Tarot & Theme Decks - When is it not Tarot?

Mi-Shell's post to a recent Greenwood Study Group got me thinking... My question has the potential to be controversial, which is good because I am interested in hearing both sides of the fence if people are willing...

I posted this question on the 7 of Arrows thread itself in reference to the wide possibility of interpretations of a single card. How far to we go with intuitive interpretation before we are no longer reading Tarot? How loose is that structure? How loose can it be?

I wonder about decks such as Greenwood and other theme decks and the structure of Tarot. If we become too interpretive, we lose Tarot and it becomes Oracle. How flexible do we become before what we are doing is reading something else...?

Most of all - is the question even important?? Or is it simply what IS Tarot?

Ok, smack me around I don't mind but in answer to What IS Tarot? It's whatever you want it to be.

I am constantly amazed by those who have just started out and even those vetrans, who resite rules, regulations, etc.

There are none,.....pure and simple. If you want to read tarot with archetypes, fine. If you want to be intuitive with interpretations, okie dokie.

The short story is that there ain't no rules, to reading, interpretation, or whatever. It's what you want to do.

Now I know I will be in trouble for this, but what the heck,......nothin' new.

To me tarot is a specific system. You can certainly use the pictures on the cards as oracles, but then you are oracle reading. The cards types and numbers are laid down and the reading has to be integrated for it to be tarot.

I agree with Baroli!

I believe the "system" of tarot comes from our need to label everything in sight. To me, the entire world is shades of grey. There is no black and white, no right and wrong.

And honestly, no one knows the original system anyway. If it began as a game or as divination. And we could debate that all day long but the point is no one knows for sure. None of us were there.

It's the human need to label and categorize. To judge. I think it all comes down to ego and pride. "Well, I know the right way." Rubbish. Do what you want and who cares.

What is the difference in tarot, oracles, playing cards? The thoth, RWS, TdM? It's all reading cards. I think the only difference is really the titles the cards are given and the images. But really, the images are usually all different anyway, unless the deck is a complete clone of whatever system.

I think it all comes down to the reader anyway. Knowing the "system" and spitting out that meaning does not make a good reader. And I have said this before, if it did, anyone who's ever read a tarot book would be a great reader at the get go.

Oh, I love this question. Since I consider myself still very much a student, this is the kind of question I ask myself all the time. For me (at least at this stage), the answer is both. I do feel a strong need to understand what tarot is in terms of archetypes, numbers and symbols. However, my goal is to have a basic understanding of these things, but then allow my intuition to use that knowledge only as a base, or general direction. I feel like I'm sort of there now actually. I have a vague knowledge of the card meanings at this point, but not enough that I am just using the book meanings to determine my readings. The general feel of the card can give me some direction, but my own interpretation can take the specific meaning for the querent to other places. This seems to be working for me. So, I guess my answer is that both the traditional meanings and your own intuition can be used in conjunction to derive meaning for the querent. I'm standing directly in the middle of the argument, lol.

I'm not with the purists on this one. When the RWS deck came out, I'm sure there were purists who'd read with the TdM all their lives who sniffed at it and said it was not truly Tarot, with a capital T. After all, what is a Heirophant? In the TdM it's The Pope; the Tower was the House of God, in the TdM. And what was with all those illustrated pips? Where did they come from?

Having just acquired the Diary of a Broken Soul, I find I'm asking the same question as Bat Chicken, and I'm leaning towards the "it's still Tarot" camp. There are cards in that deck that bear no relation to what I'm used to seeing in RWS system decks, but who am I to say that it's Not Tarot? There are 78 cards drawn by someone with the intention of creating a tarot deck. Therefore, it's a tarot deck.

Just my .02.

So, just for the sake of argument, to be tarot it must have 78 cards.

Must they be divided into suits and trumps, or will just any 78 cards do?

And if they are divided into suits and trumps then what is the point in specifying those if they don't have any meaning but the meaning the reader applies to each image on an ad hoc basis?
Does that not make the numbers and suits pointless and unnecessary?

I have no argument with folks wanting to use the 78 cards as an oracle deck. But if it is tarot, it has number, element, courts and trumps. If anything means everything, then everything means nothing.

Alta said:

I have no argument with folks wanting to use the 78 cards as an oracle deck. But if it is tarot, it has number, element, courts and trumps. If anything means everything, then everything means nothing.

Click to expand...

So then, which system is "correct?"

Sinduction said:

So then, which system is "correct?"

Click to expand...

Surely that would depend on the deck being used.

If the Thoth was being used then the system for that deck would be the system under which it was made and to which it's symbolism relates.

Same for the RWS

Same for the Marseilles, I would suspect, though I have not had much to do with that deck I was told by someone who used it a lot that it should be read partly by considering what the symbols, numbers etc in it would (or might) mean to the person who drew it. Which comes to much the same thing, I suppose.