, rather then Symbolic. Riccardo (which is deadly serious on this subject)

firemaiden	06 Feb 2003
Thank you for this interesting perspective, Riccardo-who-is deadly-serious. ;)If I understood you, evocative would be the decks I described as more human, and symbolic, would be what I called "just pictures of symbols" ? Thank you for giving us terms for this distinction. I am glad we share some points of view. :). Perhaps I might ask you what is meant by the comparative method?

RiccardoLS	06 Feb 2003
ok, I'm not anymore that deadly serious :) (I hate you, by the way) :) Ric What deck would you call "evocative", beside the Marseille?

RiccardoLS	06 Feb 2003
Said in a very short way, is a reading style, that enenahce and gives advanced meanings using multiple decks at once, comparing the same cards in its different nuances. I don't like very much the "rules" for he method, but I really love the idea, and the potential. The link here explain it better that I can ever: http://www.comparativetarot.com/ Salud, Riccardo

firemaiden	06 Feb 2003
Very interesting site, Riccardo, thank you. I had no idea that existed! Per Dio non odiarmi!

firemaiden	07 Nov 2004
...continuing a discussion begun long ago -- Riccardo asked me for another example of a deck I found "evocative" in addition to the Marseille - - I especially love the LS Dürer Tarot for this - witness the Fool card - it captures exactly what I was describing with regard to the Marseilles -- there is a funny and dear human-ness - a real person in real scenery - not an assemblage of self-conscious SYMBOLS. I think the Fey and the Bruegel Tarot both succeed very well in this as well. (Remember the scene in Robert Altman's movie "the Player" where the camera focusses veeeeery deliberately on the picture of a snake in someone's office? I loved that moment! It was such a wonderful way of poking fun at symbolism.)

Cerulean	08 Nov 2004
there's an article that might explain the iconography a bit more along Waite's storylines for the minors? Ah, perhaps the translated vision of Arthur Waite bugs people! Ms. Mary Greer gave a preview lecture of how Waite probably meant to illustrate his concept of the 'search for the Grail' in the Rider Waite minors--I am putting it very badly and generally, because I did not take notes. It was along the lines of Arthur Waite's Christian mysticism and this article took a long time to develop because she has a hard time wading through all of Waite's writing. She said that Llewellyn's Tarot Reader coming out in 2005 probably would contain the article and general Waite references. (So it's next year's Reader, not the one on the market now as of November 2004). From what I remember from reading and what I caught from the lecture, Arthur Waite and others viewed the way that Pamela Colman Smith could generally 'transcribe' through visual means the things he envisioned as a 'naive' talent. Don't know if that helps. It's still giving me food for thought. Regards, Cerulean P.S. The lecture was given October 2004 in San Francisco

Vincent	08 Nov 2004
firemaiden wrote: Whereas the Marseilles magician, and fool are powerfully symbolic without insisting on being so, the RWS cards remind me of novels written by literary critics...which self-intrepret along the way. Self-referential, interesting, they do not hold the same power as an honest human story This may be stating the obvious, but the main difference between the TdM and RWS is, that the RWS was designed as an occult deck. Designed specifically to iconify AE Waite's personal brand of Christian mysticism. Where the symbolism of those ideas overlapped existing Tarot he let them be, where it didn't, he provided his own. To use Waite's own term, he 'rectified' it. The TdM may be used to promulgate occult ideas, just as tea leaves in the bottom of a cup, can be used in the same way, but there doesn't seem to be any real evidence that it was designed with this as a primary function. What might be surprising, to card historians at least, is the way that some of Waite's ideas and symbolism have been applied retroactively to the TdM, by some of its adherents. If you wished to study Waite's ideas, then there is no alternative to the RWS. If you wished to perform divination then it simply comes down to a matter of aesthetic preference, since all divinatory meanings, including Waite's, would seem to be arbitrary. A matter of choosing the right tool for the job at hand. Vincent

firemaiden	08 Nov 2004
That's interesting, Vincent, obvious perhaps to some, but it needed to be said. So, did Waite design his cards to be a "teaching board" for his mystical ideas, rather than to be "read" as tarot cards? Funny thing it is though, to "design" something on purpose to be occult. From the point of view of reading the cards, the RWS deck feels to me like a treasure hunt that's "rigged" -- like the underwater submarine ride at Disney Land. But you know what? Now you are actually getting me curious about what these Christian mystical ideas might be. :) Thank you, Vincent.

Vincent	08 Nov 2004
firemaiden wrote: That's interesting, Vincent, obvious perhaps to some, but it needed to be said. So, did Waite design his cards to be a "teaching board" for his mystical ideas, rather than to be "read" as tarot cards? Who can tell? Sometimes Arthur doesn't seem sure. He says there is more to the cards than he is willing to tell, for "those that have eyes to see", yet he devotes a great deal of his book for the purpose of fortune-telling which he condemns as fantasy. Crowley asks, in his review of the 'Key to the Tarot', almost the same question; "Now, what I want to know is this: is Mr. Waite breaking his obligation and proclaiming himself (to quote the words of his own Oath) "a vile and perjured wretch, void of all moral worth, and unfit for the society of all upright and just persons," and liable in addition to "the awful and just penalty of submitting himself voluntarily to a deadly and hostile current of will ... by which he should fall slain or paralysed as if blasted by the lightning flash" or, is he selling to the public, information which he knows to inexact?..." Though he does admit that "Mr. Waite really does know a bit..." about Tarot If you were cynical, you might well believe it was simply a financial exercise, after all, it seemed to be targeted for fortune-tellers, though I am not sure he made much money from the venture. Vincent

firemaiden	08 Nov 2004
Wow, that's interesting, and funny :D Thanks Vincent!

Alta	08 Nov 2004
Riccardo does make another point though. That for some advanced readers, heavily into the esoteric learnings, would work much better with deeply symbolic decks. I have seen at least one tarot deck that has no images at all, just symbols, and another that is mostly that way. I assume that these decks have their audiences. Evocative decks, by which I assume you mean decks with images that us ordinary folk can relate to. I also find that the atmospherics of the cards are important. If the image on the card awakens an echo of a feeling that I can understand, then I can understand the card. Sometimes I think that is why some cards draw a blank. I have never had any experience with what it depicts. Meditation and other techniques work, gradually pulling out buried knowledge, but to draw the meaning out immediately may be impossible for me, at that time in my life.

Phaedra	08 Nov 2004
I'm glad this thread has been resurrected. Waite's ideas came out of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the late 19th- early 20th century occult order, which drew upon the many strands of the Western esoteric traditions. The cards were not designed for fortunetelling; the HOGD attitude was that fortunetelling was the lowest use of the cards. They were designed more for meditation and magical use. Each member of the HOGD was supposed to draw or color his or her own personal deck. The RWS is self-conciously an occult or metaphysical deck. (A far better discussion than I could give can be found in A History of the Occult Tarot: 1870-1970 by Ronald Decker & Michael Dummett.) Older decks, especially those before the 19th-century French occult revival, drew more on the tradition of allegorical pictures. Drawings were evocative because they were rich in symbolism. The more one contemplated the picture, the more one would find. Allegory is a visual language. It's easier to read a deck if you have some familiarity with the language in which it was created. Otherwise, if you think about it, what's the point of having pictures at all? Tarot cards, as opposed to, say, regular playing cards, are much more evocative. Of course, many people read playing cards very well. Images and symbols go beyond verbal communication. They communicate differently. They play with different parts of our brains.

RedMaple	08 Nov 2004
I think it's also important to remember the popularity during Victorian times of doing "tableaux" among the upper classes. People dressed up in costumes and posed as well-known historical, literary, and mythical figures. I think Patricia Colman Smith's depictions are very much influenced by the tableaux style, a style in which the symbols were needed to tell the audience what or who it was they were looking at. (Justice's scales, for example, or Cleopatra's snake at her throat...) I also love the more evocative decks. I think it is the difference between symbol and image, where a symbol is much more confined in meaning, and an image much more resonant. RedMaple

Persha	09 Nov 2004
I've been trying to figure out just what it is about RWS that turned me off (apart from the colour scheme) and you totally pinpointed it Firemaiden. They are pictures of symbols - which I suppose is OK from Waite's perspective, but it seems a rather unsatisfactory way of going about things. Broadly speaking you can divide Tarot decks into allegorical (from Marsellies to theme decks), highly symbolic (ie. abstract/surreal/without figures) and this odd middle-ground of RWS & co, neither one nor the other. The combination of symbolic and allegorical is distracting, or at least not mixed in correct proportions. A purposefully occult deck doesn't have to be like this. The Robin Wood deck is based on RWS symbolism etc. but the pictures are - IMHO - well rounded allegorical images/symbolic pictures. They are less strained and thus more evocative. (can you tell Robin Wood was/is my 1st deck?) With regard to Phaedra's point about allegory being a visual language, I think that's why some theme decks can be so evocative. If you really enjoy/are into a particular theme, the deck just speaks your language - or vice versa. -Persha PS. Personally I *love* allegory - does anyone else look at all those pre-20th C. mythological paintings and try to figure out the meaning of every single object and person?

Fulgour	12 Nov 2004
Productions have lavished countless millions of dollars on Hamlet, but on your own you can read the play.

Fulgour	12 Nov 2004
firemaiden wrote: Literary critics, myself included, love to analyze symbols...it gives me something to say. The hope is that the symbol should lead eventually to some deep secret knowledge....somewhere along the line of connections of metaphors to clusters of metaphors. And yet without the human story to give them body, the symbolism just turns around itself it a sad little swirl of smoke... Just as with literary criticism, a single work (such as Hamlet) can generate countless thousands of commentaries. Historical backgrounds are sought, literary roots and sources are sought for, and endless intellectual speculation freely abounds. But then we have the actual work by Shakespeare, and even the perfect quote from it: The play's the thing... Similarly, with every new (and old) Tarot deck, the interpretations run far and wide, while in the end all we really have to do is look at the card and decide for ourselves. And as anyone who has struggled through Hamlet can tell you, it's vastly more rewarding in the long run than even the best production of the play, because you get the be the director, all the actors, and the audience too!

firemaiden	13 Nov 2004
Aha, Fulgour, that was beautifully expressed. :D I understand you now. :) I think my problem comes in when the author does a massive amount of his own self-exegesis within his own novel, or play. What fun is an allegory if all the terms are explained, you know what I mean? For an allegory to resonate on many levels, it must first work at the simplest, literal level. Who was it? Rimbaud I think, who, when asked how one should interpret his poems, answered: "littéralement et dans tous les sens" -- literally, and in every possible sense. Back to the cards then... My peeve with some of the majors notwithstanding...I actually think the RWS minor cards do an excellent job of presenting what appear at first to be fairly mundane, human situations -- and these, by their very clarity, allow us the freedom to read different and sometimes opposing allegories in them.

Fulgour	13 Nov 2004
I consider Pamela Colman Smith to be the Shakespeare of Tarot, with the earlier classical decks just that, like Greek and Roman or other ancient texts, heck even Dante and Chaucer... she brought a modernity that has established itself as the ultimate progenitor. There is a deck you may wish to explore, it is a brilliant little work created in 1893 by Giovanni Vacchetta, called: Tarot of the Master. Throughout, its illustrations are fully populated and finely detailed. Given a chance, it is apt to open wide the eyes of many a historian.

jmd	14 Nov 2004
The Vacchetta, as the Sola Busca before it, are certainly wonderful sets by which to see other decks that have wonderful character/scenic-illustrations throughout the pips, and from which Colman Smith undoubtedly also draws from (nothing occurs in a vacuum). Very much like others have already mentioned or implied in this thread, I personally prefer the simplicity of the allegorically rich symbolic image to what may seem the forced superimposition of concatenated symbols. Yet, this does not mean that the overall apparent simplicity of a design such as the Marseille is lacking in symbols - rather, they are not in any obvious manner there, even if they may inform part or parts of its overall makeup. The aeclectic and syncretic integration, rather than the superimposition of concatenation. As posted by Phaedra (which I paraphrase a little and for tense), 'the more one contemplates the image, the more one finds'. This is where, to use some of the similes used in the thread, the language of a deck is masterfully simple when it manages to reflect its own being, without allusion to what has been therein included. It is not the case, in my personal view, that a more apparently complicated deck says any more (whether esoterically nor symbolically), but rather that some make apparent the reflections their creators have decided were already inherent in Tarot and therefore sought for others to also see it in their particular way - often visually enriching and assisting our own discoveries in the process. Like so many other important threads, this one too touches on not only what Tarot is, but also what becomes the personal as opposed to the underlying foundation of the deck.

Cerulean	14 Nov 2004
sailed away in 1998 into a nostalgic Disneyland of yesteryear. I wonder perhaps, if also, that the yellow box of the Rider Waite might drift away after it's upcoming 100th anniversary...or perhaps some people will chant, "Yellow box, forevermore!" I was enchanted that someone brought up the Giovanni Vacchetta deck, which I like. I've never been able to find links between it and the Rider Waite Smith designs... This beautiful Vacchetta "Naibi" decks, locally known from Turin, Italy was published in 1893. The originals were black and white. The color reproductions that we buy now seem to me similar to RedMaple's analogy of the 'tableaux'...but from the little that I read, G. Vacchetta was a gifted teacher, artist and museum director in Turin who could design appropriately symbolic designs that reflected his time period. http://www.trigono.com/tarots/naibi.htm I would love to unearth a fully descriptive book on the iconography of this deck. Sorry if this is off topic, but both the Rider Waite Smith and the Vacchetta deck to me seem to have significant symbolic pictures--but the difference is, I can only guess at most of the Vacchetta symbols. I guessed wrong about the Queen of Swords being historically Judith, if I read Paul Huston's book correctly... Forgive the meandering. The RWS did need to be explained to me for it to feel significant--I like the deck now, but it never was intuitive from day one. Regards, Cerulean

Phaedra	14 Nov 2004
Cerulean wrote: The RWS did need to be explained to me for it to feel significant--I like the deck now, but it never was intuitive from day one. Well, that's just it. The pictures weren't meant to be understood intuitively. The cards were created using the language of symbols of western esotericism (and western art), and thus would be readable by people who were familiar with that symbolic language. Just as classical allusions in written literature are understandable if you have familiarity with classical myth and literature, the symbols in the pictures are understandable. This is why Waite was so coy in his explanations of what the pictures mean. He figured if you knew the language, he wouldn't have to tell you, and if you didn't know, he wasn't gonna spill the beans in some book that just anybody could read. ;-) Context is critical. I doubt if Waite or Smith would find, say, the Rock & Roll Tarot intuitive, more likely they'd find it incomprehensible. They don't speak the language of 20th century rock & roll.

Cerulean	14 Nov 2004
Phaedra, your point reminded me of something and so I lifted a section from the posted article in another post: http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=32059 For many, a certain frisson adheres to tarot, stemming from the turn of the century when it first became popular in Britain because of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a society devoted to the study of mysticism. Its members included W B Yeats and the occultist Aleister Crowley. In 1910, one of its members, Arthur Edward Waite, published The Key to the Tarot, the first modern book on the subject. From this Edwardian fascination came the later use of some of its cards, like the Hanged Man, to represent the occult in countless books and horror films. _ These symbols are among the 22 picture cards of the tarot, called the major arcana. They also include such traditional images as the Fool, a court jester figure also found in morris dancing, and Justice, a universal image seen from the Egyptian pyramids to the top of the Old Bailey in London. It made me wonder, did anyone ever write of anything about the Victorian to Edwardian settings that Arthur Waite may have seen and grown up around that would remind them of RWS scenes? That is, if Pixie Smith had 'transcribed' his visions, especially the majors.... Thanks for the interesting discussion! Cerulean

Vincent	14 Nov 2004
jmd wrote: The Vacchetta, as the Sola Busca before it, are certainly wonderful sets by which to see other decks that have wonderful character/scenic-illustrations throughout the pips, and from which Colman Smith undoubtedly also draws from (nothing occurs in a vacuum). This seems a little unclear. Are you saying that Smith drew from the Sola Busca, which obviously she did, or from the Vacchetta, which doesn't seem quite so obvious. Or are you saying that there is a similarity because the pips are illustrated, in all three decks? jmd wrote: Very much like others have already mentioned or implied in this thread, I personally prefer the simplicity of the allegorically rich symbolic image to what may seem the forced superimposition of concatenated symbols. Yes, its strange how people can look at the same pictures, but see different images. Perhaps because my interest is mainly occult decks that I prefer symbolically rich decks like the RWS and Thoth, but I do like some versions of the Marseilles deck despite the '2D' feel of the images and the naive artwork. Vincent

jmd	14 Nov 2004
In reference to the influence on Colman Smith's scenic illustrations for the pips of the WCS, I was specifically refering to the Sola Busca. If either Pamela CS or AE Waite were in any way influenced by the Vachetta, I am unaware. Where the similarity lies is in the added scenic aspects to the illustrations, rather than the 'mere' floral additions. Perhaps, for myself, because I am likewise principally interested in Tarot from a more esoteric and occult spiritual perspective am I drawn to the depth of the Marseille over what to me are the simpler because not as integrated versions such as the WCS or CH-Thoth.

Fulgour	14 Nov 2004
Whereas the Sola Busca represents a merely grotesque aberration, The Tarot of the Master by Giovanni Vaccehetta is magnificent!

The picture of symbols vs. symbolic picture thread was originally posted on 06 Feb 2003 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.