Decks with a Worldview

Do you have a deck that makes its own paradigm a large presence in the cards? One where it seems impossible to separate out the maker/designer/artist's viewpoint and worldview from the cards themselves?

The Motherpeace might be thought of as one; The Wheel of Change might be another (and I know how strong some of y'all react to that deck!). These are decks where the creator isn't content just to leave you to your own experience, but feels that a certain view on things is important to using or comprehending the deck. What decks exemplify this for you? I'm especially interested in more recent decks that do this.

And incidentally, do you like this sort of thing? In some cases? Do you get irritated and just want to be left to read the Tarot? I'm curious to hear your thoughts...

I guess if there are such decks I wouldn't know them as I've avoided them!

Can't stand decks with an agenda.

I'll be watching this thread to see what names are touted!

Tarot of Transformation...
I don't have the book here to double check exactly what I found annoying in there, but I seem to remember many comments about women, patriarchy, etc. getting a bit redundant after awhile.

I love the cards, however... very beautiful. It's also one of the only decks where I like the added titles.

I don't actually mind much when deck creators have an agenda... just as long as the cards are attractive and/or useable. If I don't like a book, I don't have to read it.

A lot of 'esoteric' type decks feel a little agenda-heavy to me, too.
They're all, "This is a great and mighty scripture of Thoth, and don't you dare use it for fortune-telling! It's for INITIATES. Not like those other decks with the goofy pictures all-done-up in the wrong colours. The number of this card is 167, it's colour is violet-striped, it's vibration is HHMMMMMHAA, and if you don't know the planetary significance of all that, you are not clever enough to shuffle it."

Cedar Wolf said:

These are decks where the creator isn't content just to leave you to your own experience, but feels that a certain view on things is important to using or comprehending the deck.

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Your question assumes that there are decks in which the creators didn't have a personal ideological impetus or worldview.

There is no such thing as a non-worldview-saturated deck, because, like other artifacts, it was created by humans, and humans are almost by definition incapable of total neutrality or freedom from bias (note that "bias" is not necessarily a negative thing; it is a neutral term for a neutral and natural human phenomenon).

What are your examples of decks which *don't* have "an agenda," so to speak? I can guarantee that their creator(s) had one, even if it may not be readily apparent to all users. Research has firmly established that people tend to not perceive their own culture as "culture" or their own worldview as "worldview" but that it is, rather, invisible to them. Only when they confront a differing culture or worldview do they perceive it as such (and often call it "an agenda").

Some might argue that the original historical decks from centuries past were not ideological because they were designed for playing games, for neither fortune-telling nor esoteric purposes. But even they are products of the worldview of the society in which they were generated---witness the very fact of a Pope card, or of court cards/royal hierarchy.

A person from a totally different culture might view the court cards as aggressively agenda-driven and ideological, advancing a particular social order. But a person from the same culture that produced those cards likely would not blink twice; to them, there is no agenda, no palpable worldview. It's invisible to them because it is their version of "normal."

Chiriku said:

Your question assumes that there are decks in which the creators didn't have a personal ideological impetus or worldview.

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Chiriku -- I'd absolutely agree with you. In fact, the deck that I'm working on is exploring the fact that classic Tarot is largely rooted in the worldview of our culture.

I'm asking this question not so much because I believe that there are in fact "neutral" decks, but more because there seem to be those Tarot readers/collectors who do view some decks as carrying an "agenda", and have a reaction -- good or bad -- to it. I'm curious as to which decks are perceived as exemplars of that.

To put this another way, which decks invest a lot of energy/space/words to making clear that personal framework?

Cedar Wolf said:

In fact, the deck that I'm working on is exploring the fact that classic Tarot is largely rooted in the worldview of our culture.

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Sounds interesting.

Cedar Wolf said:

I'm asking this question not so much because I believe that there are in fact "neutral" decks, but more because there seem to be those Tarot readers/collectors who do view some decks as carrying an "agenda", and have a reaction -- good or bad -- to it. I'm curious as to which decks are perceived as exemplars of that

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Oh, well in that case, no question: many people decry the Gaian Tarot as being too worldview-driven for their tastes. What they mean but don't say is that, unlike the decks they perceive as "neutral" (for many, this includes the Rider Waite family of decks), the Gaian's worldview doesn't match theirs enough, and therein lies the dissonance.

The words most naysayers attach to this deck are "too New Age/hippie/crunchy/granola/glossy middle-class version of spirituality/ overly self-conscious attention to human diversity etc, etc."

Disclaimer: I don't own the deck, though I've seen scans of all the cards. Nor have I ever felt an inclination to buy it.

Rasa said:

A lot of 'esoteric' type decks feel a little agenda-heavy to me, too.
They're all, "This is a great and mighty scripture of Thoth, and don't you dare use it for fortune-telling! It's for INITIATES. Not like those other decks with the goofy pictures all-done-up in the wrong colours. The number of this card is 167, it's colour is violet-striped, it's vibration is HHMMMMMHAA, and if you don't know the planetary significance of all that, you are not clever enough to shuffle it."

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I quite enjoyed that, thank you. (And I have a recurring attraction to/on and off again relationship with high-profile esoteric decks and their systems).

Thelema is the ultimate agenda, par excellence. Ditto all incarnations of the Golden Dawn system, Crowley's and Waite's included.

ETA: Wheel of Change was the very first non-RWS'y deck I bought in the 90s and earlier this year, I revived my relationship with it to good effect. Despite my being quite the opposite of the values exemplified in the deck (I'm a consummate consumer; study spirituality rather than feel or live it, etc), I liked and still like it. I think some of the choices for non-Western characters are problematic, but I always think that; it's an unavoidable problem when you have a European system upon which (majority) European-ancestry/background artists and creators base their decks.

It was the Gaian of its day, I think, in terms of the way people responded to it. But in the 90s, at least in the US, people weren't *as* jaded about being "green." It wasn't *as* mainstream yet, and people who were into "all that stuff" were probably seen as more genuinely into it as opposed to hopping on a bandwagon that many mainstreamers are on today. It was the heyday of the eco-friendly movement, and I feel that the Gaian of the 2000s has a lot of that 90s vibe about it. Then again, the Gaian was begun years ago, so the artist was probably working on them in the 90s (correct me if wrong).


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Rasa -- I'd agree, too, about esoteric decks carrying their own, er, focus. The slight difference being that instead of a worldview, it's mostly an otherworldview.

Chiriku said:

Your question assumes that there are decks in which the creators didn't have a personal ideological impetus or worldview.

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It seems pretty obvious to me that any image being useful for tarot has to have a context that implies some kind of worldview. But surely there is a difference between a worldview and an ideological impetus in the way a deck is presented, in how much it drags you into an examination of its worldview, which is how I understood Cedar Wolf’s thoughts when starting the thread.

Chiriku said:

Oh, well in that case, no question: many people decry the Gaian Tarot as being too worldview-driven for their tastes. What they mean but don't say is that, unlike the decks they perceive as "neutral" (for many, this includes the Rider Waite family of decks), the Gaian's worldview doesn't match theirs enough, and therein lies the dissonance.

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This allegation sounds a bit unfair to me. I would be surprised if people who don’t like the gaian tarot also wouldn’t like to have a life close to nature or wouldn’t like to live together peacefully with all different kinds of people or would have a problem with pagan rituals. In my personal view there is nothing wrong at all with the “agenda” of this deck as such. But it is the expressions on the people’s faces that put me off. They look so self-sufficient and even full of themselves. It is this smell of self-righteousness I can’t cope with. In a way the deck shows my own naïve personal dreams in such a non-distant and in-your-face way that it just makes me feel embarrassed, although I appreciate all the ideas in it. Just like your naysayer's quote about an "overly self-conscious attention to human diversity" doesn't criticise the human diversity of course, but the overly self-conscious attitude to it.

And if I look at a themed tarot about the Templars for example I don’t have to think about how much I would have liked them in the days back. It is just a nice historical story board. But also other decks about today’s lifestyle like the Gay Tarot, Sensual Wicca or, say, the Web Designer’s Tarot leave me quite relaxed being neither gay nor pagan nor a web designer myself. They simply tell a story without making too much of a big thing about it.

Decks where I feel that the agenda is a bit too much in your face are Gaian, Daughters of the Moon, Giger Baphomet (adolescent show-off, pretentious companion book), Decameron (wrong agenda, plain offensive), DV's Angel Tarot (hard to pin down from the images alone, probably my own plain prejudice), Zombie Apocalypse Tarot (too proud of being oh so naughty and disgusting, still quite funny though). I am not sure about Lo Scarabeo's Pagan Tarot.

Pushing an agenda is not the same as opening the doors to your world, your home.

It's the difference between receiving an invitation and being hit over the head and dragged inside. Sometimes through a knothole. In the hit-over-the-head category I'd put the Crowley/Harris Thoth.

In the invitation-to-my-home category, Ironwing, Greenwood, Shining Woman. The old Marseille-type decks. Bill's Tarot. Wild Green Chagallian, and Thea's Tarot, and the Victoria Regina. Also the Rider-Waite. These depict complete worlds and I find them welcoming.