Minimalist decks?

Le Fanu said:

Surely a beginner would look around and see other decks replete with symbolism, ponder their lone feather and rib bone on a beige background and wonder whether this really is the deck for them... If someone's first deck was a largely empty one - however profundly done - really? That really would be very difficult for most people. I would have thought that most beginners would want something they can point at and interpret.

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Actually most beginners we see here seem to be pulling cards from whatever deck and looking up the meanings in the LWB. (Not to mention pulling cards from a Thothy deck and using Thirteen's most excellent meanings, which gets - odd.)

So - no, I can't agree there. I think they tend to move upwards from that, and when someone says something like "the pomegranates on Empress suggest...." THEN they start to want to have more to point at. Before that point, I think even having a Waite-Smith deck, they would still see EMPRESS at the bottom and not notice the pomegranates or the stars. They may notice the belly, given that EVERYONE KNOWS Empress ALWAYS means pregnancy. But....

So honestly, I think the LWB is far more of a THING for beginners than what they can SEE.

gregory said:

Actually most beginners we see here seem to be pulling cards from whatever deck and looking up the meanings in the LWB.

So honestly, I think the LWB is far more of a THING for beginners than what they can SEE.

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Agreed. When we learn to ride a bicycle with training wheels, we're mainly focused on not falling over before we even think about getting anywhere. The idea that forward motion imparts dynamic balance doesn't occur to us until our first few wobbly forays (and probably scraped knees) give us a clue. But it also reminds me of something my chiropractor warned me about when using a lumbar support belt: "Don't use it too much or you will weaken the muscles in your lower back." Lacking visual cues to chew on, the novice can come to use the LWB as a crutch that can be difficult to transcend.

But Barley - they won't chew on anything at first. My very first reading ever was with a Waite-Smith deck; we used EXCLUSIVELY the LWB (well, Eden Gray actually). We used a CC because that was What The Book Said, and we crawled around the floor saying "well, on page 27 it says... but on page 81, if it's next to that it..." My "sitter", a happy go lucky type who had said "no, DO let's; it's only fun", went home in floods of tears because it was spot on - and I - who had not wanted to do this in the first place - did not read again for 35 years.

Beginners DON'T chew. They swallow whole, for a bit. They will not use visual clues. They just WON'T. And I don't see that using a minimalist deck will hurt - at least there is less to look at, when they start to look; less potential for confusion. "Which way is she facing"; "HOW many swords ?" is a start...

gregory said:

But Barley - they won't chew on anything at first. My very first reading ever was with a Waite-Smith deck; we used EXCLUSIVELY the LWB (well, Eden Gray actually). We used a CC because that was What The Book Said, and we crawled around the floor saying "well, on page 27 it says... but on page 81, if it's next to that it..." My "sitter", a happy go lucky type who had said "no, DO let's; it's only fun", went home in floods of tears because it was spot on - and I - who had not wanted to do this in the first place - did not read again for 35 years.

Beginners DON'T chew. They swallow whole, for a bit. They will not use visual clues. They just WON'T. And I don't see that using a minimalist deck will hurt - at least there is less to look at, when they start to look; less potential for confusion. "Which way is she facing"; "HOW many swords ?" is a start...

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Hmm. Even the most callow beginner has eyeballs connected to a brain which learns from earliest infancy by associating sensory perceptions with pleasure and pain. I don't see how they could avoid some stimulus from the images, even if they have to gum what they put in their mouths. I'll grant that they're more prone to swallow than chew. This reminds me of a line from the old Tom Rush song, Kids These Days: "They don't like to chew, but they sure can swallow."

Barleywine said:

Hmm. Even the most callow beginner has eyeballs connected to a brain which learns from earliest infancy by associating sensory perceptions with pleasure and pain. I don't see how they could avoid some stimulus from the images, even if they have to gum what they put in their mouths. I'll grant that they're more prone to swallow than chew. This reminds me of a line from the old Tom Rush song, Kids These Days: "They don't like to chew, but they sure can swallow."

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The word EMPRESS
will always get more attention than that pomegranatey dress

Krystophe said:

I agree that "minimalist decks" are unlikely to be a money-making thing (although the observation in another post that tarot is still not "fully within the public consciousness" seems to be in stark contradiction to the variety of tarot decks available at my local Barnes and Noble).

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Just because its sold in the (usually very back of) Barnes and Noble doesn't mean everyone cares about it. Barnes and Noble sells anime figures too now, but that doesn't mean that's not a niche market either. I'm just saying that we're at the point where your average joe might recognize what a Tarot deck is, but no matter how neat the art style they'll probably pass on buying it. A lot of non-Tarot friends gushed over my copy of the Wild Unknown but never bought it, no matter how many times they saw it in the wild.

Sorry if OT, just wanted to be more clear what I meant by that.

ETA: gregory is right on the money, because that's definitely how my first six or so months with tarot went! You're more worried about "knowing" what a card means that you don't really LOOK at all. Only times the imagry mattered was when a card was scary. You really had to learn how to look at a card.

lantana said:

Just because its sold in the (usually very back of) Barnes and Noble doesn't mean everyone cares about it.

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(Not wishing to be argumentative, but nowhere did I suggest that everyone cares about tarot. I was simply questioning the idea that it isn't in the public consciousness, which is another issue entirely.)

In any case, to get back to the real concern of this thread, I can only offer my own experience, anecdotal though it may be. When I got my first deck (RWS) I sat down and went through the cards and the LWB very thoroughly. The first thing I did on reading through the meanings for each card was to examine the image in great detail, looking for symbolism -- objects, colors, postures and expressions of the people portrayed -- to which I could attach the meanings I had just read as a sort of memory aid. It would never have occured to me to do otherwise, and if in fact this is not the usual way for most people then I'm quite surprised to learn that.

A mimimalist deck would have given me much less material to work with in that regard, hence my preference more more dense imagery. As I said elsewhere, though, to each his own. I'm an extremely visually-oriented person, so I simply stand aside in silent wonder at those who can draw deep meaning out of something like Le Fanu's "single feather and rib bone on a beige background."

gregory said:

Beginners DON'T chew. They swallow whole, for a bit. They will not use visual clues. They just WON'T. And I don't see that using a minimalist deck will hurt - at least there is less to look at, when they start to look; less potential for confusion. "Which way is she facing"; "HOW many swords ?" is a start...

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Spot on. I credit the Wild Unknown with making me look precisely because the LWB was so sparse (2-3 keywords per card and that was it) that I really started studying the cards to find out where those keywords came from in the picture. That's what I took into my study of new decks, and it's been infinitely helpful. I'd studied the RWS previously (and that was part of what made me put down tarot for a long time), but it was the WU that really tuned me into the cards. I feel like I understand the RWS better because of my experience with a minimalist deck, not the other way around.

But that's just me, and I'm certainly not going to say that other people are going to have the same experience. But the door there is open, and I think people who are truly interested in tarot as a wider practice will go learn the history once they've found their 'in'.

I am not a huge fan of minimalist decks. I do think they are aimed at new readers who want to just start reading and not have to study- so they are looking for something that captures just the barest meaning of each card, but they are missing out on so much complexity and significance. I think the actual design of most of these decks can be very striking and I can see why it would be good to do a reading for someone with them, because it's easy enough for the querent to look at the cards and understand the meaning.

I have quite a lot of confidence in the human ability to read non-verbal clues. Even if our eyes are drawn to the word Empress, the picture will inflluence how we see this card. Most of the time, we communicate not only verbally but also using nonverbal clues: body language, tone of voice etc. Without the ability to do so, our lives would be much more complicated.

Some people are more word-orientated, other more image-orientated, but it doesn't take much to teach people to use their innate ability and READ pictures. I've always been surprised when I taught art appreciation to children how good they are. I don't have to say a word. The children look at Degas' Bellelli family and tell me about this family just by looking at the colours, shapes, body language, facial expressions etc.

And it's fair to say that most tarot books emphasize the need to LOOK at the pictures, and also at the pattern of a reading.

Of course, adults who have lost their trust in their natural ability to read pictures, who have learned, studied and worked with words, numbers and only their so-called left brain abilities, may need a transition time until they feel comfortable again with pictures.

In this thread, some have said that minimalist decks are more difficult to read, others have said they're easier to read for beginners... I guess it depends on the quality of the deck, of the connection the reader has with it, and many other factors.

I have always been astonished here on AT how the same decks appear mentioned as "the worst deck I ever bought" and "the most glorious deck in tarot history". The deck is the same, the reader is different.

We can't lump all minimalist decks together anyway IMO, and I'm quite sure that we can't generalize whether they're easier or more difficult to read. If a deck has content, then it will find readers able and willing to access that content. I tend to say that a minimalist may be easier to use for an experienced reader than a beginner, because the experienced reader brings with him/her many points of reference and earlier knowledge.

The Wild Unknown is minimalist in my book, and one of its most simple cards has given me insights that many other decks didn't give me. The simplicity of the image allowed me to SEE what I knew about this card in theory. I could connect the dots. I'm sure that ten years ago, this card would have thrown me.