"Why does the Liber-T make me anxious?"

I have the Liber T and find it really beautiful. But I'm totally intimidated by it. I haven't even shuffled it yet. *sheepish*

After all, the Liber T *is* a mini, of a sort - I find all of the standard-sized LS decks small-in-the-hand, possibly because they are so narrow. I also have two of their minis, which a few years ago were all right, but nowdays, what with middle-aged eyesight an' all, they are getting awfully tricky to read, as I found with my LS Mini Visconti-Sforza an hour or two ago.

In my bid to manage some of the larger-sized decks in my collection with stumpy little paws, I've taken to turning all decks around 90 degrees for shuffling and using a longer, slightly longer, slower arm-action to compensate: I get more exercise, bigger decks are shuffleable. Win-win. The drawback is that tall, narrow decks such as LS or Dal Negro decks, tend to "feel small". Then I'll go and shuffle Something like the da Vinci Enigma, or the Rumi, or any number of privately printed decks, and they'll suddenly feel big even though they may not be tall.

I drop LS-sized cards more often during shuffling - and I've noticed the Liber-T scowling at me disapprovingly when I do this, more than once.

I always find something to moan about, don't I <grin>.

I'd never been able to read Thoth clones before I got the Liber T. The Thoth itself leaves me cold which is strange because I do like the artwork but I can't read it.

The Liber T is a deck on its own. The Majors are Thoth-like but its in the Minors that the deck starts to live. You have the Thothy image but then the smaller images take over. You can read the Liber T from just letting these images talk to you. There are some decks that let the Minors down badly, concentrating on the Majors more, the Liber T isn't like this. The Minors make this deck.

When I first started working with the Liber T, I thought it ugly - I'm sort of middle of the road now, there are some very pretty cards and some not so pretty. Also the first 'intuitive' flash I had with this deck was pretty intense, I'd never had that before but its part and parcel of working with the Liber T, eventually it opens up the intuitive channels - doesn't happen with every reading but you know when it does.

I love this deck to bits but I can see its failings - it can be overwhelming if someone jumps straight into trying to read this deck with decans, then the cards look so busy. I've tried to journal this deck and I can't - it just wants to be used, so I'm on a constant learning curve with it - I just write down all the readings I do with it so I have some kind of record of my journey.

Curiosity got the better of me and I started looking this deck over a little more closely. I would say it's a hybrid between the Tarot of Ceremonial Magick and the Thoth. In the absence of a companion book the next best thing in my opinion is DuQuette's companion to his ToCM. It won't explain everything but it explains a lot. You'll be able to understand all the planetary and astrologial correspondences at least and probably a lot more.

I really can't understand why there isn't a companion book for the Liber T. If I've got the history right, didn't the Liber T nearly go out of print, only to be saved by something of a "save the Liber T" campaign by AT members? And doesn't the consensus seem to be that nearly everyone who owns a Liber T would buy a book if there were one?

If the Liber T was worth saving from going OOP, why isn't it worth a book?

zan_chan said:

I really can't understand why there isn't a companion book for the Liber T. If I've got the history right, didn't the Liber T nearly go out of print, only to be saved by something of a "save the Liber T" campaign by AT members? And doesn't the consensus seem to be that nearly everyone who owns a Liber T would buy a book if there were one?

If the Liber T was worth saving from going OOP, why isn't it worth a book?

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Yes just over 2 years ago, it was going OOP but Lo Scarabeo decided to keep it going. It was a deck that was never very popular mainly because people didn't give it a chance. When the notice went out that it was going OOP more people noticed it and gave it that chance. Then Lo Scarabeo gave it a reprieve. Most of the other thoth clones are very strange but the Liber T isn't, its very readable.

As to why it hasn't got its own companion book, I don't know. Scion's guide is the closest we have, that and an assortment of Thoth books.

zan_chan said:

If the Liber T was worth saving from going OOP, why isn't it worth a book?

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The excuse that was given was translation, that esoteric terms are too technical to translate from Italian to English. Which I called total bogus since my mother works in translation and translators translate documents that can be very very technical going from plumbing, mechanic, technology, etc. In other worlds, translators are used to translate stuff that are very technical and have their own specific terms, so claiming that they cannot find one translator to translate the book is nonsense to me.

zan_chan said:

If the Liber T was worth saving from going OOP, why isn't it worth a book?

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Indeed. My question - are there books for *any* LS deck? Not that I know of, at least, not that are published by LS. But I could be wrong.

We have Scion's .pdf, which is *well* worth the time of printing out and studying, deck in hand. There is so much behind the images! I think you could spend years studying it.

That being said, it's my understanding that the deck is straightforward Book of Thoth Golden Dawn magickal thought, so just about anything that Crowley wrote about the Thoth would apply here. But, of course, it's the bits about the number cards that has everyone so excited.

Personally, I *love* the artwork. I think that Serio is a master, love the use of pastel media (I can't think of another pastel artist with a tarot deck). But we have Emily and Scion to thank for the interest in the deck here on AT. I've tried to work with it from time to time - to no avail. Perhaps one day I'll spend the time and effort necessary to actually start getting the intuitive flashes that Emily talks about. But until then, it stays in my collection.

In an ideal world, LS would contract with Scion and Negrini to produce *the* Liber T book.

SolSionnach said:

Indeed. My question - are there books for *any* LS deck? Not that I know of, at least, not that are published by LS. But I could be wrong.

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The Fey has a companion book, and there is Lee's book that goes with the Universal Marseille, but I'm not aware of any others. So many of their decks would be enhanced by a companion book.

I did read somewhere awhile ago from Ric (LS) about why a companion book for the Liber T wasn't an option....can't remember where unfortunately.

Vampires of the Eternal Night does, too, and Da Vinci. There are others....