sapienza said:
Nisaba....here are the links to images.....I think you're going to be sorry when you see them.....you'll want them too
This one has all imags of the sevenfold mystery:
http://tarotconnection.net/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=283
This one has the Cary Sheet restoration:
http://tarotconnection.net/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=10&products_id=282
Me? Want them? Er ... I think not (said Descartes, and promptly disappeared in a puff of paradox).
The first URL shows me, even before the images roll out, a heading that almost de-enabled me from even looking at the thumbnails - it was all I could do to control the urge to navigate away before seeing any more than "The Annotated Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery: a Renaissance Magical Tradition". I only persisted in looking further because of my willingness to nobly sacrifice myself for the greater good of anyone actually tempted by the deck.
Yeah. Wow. So impressive. I am sick to the back teeth with twenty-first century youngsters who have only known Tarot for the last thirty or forty years of their lives and haven't ever lived in a Renaissance cultural climate thinking they are privvy to all the deeper mysteries of the age. And somehow persuading a publisher of this. Whatever happened to Truth in Publishing? Or at least, Truth in Headlines?
I winced my way (no, S, I said WINCED) my way past the paragraphs of text that I could just feel radiated such embarrassments that I didn't want to read them and very likely feel embarrassment on behalf of the person or people who draughted them, and looked at the images.
At first I was pleasantly surprised - they were easy on the eyes. Then I noticed wide, white borders, things that a lot of you don't seem able to cope with, with any good grace.
These were compounded with purple inner borders. The purple inner borders, I strongly suspect, were there in order to lessen the area of the cards which the artist had to fill, making their job easier. And there was the first anachronism. Was the deck painted for a king? In Renaissance times, purple was associated with royalty generally and political power specifically - rather, red was seen as a spiritual colour, the colour of glowing embers symbolising latent but burning magical force. I suppose, if you want the deck to be worldly and speak of politics, power, militarism and money, purple borders are the correct borders to use.
Then the artwork, whilst overly pretty, seemed superficial and shallow to me after a while - the deck didn't seem to have anything to say that hadn't been said - better - by numbers of other decks in the past. The "skies", or single-colour backgrounds, in particular, I considered very poorly rendered - just sheer laziness on the part of the creator.
I guess there are two questions that should be asked of decks when you are seriously thinking of adding them to your wish-list: do you think they will work well as a deck that is will you use them in preference to one of your already-existing decks; and the second question, if the images were blown up as full-sized paintings, could you live with them hung on the walls of your home for more than five years?
The answer to both questions, sadly, did not start with a Y.
- well, I do have that Mystical one.... and a Blue Owl from YEARS ago.....
And they aren't cards but whacking great pictures like a portfolio. Even I am not buying it.....