Umbrae
Sulis said:Ooh I want one
Yeah – head to Hay-on-Wye!sravana said:Girlfriend, you know what to do!
...The bus goes there...
Balbi Tarot appreciation thread
...The bus goes there...
Le Fanu
My local tarot shop said they could get me a copy of the balbi; they get them from Spain; Santaria Milagroza. I asked them to find out how much it would be... 145 euros!!!
firefrost
It's worth contacting them yourself, to find out how much it would cost you direct.
Le Fanu
I´ll be in Madrid soon, so I´ll go in person and see how much it is there.
It seemed odd as I have spoken to the shop owner and I sussed that she knows very little about tarot. She was talking about rare decks and I played ignorant and asked her to show me some (this is the shop where last week I bought the rare OOP Chinese tarot and the Ravenswood Eastern for peanuts) and she showed me tarots in stock which are just not rare at all. So I can´t think that she put this massive mark-up price on the Balbi
It seemed odd as I have spoken to the shop owner and I sussed that she knows very little about tarot. She was talking about rare decks and I played ignorant and asked her to show me some (this is the shop where last week I bought the rare OOP Chinese tarot and the Ravenswood Eastern for peanuts) and she showed me tarots in stock which are just not rare at all. So I can´t think that she put this massive mark-up price on the Balbi
Moonbow
This is one of my favourite decks after the Marseilles, but within the Marseilles ilk. It does show some WCS system similarities (like the pierced heart on the 3 of Swords *sigh*) but its more Marseilles and Wirth than WCS.
I love the deck, I've done loads of readings with it. Sulis, I know you love the Sheridan Douglas, as I do, I would say this is more Marseilles than that deck but has an up-to-date feel in the colours.
The Swords are water and Cups are air, but I don't take notice of that just as I also ignore the astrological links on the cards.
Thing is, when you get beyond liking the art in a deck and can accept and read a deck without pretty art, I believe your readings improve. That's not to say that great readings aren't possible with pretty art... they are, but reading a card without the distraction helps to focus on the meanings.
I tried Hay on Wye via the net, not in person, and had no luck but then Alta came to my rescue and offered me the deck.
I love the deck, I've done loads of readings with it. Sulis, I know you love the Sheridan Douglas, as I do, I would say this is more Marseilles than that deck but has an up-to-date feel in the colours.
The Swords are water and Cups are air, but I don't take notice of that just as I also ignore the astrological links on the cards.
Thing is, when you get beyond liking the art in a deck and can accept and read a deck without pretty art, I believe your readings improve. That's not to say that great readings aren't possible with pretty art... they are, but reading a card without the distraction helps to focus on the meanings.
I tried Hay on Wye via the net, not in person, and had no luck but then Alta came to my rescue and offered me the deck.
jema
oh i actually found a Balbi like REALLY cheap from a swedish online auctionsite and yeah i love it!
a bit garish in the colors but sometimes that is just what you need.
it is my "punch-in-your-face-deck"
a bit garish in the colors but sometimes that is just what you need.
it is my "punch-in-your-face-deck"
nisaba
Waking this thread up.
I've never desired this deck. I'm not huge on Marseilles-style decks and I have two already, so there really isn't any need.
This, and I'm between incomes at the moment, so I really can't justify buying *anything*, especially since my whole income is less than my weekly grocery bill used to be - and I have groceries, rent, electricity and a personal debt to pay out of that!
So yes, I've stopped buying.
That being said, I found myself in a second-hand bookshop earlier today, browsing books I'd like to buy if I had a budget. Eventually I decided on a Megan Lindholm, partly because it was cheap and partly because I found out recently that many years ago she was involved with someone I know. Wandered up to the till. Glass-topped counter. Tarot decks underneath, mostly obscured by commercial detritus.
The woman pulled them all out for me, and tried very hard to sell me a DV angels deck, Healing with the Angels, or some such thing. Jeez - there I was, female, fat, middle-aged, a bit soft-looking, wearing a huge tie-dyed purple/blue/white tee-shirt as a dress ... you'd think she'd *know* from my dress and general demeanour that I was into the Hard Stuff! But no. The decks turned out to be mostly oracles, and mostly of the Fwuffi Bunni variety (imagine little circles instead of dots over the "i"s).
Through the cluttered glass I saw the word "Tarot" and a shade of blue that almost matched bits of my tee-shirt, so I asked her to fish out that one, which was just about the only one she hadn't pulled out. Tarot Balbi. Unsealed, and in an incredibly worn two-piece box: not *torn* exactly, more so well-used that the box had become furry and started disintegrating.
The cards had, too. The Minor Arcana had been put on top, and had been so well-shuffled that they were as furry as the box. I felt as though they had been well-loved, but by at least two if not three different people. I was about to add to a lineage of people who had kept and used this deck. Each and every Minor, courts included, had key-words written on them, three or four, in large cursive using a proper fountain-pen using Quink blue-black ink (yes, I know - a pen fetishist as well!). Subsequently, someone had handled at least two of the cards on a hot, sweaty day, and blurred some of the key-words.
There were four title-cards, and all of them had had white stickers put over them, and had had spreads written on them, which I might actually experiment with - one in particular looked interesting.
As soon as I saw there was writing on all of them, I asked the woman if she'd drop the price for me because of it: holding my breath, because the writing was actually a big part of their attraction for me! She capitulated, and knocked a sizeable amount off - I got a bargain on a bargain.
Taking them away, I looked through them at greater leisure at work between clients. I got to look through the Minors with growing amazement at the keywords the writer had chosen for them, especially the Courts, which were manifestly bad choices for those cards. I mean: Queen Cups - ruthlessness? King Cups - brilliant businessman, millionaire?
At the same time, this was a well-used deck. It might force its own, quirky system on me ...
Then I got to the Majors. Remember I'd said that the Minors were thinned, damaged and almost furry from constant use? Well, yeah. The Majors were even more so - for many years, I feel, it had been used daily as a 22-card majors-only deck. The Majors were so thin as to almost be translucent. Fortunately, its previous owner had only put one key-word on each of the Majors, as opposed for half-a-dozen all over the entire surface of the Minors.
The deck design itself seems quite quirky: is that a lantern the Hermit is carrying, or a vulva, or a dead fish? And the Lovers, too - the younger woman touching the chest, the older woman going straight for the genitals? And the highly decorated pips are interesting: The Five Cups, which, apparently, means "unselfishness, wisdom, generosity, strength, kindness, triumph", is full of movement, and I love the sinuous lines of the tree in the Seven Pentacles ("wealth, integrity, good business sense, successful partnerships, lifetime love").
Ironically, for someone who loves her decks and looks after them well, I probably wouldn't have bought the deck if it had been less damaged. All the wear-and-tear on it, coupled with a certain residual personal energy which I believe belongs to more than one person, giving the cards an interesting feel (I just wish I were better at psychometry) makes it compelling, as does the often uninformed writing on it which was never intended as vandalism but as an aid.
The touches of the past and the feel of other people on objects are why we keep things that belonged to our grandparents, or why we rummage eagerly through garage sales. It is the sense of undocumented history, and a rich and full history that I'll never have the chance to understand, that makes this deck a real find. Archaeology uncovering early white settlement in Sydney only just over 200 years ago where there are written records, is less interesting to me for this reason than archaeology on communities abandoned over 3,000 years ago and unmentioned an what few texts of the time survive.
I am not the only person to have felt like that: there is the novellist and poet Thomas Hardy:-
"I now not how it may be with others
Who sit amid relics of householdry
That date from the days of their mothers' mothers,
But well I know how it is with me
Continually.
I see the hands of the generations
That owned each shiny familiar thing
In play on its knobs and indentations,
And with its ancient fashioning
Still dallying:
Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,
As in a mirror a candle-flame
Shows images of itself, each frailer
As it recedes, though the eye may frame
Its shape the same."
This copy of the Balbi has its own history. I will treasure it for that. If only the people who previously loved and used it could know that!
BTW, I didn't end up getting the Megan Lindholm book.
I've never desired this deck. I'm not huge on Marseilles-style decks and I have two already, so there really isn't any need.
This, and I'm between incomes at the moment, so I really can't justify buying *anything*, especially since my whole income is less than my weekly grocery bill used to be - and I have groceries, rent, electricity and a personal debt to pay out of that!
So yes, I've stopped buying.
That being said, I found myself in a second-hand bookshop earlier today, browsing books I'd like to buy if I had a budget. Eventually I decided on a Megan Lindholm, partly because it was cheap and partly because I found out recently that many years ago she was involved with someone I know. Wandered up to the till. Glass-topped counter. Tarot decks underneath, mostly obscured by commercial detritus.
The woman pulled them all out for me, and tried very hard to sell me a DV angels deck, Healing with the Angels, or some such thing. Jeez - there I was, female, fat, middle-aged, a bit soft-looking, wearing a huge tie-dyed purple/blue/white tee-shirt as a dress ... you'd think she'd *know* from my dress and general demeanour that I was into the Hard Stuff! But no. The decks turned out to be mostly oracles, and mostly of the Fwuffi Bunni variety (imagine little circles instead of dots over the "i"s).
Through the cluttered glass I saw the word "Tarot" and a shade of blue that almost matched bits of my tee-shirt, so I asked her to fish out that one, which was just about the only one she hadn't pulled out. Tarot Balbi. Unsealed, and in an incredibly worn two-piece box: not *torn* exactly, more so well-used that the box had become furry and started disintegrating.
The cards had, too. The Minor Arcana had been put on top, and had been so well-shuffled that they were as furry as the box. I felt as though they had been well-loved, but by at least two if not three different people. I was about to add to a lineage of people who had kept and used this deck. Each and every Minor, courts included, had key-words written on them, three or four, in large cursive using a proper fountain-pen using Quink blue-black ink (yes, I know - a pen fetishist as well!). Subsequently, someone had handled at least two of the cards on a hot, sweaty day, and blurred some of the key-words.
There were four title-cards, and all of them had had white stickers put over them, and had had spreads written on them, which I might actually experiment with - one in particular looked interesting.
As soon as I saw there was writing on all of them, I asked the woman if she'd drop the price for me because of it: holding my breath, because the writing was actually a big part of their attraction for me! She capitulated, and knocked a sizeable amount off - I got a bargain on a bargain.
Taking them away, I looked through them at greater leisure at work between clients. I got to look through the Minors with growing amazement at the keywords the writer had chosen for them, especially the Courts, which were manifestly bad choices for those cards. I mean: Queen Cups - ruthlessness? King Cups - brilliant businessman, millionaire?
At the same time, this was a well-used deck. It might force its own, quirky system on me ...
Then I got to the Majors. Remember I'd said that the Minors were thinned, damaged and almost furry from constant use? Well, yeah. The Majors were even more so - for many years, I feel, it had been used daily as a 22-card majors-only deck. The Majors were so thin as to almost be translucent. Fortunately, its previous owner had only put one key-word on each of the Majors, as opposed for half-a-dozen all over the entire surface of the Minors.
The deck design itself seems quite quirky: is that a lantern the Hermit is carrying, or a vulva, or a dead fish? And the Lovers, too - the younger woman touching the chest, the older woman going straight for the genitals? And the highly decorated pips are interesting: The Five Cups, which, apparently, means "unselfishness, wisdom, generosity, strength, kindness, triumph", is full of movement, and I love the sinuous lines of the tree in the Seven Pentacles ("wealth, integrity, good business sense, successful partnerships, lifetime love").
Ironically, for someone who loves her decks and looks after them well, I probably wouldn't have bought the deck if it had been less damaged. All the wear-and-tear on it, coupled with a certain residual personal energy which I believe belongs to more than one person, giving the cards an interesting feel (I just wish I were better at psychometry) makes it compelling, as does the often uninformed writing on it which was never intended as vandalism but as an aid.
The touches of the past and the feel of other people on objects are why we keep things that belonged to our grandparents, or why we rummage eagerly through garage sales. It is the sense of undocumented history, and a rich and full history that I'll never have the chance to understand, that makes this deck a real find. Archaeology uncovering early white settlement in Sydney only just over 200 years ago where there are written records, is less interesting to me for this reason than archaeology on communities abandoned over 3,000 years ago and unmentioned an what few texts of the time survive.
I am not the only person to have felt like that: there is the novellist and poet Thomas Hardy:-
"I now not how it may be with others
Who sit amid relics of householdry
That date from the days of their mothers' mothers,
But well I know how it is with me
Continually.
I see the hands of the generations
That owned each shiny familiar thing
In play on its knobs and indentations,
And with its ancient fashioning
Still dallying:
Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,
As in a mirror a candle-flame
Shows images of itself, each frailer
As it recedes, though the eye may frame
Its shape the same."
This copy of the Balbi has its own history. I will treasure it for that. If only the people who previously loved and used it could know that!
BTW, I didn't end up getting the Megan Lindholm book.
ilweran
nisaba said:
I like that. I love old things and old places and have no problem buying books and decks second-hand. I like finding out about where I live and was pleased to be able to find out something about all the people who've lived in my house from talking to neighbours, bits and pieces left in the house and from bits of post that still get delivered. Not bad for 9mths in a house that could be more than 100yrs old.
That poem captures how I feel about all those things.
Le Fanu
Oh nisaba, what a beautiful post! And as one who treats his own decks so carefully, why do filthy, grubby, battered old decks thrill me so much?
Thank you!
Thank you!
greycats
Balbi was the deck that weaned me off of illustrated minors. I had tried others before (TdMs, The Prediction deck) but I'd always be thinking of what an RWS deck of the same suit/number meant. I guess the Balbi was enough of an attention-grabber that I was able to focus on it, exclusively. The design seemed to demand its own parameters. I used it almost exclusively for about a year and still use it frequently.
