"melancholy" or "sad" decks.

Why do people classify decks like the Hudes or the Aquarian as sad or melancholy?

I see the facial expressions more as neutral, the face a person wears, say, in a bus or train, giving nothing away. This allows the reader's intuition to superimpose expression.

I don't know, I agree with you. I've come to find decks with a strong facial expression (like Robin Wood) limiting when it comes to reading with them. I have both the Hudes and the Aquarian, and I had them both out comparing them just the other day. I really like both decks.

I wasn't aware that decks were considered sad or melancholy. I wonder if rather than the way the people look in the deck it could be more about the way the deck makes you feel when you spend time with it? If the faces are neutral then you are right, it allows you to superimpose a feeling or mood onto them, and in some cases, depending where you are at, that might be a feeling of melancholy. Not everyone, but many people do tend to turn to the cards when they are feeling sad or lost. Could this be a factor?

What about the Tarot of the Sweet Twilight? The characters do have a melancholy beauty to them... and even the happier cards look tinged with sadness.

I think the Hudes is considered melancholy because of the colours. It's melancholy in the way that autumn is melancholy.

I don't think it is a question of just the faces, but I do think that if faces look "out" of the image, away from the viewer, slightly bowed, it does give the image a more wistful, sadder feel.

Many cards in the Hudes and the Aquarian have this, contributing to the overall mood. For me it's that...

Le Fanu replied as I was thinking. It seems to be largely about the colour palette. I have seen some threads referred to as 'autumn decks' and the authors of those posts say they turn to those decks as the sun gets lower in the sky. Maybe there is a tinge of melancholy there.

I would call the Aquarian "pensive" rather than sad/melancholy.

I don't think it's the colors. At least not with the Hudes. I think it has to do with the positioning of the head and eyes, which Le Fanu touched on:

Le Fanu said:

I don't think it is a question of just the faces, but I do think that if faces look "out" of the image, away from the viewer, slightly bowed, it does give the image a more wistful, sadder feel.

Click to expand...

I would amend this to suggest that, at least with the Hudes (I don't have the Aquarian at hand), it is when their eyes and/or faces are cast downward that the "shuttered" feeling of dampened, numb emotional states comes into play.

This doesn't necessarily mean sad. It simply means an absence of strong emotion--neither strong happiness or excitement as per, for example, the gushing Robin Wood Tarot, nor strong anger, pain or fear as expressed in many other decks. When their eyes and faces are tilted downward, they seem to be in their own introverted, touch-me-not, numb-to-the-world reverie. And this can be interpreted by many as melancholy, even by me. (I don't like The Lovers in the Hudes, for instance. Everyone is looking down).

But when their eyes and faces are turned straight-ahead (even though not straight at the viewer, but looking off at some other point we can't see), like the Hudes' Two of Swords, Queen of Swords, King of Swords, Two of Cups, Nine of Cups, etc, etc (there are quite a few), they appear much less shuttered and thus more neutral to the viewer. They are facing their world head on--neither smilingly nor sadly, but they are looking at it in the eyes, and this throws off the emotional "shutters" that come about when a figure's eyes (the "windows to our souls," in many human cultures) are hidden or turned away.

Amazing how attuned our species is to eyes. We become discomfited if we can't see another creature's eyes because we can't determine its emotional state, and we also become discomfited if a creature (insect) has "too many" eyes because then we have no emotional center to assign to it; we feel it has no such center.

Chiriku said:

I would amend this to suggest that, at least with the Hudes (I don't have the Aquarian at hand), it is when their eyes and/or faces are cast downward that the "shuttered" feeling of dampened, numb emotional states comes into play.

Click to expand...

This is what I was thinking of. I had the Aquarian High Priestess in mind.

For me, neutral expressions are one of the most important criteria in what makes a good reading deck.

I quite like the Aquarian for that reason, the RWS, and roughly drawn faces like in some TdMs.

I agree with Nisaba that they don't really look sad. To me, they reflect what we want to see in them.

I also think that a figure with a downward gaze might suggest a more intoverted perspective, rather than looking up and out at the world.