Last autumn, I was giving a talk in Durango and a lady asked me, “What about the evil and satanic associations with Tarot?”
“Only in America.”
“What?”
“It really only has that image in the US, and not quite so much in the UK.”
“What are you talking about?”
“On the continent, they still play the game.”
“What game?”
“Tarocchi, Tarrok, Atouts, Tarot…”
“A game?”
“Yup…historically, we know that Tarot cards were used to play the game of Atouts, or Tarocchi, or Tarrok – depending on which country you’re in. It’s still played.”
Her world changed. Tarot cards are the Monopoly of the 1400’s.
Take a look at the Tarots Oreste Zevola, it’s a non-scenic deck that tends towards harsh in imagery and coloration. It’s Tarot. It’s also Tarocchi. In Europe, it’s quite common for artists to get their work known, by illustrating Tarots. Look at Enzo Viviani. Some art only makes it as far as limited edition folio’s, others get turned into art decks.
Tarot can be and is, many things. We cannot in our cultural stagnation mandate what is and what isn’t – this makes a rather narrow sighted view of our culture and training.
Art decks are common in Europe. As the world gets smaller – those decks become available here. For us to judge them as non-tarot based on our opinions is…
For many years, tarot based divination (in some places on the continent) was done with only 22 cards. Over in the UK and on the US side of the pond, it’s been 78 cards since the early twentieth century. So can we say that Tarocchi del Futuro is not a real tarot deck? That it only has 22 cards and is a Sci-Fi deck?
No. It’s Tarot.
Are there some good Art decks out there?
Yes.
Are there some really bad Art decks out there?
Well – art and Tarot is indeed in the eye of the beholder. There are some decks that I’d not be caught dead with.
There are others however…
Take the Wonderland Tarot – great stuff. Very suprising. Especially if you can get a copy with the original LWB.
Then there’s Tarot of the Imagination. Dreadful. However if you look at the Folio version (22 images) – it freakin’ rocks hardcore. But shrinking the images for Tarot, and further shrinking the images so you can put the card titles in 6 languages, and expanding the artists vision beyond where they origionally meant to go – leaves us with…frankly…a dreadful mess.
Classifying decks is difficult at best.
It’s a game.
It’s an oracle.
It’s Tarocchi, Atouts, Tarot…
I mean if you really really wanna get picky - the WCS is not Tarot...
Edited to add: Sometimes, random pics on the cards - upon further introspection, and within the context of the artists context - it all fits together and makes sense. A couple examples would be the Fantastic Menagerie and the Victorian Romantic – both are brilliant decks, but fall well outside the ‘norm’. Study of each, provides the vision of each as a holistic Tarot.
Actually I did once seriously consider trying to work out a way to divine with a Uno deck... but thats another story....