Strange decks; which are the ones that tempt you?

[Grizabella]

Originally Posted by Alamaris

The New Orleans Voodoo is my "bought it once and sold it and have meant to rebuy it for years" deck. It's a strange, difficult deck, which is why I want it..and also why I've been putting it off.

Yep, me too. Had it. Sold it. Had it. Sold it again. Had it. Sold it yet again. Now I've got it again and I'm keeping it.

Originally Posted by Egypt Urnash

And every time I see the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot, it tempts me. Maybe this is just because I'm from New Orleans and want to have a few tokens of that city's strangeness hanging around my life now that I live elsewhere. But it, too, is just... alien. And almost dangerous; I'm just not sure I want to be talking to the loa, you know? They're capricious.

This is the same feeling I've always had when I've gotten the deck and it's why I've chickened out and sold it again.

Originally Posted by Cat*

I know what you mean. I think the same hesitation about talking to the loa is a big part of the reason why I've never read with my copy of the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot...

I've just decided not to involve the lwa and see if I can do it that way. It may not be possible but I've educated myself more and more about voodoo and by taking the mystery and superstitions an uneducated person feels about it it's not so fearful. At least, that's my theory at this point. I'll always have a healthy respect for the lwa, though.

For me, the strange ones are Lo Scarabeo. I have some that make perfect sense to me and I love them but there are many, many others that I just don't get. So I think, "Well, I'll just not fall for any more LS decks." But then I'm tempted again. And again, I find that I just go "huh? How did they arrive at this? No more LS decks for me." Well---till next time---- The same goes for many other publishers, though, not just LS, so I don't mean to pick on them intentionally. If Ric is reading this, I want him to know that I think they publish really wonderful decks. It's just that a lot of times, I just don't get what their artists are getting at with decks that are supposed to be RWS based and the LWB's aren't really very helpful in those cases.

ETA: With regard to the NOVT, here's a quote from a wonderful book called The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou edited by David Cosentino:

As a cult devoted to the service of "spirits" that can intervene in the daily life and bodies of its adepts, Vodou inspires, in the outside observer, what Freud calls a feeling of "disquieting strangeness". Such a feeling leads to ambivalent attitudes of attraction and revulsion with regard to anything that is not yet known, and onto which the most diverse fantasies can be projected. To pose the problem of the American imagination vis a' vis Vodou is not necessarily to undertake, a priori, a lawsuit against the "gaze" brought by Americans to the cult. Quite the contrary, where the imagination intervenes, a drama of desire is being enacted; this to suggest, therefore, that American interest and curiosity in Vodou are the source of a tension based in a sort of superficial emotionalism.

I think that's pretty applicable to what some of us encounter with regard to using or not using the NOVT and feeling wary or fearful of it.