Your most UNREADABLE deck

I feel bad saying this because I love her art, but any decks that have been illustrated by Lisa Hunt apart from the Celtic Dragon Tarot.

I use the Animals Divine to help develop characters in my writing, but the imagery in her decks doesn't really match any tarot tradition I know of and they often rely on knowing say, mythology, or gothic literature (like in the Ghosts and Spirits). I love her art but it just doesn't fit.

It's interesting to see how many decks are mentioned in both this AND the most readable thread!

I want to do a poll: do you read RWS style decks (Pictures on the minor arcana) or do you prefer Marseilles (Pips on the minors) decks?

For me: I can't read Marseilles decks. I NEED the picture to read the meaning. An abstract deck like Handl or Voyager? Forget it!

barb

Ace said:

I want to do a poll: do you read RWS style decks (Pictures on the minor arcana) or do you prefer Marseilles (Pips on the minors) decks?

For me: I can't read Marseilles decks. I NEED the picture to read the meaning. An abstract deck like Handl or Voyager? Forget it!

barb

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I prefer Marseille. I have never been able to successfully read with the RWS, it doesn't click with me for some odd reason.

Ace said:

I want to do a poll: do you read RWS style decks (Pictures on the minor arcana) or do you prefer Marseilles (Pips on the minors) decks?

For me: I can't read Marseilles decks. I NEED the picture to read the meaning. An abstract deck like Handl or Voyager? Forget it!

barb

Click to expand...

Funny you say that about the pictures I also NEED pictures to get the reading going. to me, they are not only fundamental but add depth to the messages. HOWEVER, I LOVE reading with the Voyager. It is ALL picture!!! If anything, it may be an overload of choices

Ace said:

I want to do a poll: do you read RWS style decks (Pictures on the minor arcana) or do you prefer Marseilles (Pips on the minors) decks?

For me: I can't read Marseilles decks. I NEED the picture to read the meaning. An abstract deck like Handl or Voyager? Forget it!

barb

Click to expand...

I've never owned or really seen a Marseilles deck, so for me I'd prefer the RWS style decks!

I'm no expert in Tarot, so I'd have to say that I find the Nicoletta Ceccoli deck most difficult to read with. The little white book it comes with is very brief, and has around two-three sentences about each card along with a list of keywords. I like being able to intuitively read with it, but it's a habit I'm still getting into. I'm much more comfortable with decks accompanied by books with more in-depth meanings of cards. But that doesn't mean I don't love reading with the Ceccoli deck, it just means it's more difficult.

Mystic faerie immediately came to mind, I find it confuses me, gives off mixed messages,the expressions on the faerie faces are not always in keeping with the cards meaning. although TdM decks usually cause me to totally blank.

Ace said:

I want to do a poll: do you read RWS style decks (Pictures on the minor arcana) or do you prefer Marseilles (Pips on the minors) decks?

For me: I can't read Marseilles decks. I NEED the picture to read the meaning. An abstract deck like Handl or Voyager? Forget it!

barb

Click to expand...

For me, this gets right to the heart of the matter: although I never read with "scenic" minors for most of my long association with tarot, I've struggled with trying to make sense of the Marseille pips in readings. I found the semi-illustrated minors of the Thoth to be a reasonable bridge between the two as long as I'm careful not to "port over" too much of the qabalistic symbolism. Most recently, I've discovered Joseph Maxwell's tarot book to be a really useful reference for that purpose in the same way that Yoav Ben-Dov's The Open Reading is.

Ace said:

I want to do a poll: do you read RWS style decks (Pictures on the minor arcana) or do you prefer Marseilles (Pips on the minors) decks?

For me: I can't read Marseilles decks. I NEED the picture to read the meaning. An abstract deck like Handl or Voyager? Forget it!

barb

Click to expand...

I refuse to buy any deck with pips. It sucks because many of those decks have gorgeous majors, but I can't read with just pips, it does nothing for me.

HighPriestess said:

I refuse to buy any deck with pips. It sucks because many of those decks have gorgeous majors, but I can't read with just pips, it does nothing for me.

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The main problem as I see it is that so much of the art in Marseille pips seems to be merely formulaic and decorative rather than symbolic, although there have been some Herculean intellectual efforts to prove it otherwise. I think the Pythagorean type of number symbolism is still valid, and the elemental nature of the suits, as well as - to a certain extent - the arrangement of the suit emblems and the condition of the "botanical" elements in the cards. For me, it becomes more useful to read preponderences and deficits of any of these cross-cutting factors in combinations and sequences, since there are no "ready-made" narrative concepts built into the cards to create a story-line. I suppose what I'm looking for is convergences and contrasts in the energy patterns. Of necessity, it becomes a more abstract way of reading them, which involves a lot more "heavy lifting" than pure intuition.