Reflection of society...

Wichasa said:

The basic human emotions remain the same across all peoples.... It is the different perspectives that make the difference... Culture.

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Exactly. And especially people whose culture has seen opposition and suppression a lot, find it deeply emotional, and that should be respected.

214red said:

i can see what your saying, but then you can break it down to African or Caribbeans etc and they are completely different...

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Japanese ... Scottish ... Aboriginal ...

I've been watching this thread and haven't been sure if I should jump in or not. As an African-American male, >> I << don't particularly want an African-American deck. (I had one and actually traded it away.) I can understand why some people want minority-themed decks. (And some of them are exquisitely beautiful.) But as other people have said, most people live in a multicultural environment. While someone may live in a predominantly whatever neighborhood, the workplace is multicultural, as is the mall, as is the grocery store, as is the world.

I have decks where each Minor Arcana suit and the Major Arcana are represented by different races. While I applaud the idea behind those decks, I have to ask myself if those decks are really multicultural. By the definition of the word multicultural, they are because they represent multiple cultures. But part of me still thinks that they are segregated.

IMHO, a truly multicultural deck would not only represent multiple cultures, but would also randomly integrate those cultures throughout the deck. So maybe I need to use a different term. I want a deck that represents the peoples of the world, peoples of varying ages, skin tones and body shapes. The "beautiful young people" deck has been done to death in the last decade or so. I want an "every person" deck. I know there are only 78 cards in a deck and there are more than 78 combinations of "every person" so there's no way that every person is going to be represented in any deck. But surely decks can be created that represent more than 5 races of "every person"!

One deck I really enjoy is the Navigators Tarot of the Mystic SEA. The people represented are gray and blue and purple and green and orange and red and also skin tones that "real" people actually have. And there isn't a suit of purple people or a suit of orange people. People of all colors are sprinkled in a random (at least to me) order throughout the deck.

Deck publishers and deck creators, please create more decks that are a reflection of the many different shapes, sizes and colors that are represented in the world.

Rodney

Multicultural

As I read rwcarter, I had an awareness.... He is absolutely correct.... The awareness is that no one deck could possibly cover, all cultural conditions.... some people are more in tune to traditional culture ideals than the guy next door who is a liberal, Native American, Asian, African, and on ... all within a four block radius.

Personally, I think I am going to build a library of different cultural decks.... What speaks to one doesn't speak to another. It's about learning about each other, and tolerance.....

There is one deck that I know of that does not deal with anything cultural....That is the William Blake Tarot.... Spiritual and intellectual only... The imagery matches that.....

Megwich Mr. Carter..(Thank you!)

Wichasa said:

As I read rwcarter, I had an awareness.... He is absolutely correct.... The awareness is that no one deck could possibly cover, all cultural conditions....

(respectfully snipped)

Megwich Mr. Carter..(Thank you!)

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Wichasa,

You are quite welcome. And it's Rodney. "Mr. Carter" was my father, and I'd like to think that I'm not that old yet....

Rodney

Dave Chapelle

I just finished watching Dave Chapelle (A black comedian) and I couldn't help but think about this thread. If we are going to a multicultural people, then we need to be one people and stop looking at color. This is the basis of his comedy.

Nisaba, I think your idea is a wonderful idea.. Really gets us into that kind of a mindset. There's a long road ahead on this one.

I will be keeping my eyes open for that deck

nisaba said:

Count yourself lucky. In Australia, you can't find dark colours at all. Except, maybe, in theatrical makeup - I'm not sure about that one. But makeup you buy? No. And yet we have a whole diversity of all different colours.

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Maybe the case in W.A, but over here on the east coast in most major dept stores now you can buy foundation for darker skin types.
And besides that, don't us 'whiteys' (I can say that because I'm making reference to myself, and my family has so much cultural diversity within it, no one should dare direct the 'r' word at me) wear makeup foundation to even/smooth out or deepen our facial skin tone?
Dark skinned ladies generally have such beautiful skin tone they really don't need to use foundation, except perhaps where impetigo gives them uneven skin tone. The girls I see around my neighbourhood are just gorgeous, and most of them only wear eye makeup and lipgloss, and maybe a dusting of mineral powder along the cheekbone like blusher to highlight.

I think it's great that you're doing a deck, Nisaba, to fill this need in the market for those who are looking for it and I wish you success for your project and venture.
But for me I don't see that it would make any difference to how I read tarot or for who, the archetypes are a 'one-size-fits-all' in my mind.

ETA: I should add/say that I dismissed long ago the notion I'd come across in several tarot study references where it was said that particular Suits were associated with or suggestive of people with particular skin/hair/eye coloring because that thought was formulated so long ago when the world was a very different place and tarot was used by a smaller and more specific/particular demographic of the world's population.

Wichasa said:

Nisaba, I think your idea is a wonderful idea.. Really gets us into that kind of a mindset. There's a long road ahead on this one.

I will be keeping my eyes open for that deck

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It's only a part of the theme of the deck: I'm sick of decks with people in old-fashioned clothes that don't actually reflect real fashions of any times or places in the past - I want people in jeans, and with things like bottled water nearby. Court cards wearing crowns? Pah! Get them to be vibrant, zinging individuals instead. Race came into it only because I was bloody certain I didn't want to see white face after white face: if you walk out the door anywhere around the continent, you'll see a variety of different kinds of Asian faces, faces with African heritage, Aboriginal faces, Middle Eastern faces, even the odd Native American face, as well as a rich and diverse collection of mixtures of any or several of them. I have a friend, a New Zealander by birth, who, when you look at her in profile, looks exactly like one of the Easter Island statues. It just seems *wrong* to have a mono-racial deck, especially if you want people of all kinds to be interested in it.

There is exactly one card where race was compulsory from the outset: the temperance Angel. Look up an Australian artist called Gordon Bennett, and look for some of his Angel canvasses. They are brilliant.

But as I said, that wasn't the first consideration with the deck. As time draws closer and it's at a stage where we're looking for a publisher, I'll start talking about it a bit more. Meanwhile, we return you now to your normal programming ...

i agree with rodney, well said!

I dont like themed sets...

If you really want a deck that represents society, youare going to have to consider much more than different skin colors. A truly "representational" deck is gonna have to have fat people, people whose roots have grown out and haven't been done, bad teeth, baldness, age spots, too much makeup, wheelchairs, walkers, amputees, beer guts, stretch pants, mobile oxygen tanks, ugly jewlery and all the rest of the visual smorgasboard.
For an American a "real representational deck " might be called "The Saturday Afternoon At Wal- Mart Tarot".