Bright Idea Deck Study Group - Introduction

Before working card-by-card through the deck, let's start with a few "warm-up" questions. You don't have to answer them one by one; if you prefer, just jump on a question that strikes your fancy.

1) In your opinion, is the Bright Idea Deck a Tarot deck? Why or why not?

2) How is the Bright Idea Deck *like* a Tarot deck?

3) How does the Bright Idea Deck *differ* from Tarot?

4) What's your favorite card in the deck? Why?

5) What are the benefits of working with the Bright Idea Deck? What are the challenges?

I'll post my own answers later, when folks have had the opportunity to chime in! Thanks again for your interest!

Bright Ideas Deck

Of course I view it as a contemporary style tarot deck and am amazed the more I learn the more the deck is relavant for my use. It is a fun deck but the challenge comes in finding out that broken fence stands for say chariot. Yet now that I see the two together it is awesome. My fav. card is the high priestess in most decks but is the magician in this one. Easy to play with when the grandkids come to see grams (I also use a crystal deck here), but I find my friends want me to do readings with the other decks as opposed to this one. Guesse they think it is too fun so not serious enough for there ponderings with the great Divine out there. I keep telling them I view this and other decks not as a predictor of the future but only a differing perspective on a question allowing the person to see other paths. Trice

i think of the bright idea deck (BID) as a "modern"/"contemporary" tarot deck because it has similar cards, meanings, and uses as a "traditional" deck. it's definatetly tarot for me.

it strikes me as "different" because it can be used in a professional setting (in the workplace, for example)--and perhaps even with my more organizationally religious friends (i.e., tarot skittish)--without them getting "weirded out" by the "scariness" of the tarot. it's also different because its images and key terms are more present-day, and because of them, i feel that they are easier to read and to understand. however, i do think that the images may become dated in a few years, but then again, that's what makes the decks from the 70s now oh-so-cool.

i find the themes and the colors of the minors pariticularly helpful. when i first started tarot, minors overwhelmed me. i later felt that some suits (okay, maybe just one) had negative interpretations, because of its images were interpreted by querants and beginners more as more "scary" than others suits. finally, i appreciate that mark used more images and people of color and women in the deck. (i dream of having a deck that represents asians not as anime characters or clothed in kimonos serving tea, dressed as ninja andattacking people with swords, or clothed in white robes and looking like an inscrutable sage--just in everyday clothes doing everyday things!).

there are many cards that i like,in the deck. i'm always partial to the two of swords and eight of swords, but in BID, one of my very favorites is examination for its sense of humor and creative approach to the judgement card. another favorite is advancement--the segway is brilliant! i think i like the card just for that segway. there are several others, but i'll just stop here.

one of the benefits for me is to learn a new deck with different key terms and approaches, one that i can use for non-tarot friends--and for myself. challenges for me would be to open up a bit more to these new approaches.

thanks for starting this mark!

Serious Fun

rpbat said:

I find my friends want me to do readings with the other decks as opposed to this one. Guess they think it is too fun, so not serious enough for their ponderings with the great Divine out there.

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You know, when I read for the public, I always present people with four or five decks -- some spooky, some mystical, some spiritual, and, of course, the Bright Idea Deck. I find that only about one out of five people choose the Bright Idea Deck the first time we work together.

As part of my reading style, I do a lot of comparative readings. It's pretty common, then, for me to deal the cards out of the Rider-Waite clone my clients have chosen ... and then to deal a "mirror spread" using parallel cards from the Bright Idea Deck.

Suddenly, when they see the cards this way, the Bright Idea Deck "clicks" with them! Before long, the folks who always chose the Rider-Waite or the Tarot of Dreams are reaching for the Bright Idea Deck. It takes some time, I think, for folks to realize that even very mundane-looking cards can offer deeply insightful readings.

(That said: the whole reason we have different decks is because different situations call for different tools. I love the BID (or Bright Idea Deck), but when I'm in a strictly meditative mood, I use my Tarot of Dreams or my Universal Marseilles.)

I'm glad to hear you're using the cards with your grandkids!

Symbols and Borders

nikkeihime said:

The bright idea deck (BID) ... is also different because its images and key terms are more present-day, and because of them, i feel that they are easier to read and to understand.

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This was one of my big reasons for designing the deck, nikkeihime.

These days, schools don't teach people to read and interpret the symbolic language that dominated the arts and religion for centuries. As a result, images that used to be very straightforward and well-recognized (the inverted pentagram, for example) are now unrecognized and considered spooky.

My goal was to create a deck that suggested some of the same ideas as the traditionally-illustrated decks, using images and symbols that just about anyone from a twenty-first century Western country could understand.

nikkeihime said:

i find the themes and the colors of the minors pariticularly helpful.

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I love how the borders make elemental readings -- comparing the energies of the suits, seeing at a glance which suits or elements are represented or absent -- so easy to do.

The big colorful borders also make it easy for lazy people like me to find the card they're looking for more quickly. Instead of having to see the illustration or the suit marker, I can thumb through the deck and quickly find the cards of any suit, just from the borders!

I think that this deck is an tarot deck. There is 78 cards and there is 5 groups of cards. The only difference is the drawing style and the name of the cards that are different.

I like the guidance card. It's really not like the hierophant/pope in other decks. I usually feel a blank when I see that card in a more conventional deck. But, as I mentionned in another post, when I see the guidance card, I thought of Indiana Jones. And the card start to feel more lively. For me, Indiana Jones is not only a character in a bunch of movies. It also makes me think of one phrase he said somewhere (and I put it here from memory): "It belong to a museum". So, it help me a bit with the hierophant/pope in other decks.

And I must say there is many cards that have a sense of humor. There is some card that there is in the card, as the 7 - assumptions in the yellow suit. There is some card where it's the links I make with them. The nurturing card is among them. As I look at the cookies plate, I think of Cookie Monster!

What I like with this deck is it's originality. I had a few look of the cards and there is some associations I made I haven't made with in other decks. The challenge may be to keep a bit of the serious side!

BID favorite cards

I just took a quick look through the deck to identify my favorite card... but unfortunately I seem to have 13 favorites. Hmm. For the sake of brevity I'll mention just a few:

XV Shadow (the Devil) - Love it. What a new twist. The emptiness inside, looking for the Self in all the wrong places, obsessiveness, dissatisfaction... This card says a lot.

I Capability (the Magician) - Chalices, wands, swords and pentacles are rather obscure symbols to me. I had to learn their meanings -- they didn't come to me naturally. But when I see this guy juggling a watch, a house, a coffee cup, and a globe -- I get it. These are symbols that mean something to me in real life.

XIX Energy (the Sun) - Finally, I "get" the Sun! This image resonates with me in a way no other Sun card has. I can feel the warmth here, feel the life energy on one side of the wall, the overheated desert on the other. Love the bare feet, too.

From the minors -- I appreciate the alternative approach of the Green (Pentacles) 10 and the Blue (Cups) 10. I'm accustomed to seeing happily-ever-after images on these cards, but the "too much" approach taken here feels more satisfying to me.

BID benefits/challenges

The BID is a deck I turn to when I'm looking for a practical, real-life perspective. I like to do a 3-card spread with 3 different decks, each deck with a distinctive "personality." The BID is there to provide a down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts voice. It speaks very clearly.

As to the challenges of working with the deck... I struggle with the "court card" equivalents. I miss the people.

pangolin said:

As to the challenges of working with the deck... I struggle with the "court card" equivalents. I miss the people.

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You know, sometimes I do, too.

At the time I designed the deck, I was looking for something that would break away from the gender-based, courtly titles that have been associated with the court cards for so long.

Pages and Knights would have felt entirely out of character, I think, in a deck as practical and modern as the BID. While I liked familial titles (Father, Mother, Son, Daughter), they were gender-based.

I wound up, of course, going with functionality (Learning, Doing, Feeling, Controlling), and I think it's a "not-bad" compromise. I confess, though, that when I'm reading with the deck, a part of my brain whispers the old court titles to me!

1) In your opinion, is the Bright Idea Deck a Tarot deck? Why or why not?

I think it is, because its structure is like a traditional tarot deck.

2) How is the Bright Idea Deck *like* a Tarot deck?

21 trumps + fool, 4 suits of 13 minors

3) How does the Bright Idea Deck *differ* from Tarot?

Non-standard trump set.

4) What's your favorite card in the deck? Why?

Yellow - Learning: Information
When I saw that card I thought "hey, that could be me!"
And getting quite a confrontation with myself when reading its "cautions against" contents...

5) What are the benefits of working with the Bright Idea Deck? What are the challenges?

The imagery is down to earth. Problem might be that for some images I have a very narrow set of meanings. A more "esoteric" symbol might generate more meanings, but I guess that's just a matter of practice.