Is this a vintage B&W University Books RWS?

truelighth

Ok, first of all.. waaahh.. that is two RWS B&W clones I don't have :D.

But anyway, this one is a surprise to me too. I haven't seen it before. I am pretty sure it was never on Holly's site either. And the one Gregory has is the other one I don't have.

I have to agree with Roppo and Dusty, it does look very much like it was copied from the book. Because of the grey shading, it is not just the clean black&white lines like on the Bert Bakker. I would love to know more about it.
 

truelighth

Just a thought, it could be that this deck was indeed taken from the images of the UB book. But it doesn't mean it was done by UB. As we have seen from DeLaurence, who also just took the images of the RWS from the Pictorial Key to the Tarot and published his own deck.

I definitely would like to know more about this one!
 

DustyWhite

Mystery school deck

hello guys

I think RichardG's BW-UB deck is a sort of "lost child" of the UB deck. I found a similar BW P9 image in the later UB PKT (1966). Perhaps they intended a "color it yourself" pack, like a BOTA one?

Grr . . . I am still thinking about this deck. When I was 11 I stole my neighbor's mail (just once). It was a JERK thing to do but it was from a mystery school. I just knew it, and it turned out to be true. I learned so much from that one month's correspondence lesson that it changed my life forever.

Now, that said, the 1960's were a HUGE time for secret organizations and modern mystery schools. I am thinking more and more that this *was* a mystery school creation, something the Rosies of the time or a similar organization would put out. This would explain why so few will ever turn up but also why the plain white box. This is just a guess and I realize that unlike the BOTA it rejects watercolor and colored pencil. That said, it may still be true and possibly "a mistake in hindsight" to have made it laminated. I want to include this on the w-s site for posterity. I need to get a little help bringing the collections together on the site so this may take a while. In the meantime I will assume a working theory of this as a mystery school deck but I will not marry myself to that idea. This will help point me possible directions.