Tarot Cards and thier Physical Appearance

[Red_Ocean]

I'm eagerly looking for a list of tarot cards that represent psychical appearances. I'm looking for the remaining 62 cards (majors and minors, excluding courts). If anybody has a list they'd like to share, it would be gratefully appreciated.

 

[AJ]

I think you are asking how long is a piece of string?

Do you have a specific deck in mind? The world card in the Deviant Moon vs. the Rider-Waite are worlds apart in physical body descriptions.
There is one deck where every single person looks like a barbie doll that has been heated and stretched, the AnnaK has bulkier people.

When you clarify deck (or question ) you might also list what you've already worked out, that would really give us a feel for what you are working towards.

Welcome to AT if I haven't already said it! These kinds of threads are fun, just give us some meat to work with~

 

[starrystarrynight]

As AJ says, looking for physical descriptions in tarot is not its best use and, I think, is pretty much impossible to rely upon. Tarot digs into psyches and motivations--not freckles and eye colors, IMO. If you pick up three different, say, Nine of Pentacles cards from three different decks--for example, an Egyptian deck, a Native American deck, and an Oriental deck--I very much doubt that the people in the images on those decks would have anything at all in common. Does that mean that anyone being described as the Nine of Pents in an Egyptian deck will look...Egyptian? Doubtful.

People dye hair, grow and shave mustaches and beards, gain and lose weight and choose-and-change personal styles. An artist's vision of what a Nine of Pentacles looks like will differ from artist to artist and will be symbolic of what that artist envisions the motivational attributes of that energy is...but not what that person may look like physically. So, you can get two very different-looking people--even a male and a female--who will embody the psychological traits of that Nine of Pentacles to a T...so, how do you describe that person in a physical way? I don't believe you can.

 

[Thirteen]

The Only Such List is Limited to the Courts and Outdated

What Starry said! And just to add, there is no modern deck creator or writer of tarot card meanings who includes such descriptions. Not only would it be counter productive by limiting the card (So no one who isn't blonde and blue-eyed can be the Queen/Swords? What if you're in China reading for people and there's not a blonde in sight? Will you ignore the Queen/Swords if she shows up?), but it'd be pretty impossible. There are far more combinations of hair, eye, skin color and body type then can be covered by 78 cards. And that's not including, as Starry says, dying hair, wearing colored contacts, getting a tan, etc. Do the cards say the person is blonde because they're naturally blonde or blonde because they've dyed their hair?

Back in the old days, there were physical descriptions for the courts--and ONLY the courts. They were very general and limited, but they could often work simply because Tarot readings were done for Europeans and Europeans were more homogenous and who you knew or could know was limited (as compared to modern day Facebook). So, if you lived in a small town and got a reading, it made sense for the reader to say, "Your true love is blonde and blue-eyed" because there were only so many blonde-blue-eyed folk you might know who were single and likely to be "the one" for you.

In our modern world, this is nonsense. If the cards say your true love is blonde, well, they may be today, but what if they dye their hair black tomorrow? What if you get the message that your true love has dark hair...but you belong to Goth culture and everyone in the club you frequent dyes their hair black so they all have dark hair?

The only list you'll ever find of physical descriptions for the cards are the old and outdated ones for the courts. None other, that I know of, exists or is even remotely accepted by modern readers. And most of us modern readers will keep on advising you that going for a person's physical looks according to the cards rather than relying on what the cards are really trying to tell you--that the person appears sad or intelligent or confident or insecure--is a good way to completely miss the message and never recognize who the cards are pointing out to you in a reading.