The more I see it, the less I like it.

bogiesan

Aren't we lucky that there are so many other Tarot decks to choose from!
Personally, it has been my hands-down favorite deck for 48 years - along with the Marseille and Thoth. After those it's a changing variety of decks that only catch my fancy for a while.

Recognizing the staying power of things that turn into icons, I once asked the forum which currently available decks we thought would, in another 100 years, still be in print (as paper objects or something else) and talked about similar to how the Waite-Smith, Crowley-Harris Thoth and the Tarot de Marseille are regarded today.

Every collection needs these seminal decks like every writer needs a Strunk, Roget's and a good dictionary, even if they're not used all that much.
 

Richard

Recognizing the staying power of things that turn into icons, I once asked the forum which currently available decks we thought would, in another 100 years, still be in print (as paper objects or something else) and talked about similar to how the Waite-Smith, Crowley-Harris Thoth and the Tarot de Marseille are regarded today.

Every collection needs these seminal decks like every writer needs a Strunk, Roget's and a good dictionary, even if they're not used all that much.
I certainly agree, although I think that that the popularity of each deck style is due to different considerations. The dominance of the Waite-Smith is mostly due to the scenic minors and not to Waite's innovative reinterpretation of historic tarot, which is a shame, but this is partly Waite's own fault for his turgid writing style in PKT and elsewhere. However, he was under stringent self-constraints.
 

Barleywine

I started with Thoth took simple meanings from the titles but had trouble stringing them together in a reading.

The RW pics on the minors helped me get a wider association to apply a card meaning with an event in someone's reading and I found I could string each little 'stage scene' in the RW minors together into a little play.

There's so much good stuff going on here, it was hard to choose where to enter this thread. So I'll start with the illustrated pips, which seem to be the major draw for the RWS. While I find the drawings charmingly archaic (yes, even the blood-thirsty Swords; as a lover of swords-and-sorcery fantasy literature, I'm long over that one) and perfectly workmanlike for their purpose, I don't use them much as an inspiration for my reading with this deck. I've developed such an over-stuffed mental "filing cabinet" of correspondences (numbers, colors, symbols, etc.) over the decades that the illustrations seem incidental in most cases. But I will fall back on them when I'm stuck, mainly as a tool to kind of "jog" things along. I like to have the querent in front of me when I read (which is a whole 'nuther debate I won't reopen here), so I can immediately try out different avenues of inquiry along the lines suggested by the images. I should point out, though, that the Thoth was my first (and probably at this point my "forever") deck, at least until I bestir my lazy metaphysical butt and get on with the Marseille. So I came late to the RWS party, although I did read (well, "wade through" is probably more accurate) the PKT early on.
 

ravenest

While I find the drawings charmingly archaic (yes, even the blood-thirsty Swords; as a lover of swords-and-sorcery fantasy literature, I'm long over that one) .

Maybe because they were inspired by similar stories ? " By virtue of his early life style Waite turned in upon himself and, being unable to receive a formal education of any kind, he simultaneously educated himself and found a way of escape by reading 'penny dreadfuls' and medieval romances." { 'Shadows of Life and Thought'. A Retrospective Review in the Form of Memoirs (Selwyn and Blount, 1938). chapter 2, passim } :

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=213285
 

Barleywine

Maybe because they were inspired by similar stories ? " By virtue of his early life style Waite turned in upon himself and, being unable to receive a formal education of any kind, he simultaneously educated himself and found a way of escape by reading 'penny dreadfuls' and medieval romances." { 'Shadows of Life and Thought'. A Retrospective Review in the Form of Memoirs (Selwyn and Blount, 1938). chapter 2, passim } :

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=213285

Thanks for the interesting link. Would you say, then, that the RWS "borrows a many-splendoured aureole of romance and of esoteric fable," a charge that Waite had leveled at Freemasonry prior to his preoccupation with the tarot?
 

prudence

I think that the S-W Centennial is the best of the USG editions. The colors are muted but not muddy. Here is a scan I did which is truer to the actual colors on the cards than most scans which I've seen, at least on my monitor.

I have to agree with this whole heartedly. I love the colors on this edition, I find them to be earthy, or like the colors you'd see in a desert scape. I don't think I'd enjoy these images if they were vibrant or jewel toned.
 

Richard

I have to agree with this whole heartedly. I love the colors on this edition, I find them to be earthy, or like the colors you'd see in a desert scape. I don't think I'd enjoy these images if they were vibrant or jewel toned.

I certainly agree with you about the colors.

I have read that the original Pam A deck was criticized as being too dull with the colors. That's what the Centennial is like, an aged Pam A, somewhat dullish earth colors (but not really drab or muddy), with the card stock artificially darkened (as the "original" would have been by now from natural acids in the paper). It is a perfectly charming deck, actually more beautiful in its artificial naturalness than its more artificial-looking garish siblings, such as the standard RWS.

I have not heard of any criticism of the fabulous Lebanese Tarot (which was given a rave review by Nisaba and received 5 stars from Solandia) for having muddy colors or artificially aged card stock. It is one of my most prized possessions.

If you want a psychedelic (1960s "day-glo") type RWS, get the Albano-Waite (which I also like very much). In some ways it is the antithesis of the Centennial, with more esoteric color symbolism than Waite would have dared to use (due to self-imposed constraints).
 

ravenest

Thanks for the interesting link. Would you say, then, that the RWS "borrows a many-splendoured aureole of romance and of esoteric fable," a charge that Waite had leveled at Freemasonry prior to his preoccupation with the tarot?

Certainly ! But that is just one petal of the flower that is Waite's tarot 'tradition'.
 

Richard

Certainly ! But that is just one petal of the flower that is Waite's tarot 'tradition'.
:!: The Waite merely represented a conservative transition to the GD and post-GD tradition. Waite was born "posthumously," as Nietsche said of himself. Sometimes I think that of myself as well. :(
 

GlitterNova

I feel very lucky to have started my journey learning tarot in this day and age (as opposed to, say, 50 years ago). The internet has made it incredibly easy to learn and study the traditional RW cards without having to physically buy the deck (for those who don't find the artwork particularly appealing). If I'm struggling with a particular card in another deck I can just do an image search for its corresponding RW card and gain some insight.

Also, there seem to be about a million-bazillion RWS clones which (for the most part) preserve the symbolism but present it in a better-looking way.