Evolution of the tarot ?
Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 08 Aug 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.
| paulo32 |
08 Aug 2003 |
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Hello
"I know of people, and one is a friend of mine, who can see the future..... as clearly as if it is were taking place in front of their eyes." Diana
For somme people is not dificult to see the future.
How can we see a possible evolution of the card ?
Will the tarot grow up and will be more cards ?
What will the aspect of the tarot in the future ?
bye
paulo
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| jmd |
08 Aug 2003 |
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For the sake of keeping connections, the quote you give is from page 2 of the thread the tarot can predict the future?
With regards to possible changes in the Tarot, numerous decks already exist which can be described as modifications of the Tarot - decks which have added a suit, or decks which have increased the number of Major Arcana cards...
These, however, and in my personal opinion, deviate from Tarot. They become something other than Tarot, even if inspired by Tarot. It may be than some other (non-Tarot) deck at some stage in the future gains more prominence than Tarot - it may even be that its name is 'Tarot'... but it would also lose something of the intrinsic qualities of Tarot: having twenty-two Major Arcana cards, forty pips and sixteen courts.
These numbers and combination have certain esoteric - or inner - mathematical and other significance which differently sized decks will only differently have.
Maybe the 'growing up' of the Tarot is not the playing around with modifications, but the deeper involved study of, maybe, just the Marseille ;).
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| paulo32 |
08 Aug 2003 |
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Hello
Whell the quote jmd is onlly a sentence that i like from diana, is not to made a connection, because are diferent subjects on the posts.
I agree with you on have say "Maybe the 'growing up' of the Tarot is not the playing around with modifications, but the deeper involved study of, maybe, just the Marseille"
i think also this tarot deck also already lose somme essence,but maybe we will find this essence later.
I will put a post about this question on the future.
bye
paulo
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| jmd |
09 Aug 2003 |
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touché!
... and yet one may also consider this important history, into which Tarot is embedded, and also reflect on whether these connections to Tarot are themselves part of Tarot's history, or the various important other developments occuring at the time.
From this milieu in which numerous decks were created and experimented with, some survived and became modified, others were more or less left by the wayside, and others facilitated the birth of Tarot - that deck having 78 peculiar and particular cards.
Experimentations and modifications continue, many which, it could be argued, are not strictly Tarot, though certainly influenced (in some cases enormously) by it.
There are, therefore, two (amongst others) important ways to view 'Tarot'. On the one hand, to view it as a peculiar deck manifesting with specifications we could enumerate (22 majors and 56 particular minors, &c.); on the other, we could view the Tarot as decks having causal connections, which emerge out of various social-cultural strivings.
I suppose that favouring the first of these, and also personally adding its impulse as arising out of the spiritual realm, I tend to find the second interesting, but not as satisfying.
Partly because of this thinking do I consider the most popular 19th century deck (the Eteilla) and the most popular 20th century deck (RWS) each wonderful variations - and hence deviations from the essence of the Tarot deck.
It took more than a century for France to distance itself a little from the influence of the Eteilla modifications (though they of course also still remain - but not with the same strength they once had). In the English speaking world, we are only beginning to see the loosening of the grip the wonderful (personal) work of Waite and Colman-Smith has had...
What will, indeed, be the evolution of the Tarot!?!
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| Huck |
11 Aug 2003 |
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Tarot in its form as a divination system is a younger development. With that it stands in a long row with other objects in history, which also once had use as divination tool and some of these are still alive. Astrology, Geomancy, I-Ching etc. are well known examples nowadays, but creativity did lead mankind to use more or less anything in this way. The Bible (together with a knife), the left hand, the flying of birds, the rest of the coffee, dreams, throwing chess figures on a chess-board, snapping accidently through TV-channels, well, that's all evolution. The real basis of all is the user, who asks, the methode is free.
Already we do see Computer programs which let you chose cards ...
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| jmd |
11 Aug 2003 |
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Could this, therefore, also point to possibly separate and differing developments in the 'evolution' of Tarot?
For example, the decks used for gaming have already developed with quite significant differences to ones used for 'reading'. Could it be that the shape of Tarot things to come, to use the title of another thread in the sense intended in this thread, has three branches:- decks for Gaming;
- decks for Divination; and
- decks for other and Esoteric work.
... just occurs to me that the Marseille seems perfectly suited to these three ;)!!!
[...is no-one taking the bait?]
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| matfav |
11 Aug 2003 |
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The reason Tarot works so well is it's mathematical division into a circle, as Rachel Pollac pointed out in 78 degrees of wisdom. 22 over seven, pye. The reason that waite and crowley decks work so well is that they are drawn to trigger the psychic mind.
Modern decks with modern images misdirect the mind by locking onto that which is familiar. This bi passes the psychic mind and in most modern decks, the deep symbolism, mysticism is not adhered to.
"Look deeper and tell me what you see"
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| Cerulean |
13 Aug 2003 |
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Ah, JMD is rightly only saying a fact of the best-seller for the 20th century is the RWS as far as I've read... although I had secretly hoped the infiltration of interest in the very late 1990's of Marseilles and Marseilles derivations would become the next most excellent *wicked pack of cards*...
It is my hope before 2005 or 2010 RWS is a respected runner in a neck-to-neck race with other styles such as the following:
Marseilles
Historical Patterns (whatever we define them)
Recognizeable Variations (however we define them)
Can someone help me place dates? I thought the Milanese Pattern, for instance, might be Visconti to perhaps Bolognese 1760 to Dotti or Italiano/Bolognese Tarocco? I may have to check Tom Tadforlittle and Andy's Playing cards.
Sorry if this wandered. Probably I should just say I really like the evolution of the designs in the Di Gumppenberg and Dotti variations of the 1800s.
Mari H.
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| Yatima |
07 Aug 2004 |
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JMD is right in his differentiation of view the Tarot in its development: either as a certain state of this development or as the evolution itself. I also would agree that the first option, to seek a certain fixed phase as "the" Tarot-phase, would be the more satisfying, but less interesting one.
I personally think that the second way is the more interesting one, I would like to follow. It may be less satisfying; but this is so because of its being more adventurous; because change is the center of this view. So, I see Tarot as a process of evolution of many braches, of which some may prevail, others may die out…
Important is indeed the philosophical basis: Whether one wants a “substance” (sub-stare: standing beneath as unchanging essence or structure)—that is the Aristotelean way (in its reception through Descartes) or “process” (which has “nothing” as its fixed center, but is “empty” and therefore a “living whole”)—as was the way of Plato (via Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze, Derrida…). I side with the latter.
Yatima
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The Evolution of the tarot ? thread was originally posted on 08 Aug 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.
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