Who Owns a Tarot Spread?

luxshine

Laura, I think there's a lot of lack of reading comprehension in this thread. I've read the op accuse AM AGAIN of "kidnapping" (really?) the spread from the forums at least two more times since AM came and explained their side of things, where they pointed to the exact place where they got the spread (and that I can attest, it was the exact same spread at the time AM posted, but as they said, text is easily edited) and how they came to ask for permission to use it, the mod has asked for no more personal attacks against AM... and yet the OP continues insinuating they were acting in bad faith.

And for the record? I think a creative commons license is perfect for tarot spreads. As it allows, among other things, the idea that you agree that people can and will use your spreads for readings, which I assume is the only reason why we share spreads, no?
 

Kgirl

It's kind of like this: One dark and stormy night you are sitting around with a friend, tossing back a few Absinthes. Three or four Green Fairies later you come up with the wonderful idea that if you could breed gigantic fireflies you could use them to light places that have no electricity. That is an idea. However, your friend/drinking buddy is Jules Verne and in the next book he writes a group of cavern-dwellers on Mars are using gigantic mutant fireflies to light their world. Verne has the idea in print; it is a material expression of your idea - but he gets to copyright his book and the credit for the outlandish idea goes to him - not you. 150 years later when someone produces light from genetically-altered fireflies they will call it 'Verne-light', not 'someone who got drunk on Absinthe light.'

The world is full of sob-stories of someone who had a great idea and got to the copyright office 30 minutes after someone who stole their idea had already beat them to the office.

This thread is ... bizarre.

There is an ocean of difference between stealing an idea and actually genuinely thinking of an idea on your own and being diligent enough to copyright it. Do you see what I mean?

You don't think two people in the whole world can think of identical ideas on their own? They could be oceans apart, in different worlds and have never met and believe that what they have created is "theirs" to copyright? You don't think that's possible? You don't think that the entire body and scope of intellectual property rights law isn't largely influenced by this happening?

Now apply that to someone who creates a tarot spread (we're not talking about a book) but a tarot spread in the age of the internet. You don't think two or more people from completely different locations in the world who can look at all the great tarot resources on the internet and its never possible that those people could possibly have a same or similar idea for a tarot spread?

This very thread has proven my point. LOL. This person who is being lambasted WRONGLY, has already come in here, explained their position. It's real life proof of what I'm talking about.

My goodness, this thread is very strange.

I understand the importance of protecting ideas, know how etc. As a lawyer that fights over IP rights in contracts EVERY SINGLE DAY, I fully understand its value and its importance. I just don't think people are looking at this rationally here.
 

Barleywine

To answer the question about the Celtic Cross Spread - no exact source can be found for it, but a very similar spread exists in some turn-of-the-century cartomancy books. Usually it's just the basic cross where one says a similar memonic when laying the cards: This is above you; this is below you . . .. etc.

If I remember correctly either Waite or Yeats mentioned an old layout that could have been some form of the Celtic Cross or the cartomancy spread above. It could have been Yeats' uncle, George Pollexfen whose card reading ability Yeats appreciated very much. Waite was much in awe of the reading ability of his 2nd wife, Mary Broadbent Schofield, and he was not above asking her to do readings for him on very mundane matters. I speculate (with no proof) that she may have been "Minetta" who wrote two books on cartomancy for his publisher during the time of their marriage.

Just a curiosity. While poking around the Tarosophy web site I came across a free copy of the Tarosophist magazine from 2009 with an article by Marcus Katz on this very subject. He seemed to be of the opinion that F. Leigh Gardner may have created it between 1892 and 1897, based on a hand-drawn version in one of Gardner's notebooks and a typescript. There is still some uncertainty whether it was actually drawn before Waite's published version. I don't know if anything more recent has been published. Here's the link:

http://www.tarotassociation.net/free/TarosophistSample.pdf
 

Teheuti

You don't think two people in the whole world can think of identical ideas on their own? They could be oceans apart, in different worlds and have never met and believe that what they have created is "theirs" to copyright?
That's why ideas can't be copyrighted. Only unique, creative expressions of an idea as a tangible work can be copyrighted. There are only a dozen or so literary plots and yet millions of books, plays and movies have been written about them. Lots of people have the same or similar ideas.

In one of my early books I talk about such a situation. I had been writing about the Court Cards and trying to think of ways to demonstrate how they operate differently than the Majors or Pips. Suddenly I got this idea for a spread in which you draw one card each from the Courts, the Pips and the Majors (the Who, the What and the Why) and gave instructions for how they were to be interpreted in a single statement. I considered it one of my greatest Tarot insights (at that time). A week or two later a friend brought me a book by the magician, W.E. Butler, saying she felt there was something important for me in it. While the book was mainly about magic, at one point Butler talked about the Tarot Court Cards and then, with almost the same reasoning I had gone through, he presented the same spread that I had just "invented" with almost identical words (except he included the Aces as a 4th position). I was shocked and upset and then I found myself laughing and laughing as I felt that we had both touched on some layer of archetypal "Truth" that exists in the cards and their design; they will teach you what you need to know! Still, I was struck by how nearly identical our process and even our words were to each other. Truth is far stranger than fiction.

The idea of a "Haunted House Spread" cannot be owned or copyrighted, BUT a unique and individual, creative expression of it, when made tangible (printed/published), can be. And, if people find it valuable enough to pass on, then, at the least, acknowledgement is due.
 

Teheuti

Just a curiosity. While poking around the Tarosophy web site I came across a free copy of the Tarosophist magazine from 2009 with an article by Marcus Katz on this very subject. He seemed to be of the opinion that F. Leigh Gardner may have created it between 1892 and 1897, based on a hand-drawn version in one of Gardner's notebooks and a typescript. There is still some uncertainty whether it was actually drawn before Waite's published version. I don't know if anything more recent has been published. Here's the link:

http://www.tarotassociation.net/free/TarosophistSample.pdf
Thanks for the reminder of this (my memory is terrible and my computer is now so full of stuff that it's hard to find my own references). Somewhere either Gardner or someone else says he learned the spread from Florence Farr. Farr taught Tarot to the members of the Golden Dawn (there is a letter in which she asks Annie Horniman to take over the Tarot teaching for her). But I doubt if it originated with her - because as I've said, there are old cartomancy books that have nearly the same spread. Instead of a column to the right, the four final cards are placed at the four corners of the cross. I believe the following edition of Tarosophy has a letter from me explaining the Farr connection.
 

Metafizzypop

The idea of a "Haunted House Spread" cannot be owned or copyrighted, BUT a unique and individual, creative expression of it, when made tangible (printed/published), can be. And, if people find it valuable enough to pass on, then, at the least, acknowledgement is due.

I agree completely. :)
 

Kgirl

That's why ideas can't be copyrighted. Only unique, creative expressions of an idea as a tangible work can be copyrighted. There are only a dozen or so literary plots and yet millions of books, plays and movies have been written about them. Lots of people have the same or similar ideas.

the idea ... cannot be owned or copyrighted, BUT a unique and individual, creative expression of it, when made tangible (printed/published), can be. And, if people find it valuable enough to pass on, then, at the least, acknowledgement is due.

Which makes this whole thing even more absurd and the arrogant imposition being made here in the OP and throughout is really tough to swallow.

And yes, I understand what you're saying here and I thank you as you have been a sober voice of reason here. My use of the word 'idea' in my post differs to the context you rightly have put it in here.

Irrespective of that, the argument is ... again ... bizarre.
 

gregory

Which makes this whole thing even more absurd and the arrogant imposition being made here in the OP and throughout is really tough to swallow.

And yes, I understand what you're saying here and I thank you as you have been a sober voice of reason here. My use of the word 'idea' in my post differs to the context you rightly have put it in here.

Irrespective of that, the argument is ... again ... bizarre.
I think the idea that people should get credit for something that they put together is hardly arrogant.

As Teheuti said:
The idea of a "Haunted House Spread" cannot be owned or copyrighted, BUT a unique and individual, creative expression of it, when made tangible (printed/published), can be. And, if people find it valuable enough to pass on, then, at the least, acknowledgement is due.

Right on.
 

Grizabella

This thread is ... bizarre.

There is an ocean of difference between stealing an idea and actually genuinely thinking of an idea on your own and being diligent enough to copyright it. Do you see what I mean?

You don't think two people in the whole world can think of identical ideas on their own? They could be oceans apart, in different worlds and have never met and believe that what they have created is "theirs" to copyright? You don't think that's possible? You don't think that the entire body and scope of intellectual property rights law isn't largely influenced by this happening?

Now apply that to someone who creates a tarot spread (we're not talking about a book) but a tarot spread in the age of the internet. You don't think two or more people from completely different locations in the world who can look at all the great tarot resources on the internet and its never possible that those people could possibly have a same or similar idea for a tarot spread?

This very thread has proven my point. LOL. This person who is being lambasted WRONGLY, has already come in here, explained their position. It's real life proof of what I'm talking about.

My goodness, this thread is very strange.

I understand the importance of protecting ideas, know how etc. As a lawyer that fights over IP rights in contracts EVERY SINGLE DAY, I fully understand its value and its importance. I just don't think people are looking at this rationally here.

Thank you, Kgirl.

So if acknowledgment is to be given, then shouldn't mkg have given acknowledgment to the person who had previously done that spread of hers? Acknowledgment is fine and polite, but it's a well-known fact that ideas that are pretty much identical hit thousands, and even maybe millions of people at a time.

It's said that there's not an original plot left in books and stories. That there are something like 35 different plots and the rest is variations on the same theme. I believe it's the same with thoughts and ideas---there's not an original thought that only one person in entire world has. There may be millions of others. But the reason an idea is seen as being original is that one person becomes more well-known for taking the same idea and actually doing something with it.

I just pick my battles. I reason it this way if I stop to think of it and take it apart. Say I've made a Tarot spread I find works well and I share it. Now, someone else takes the spread and does something a little more creative with it, like adding a Halloween graphic to it and puts it on a website. On my own part, I'd just smile and think that was cute and go on with life. But say I was irritated and precious about it----would I take it so far as to make a big issue of it? No---I have a life to live where terminal illnesses in the family have helped me to get my priorities straight and on a scale of 1 to 10, my concern with that Tarot spread would rank about a minus 5. For that reason, I just don't understand the big to-do about this. And especially since the person who used it showed up and set the matter straight, removed the spread, and that should be that.

As I said before, anyone who sees me post a spread of my own making is free to have it. Use it, publish it, do whatever you will. You have my permission. Be aware, though, that I'm not so clever as to think that nobody else will have ever had the same thought about making a spread, so be aware someone might jump out of the woodwork to claim it. I don't think anyone else has used it that I know of, but I know the likelihood is high that some people have done the same thing. I'm thinking of the one I call a Sacred Seven, to be specific, but again--use it if you want to. It works well for me.
 

Alta

Moderator note:

I see the discussion has been veering back to criticizing each other rather than discussing the topic. A couple of posts that were only about other members are removed.

Alta