42-card Tarot Decks? Humm...

Marina said:

But i never thought about reading only with the major, the courts and the aces. May i ask you... why keep the court and the aces?

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Because it just ... works better.

Don't know if it helps make any sense, but I was looking at factors for the number of cards. 42 = 7 x 6
http://www.tarot.org.il/Forty Two/
letters in the name of God?
a couple of angel oracles have 42 cards

I sometimes work with a cut back number of cards if I feel channel is too wide. I have had to kind of retrain myself to remember the richness of the major arcana as I felt I was putting too much emphasis on the minors. Going back to using a non illustrated pip deck here and there helped me with this too.

Freddie

Certain Italian gaming tarots have a reduced number of pip cards, with pip cards 2 to 5 of each suit omitted (leaving 62 cards total). The Tarocco Bolognese is an example of such a deck. These decks and their corresponding games are often referred to as Tarocchino, a diminuitive of Tarocco. If I were to read with one of these decks, I would strip it down to the trumps, courts, and aces. You can see a few cards of the Tarocco Bolognese here:

http://www.carte-karuta.com/catalog/images/tabo.JPG

Alan

Like Alan mentions, the Bolognese Tarots have a reduced number of cards. See the Mitelli for example. I've always shied away from these reduced decks. As if a reduced number of cards means that certain things aren't being expressed, but maybe that's silly... I have the Linweave, but I've never read with it. Just admired the artwork.

I've seen the Tarot dos Anjos round here. never attracted me, but I had no idea it didn't have 78 cards.

And of course, ev eryone knows that 42 is the Answer to the Question, the Great Question, the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

Which reminds me, World Tarot Day and World Towel Day both fall on the 25th May. Soon it will be time to start winding up for it again <evil grynne>

As Alan Ross points out, some regional packs are sold reduced or get reduced by removing pip cards for playing games. There is a precedent for 42 cards packs in gaming, though it is mostly seen in the Hungarian games (which I'll take my usual opportunity to recommend to all as being some of the most sophisticated games in the world - though Alan Ross has alluded to my favourite, Ottocento, which is played with the Tarocchino/Tarocco Bolognese).

nisaba said:

And of course, ev eryone knows that 42 is the Answer to the Question, the Great Question, the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

Which reminds me, World Tarot Day and World Towel Day both fall on the 25th May. Soon it will be time to start winding up for it again <evil grynne>

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I suspect there is solid cosmic reasoning behind the fact that "tarot" and "towel" have not only the same number of letters, but also the same configuration of vowels and consonants.

Le Fanu said:

Like Alan mentions, the Bolognese Tarots have a reduced number of cards. See the Mitelli for example. I've always shied away from these reduced decks. As if a reduced number of cards means that certain things aren't being expressed, but maybe that's silly... I have the Linweave, but I've never read with it. Just admired the artwork.

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I never minded major-only decks actually. But these 42-card decks really got me thinking... is the minor arcana so unimportant that is can be cut away like that? Then why bother learning it at all? How did it survive if it doesn't "add anything" numerologically (other esoteric schools out there that use tarot would have noticed that, wouldn't them?)?

So what if the sacred number of God is 42, tarot isn't a God-oriented oracle anyway. Wouldn't it be easier just to create another oracle, instead of dismembering the tarot?

The Linweave is so pretty! I love Palladini's art!

Le Fanu said:

I've seen the Tarot dos Anjos round here. never attracted me, but I had no idea it didn't have 78 cards.

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It's not my favorite deck either, but a good friend of mine gave me her deck (which is the first edition) and so i ended up having it . If left to my own devices i wouldn't have it. I don't care much about angels and i certainly don't like Monica Buonfiglio's book.

Alan Ross said:

Certain Italian gaming tarots have a reduced number of pip cards, with pip cards 2 to 5 of each suit omitted (leaving 62 cards total).

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I know that. Before using la Baraja Española to play Truco, for instance, we remove the pip cards 8 and 9. I don't really know why these cards are removed. Some that the 8s and 9s were considered unlucky. Others, that it's just the tradition. You never really know...

Oliver Danni said:

I suspect there is solid cosmic reasoning behind the fact that "tarot" and "towel" have not only the same number of letters, but also the same configuration of vowels and consonants.

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And the SAME vowels, in mirror-image!

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