Mythic accuracy

[pan]

it seems to me the most important consideration
regarding making a deck is to represent the cards
meaning as accurately as is possible.

That in turn requires a certain amount of discernment about the assorted BS that has been created by the people who have had and influenced
tarot since its authenticity.

One of my favorite decks is "daughters of the moon
tarot." They instinctually hit upon some very very
good symbolism and the art is wonderful. They also
were cleraly oblvious to and ignorant of the Tarots actual mythical structure, which they violated in some instances rather violently.

The Daughters of the Moon is a feminsist reconstructionist deck thats trying to create
something to balance the male dominated (and lately frankly gay) decks like waite etc.

In this, they achieved the goal of creating positive feminist images very well, but, through accidental ignorance, created a deck that like i said really shouldn't be called Tarot, but maybe
"based on Tarot" or something.

In order to do a good reconstruction job, you have
to edit out christian bias, edit out bohemian bias, and edit out modern new age bias, and thats a lot of systems to cover and a lot of work to do.

(i notice a great deal of failure to accomplish this all over the site.)

Then you have to fill in the blanks created by
a whole lot of erasing, which can only be done by
learning to see the overarching pattern of the wholistic Tarot; the mythical architecture of the
16 heros, their loves, their conflicts, and their
perpetual and entirely accidental genesis of the
physical universe.
The 40 locations upon the space time wheel, the 24
evolutionary steps, ...
those patterns are larger than any one card, and
only by seeing the larger pattern can you with
authenticity fill in the blanks of any given card.

 

[HudsonGray]

Ah, but how do you edit out the Mediterranean & European bias (from the mythos passed down through time), the US bias (a bit of everything), and the scientific bias? You're left with almost nothing.

Do you ignore the Asian component with the evolutionary steps? Whose heroes are you basing the new tarot on? Should you ignore the Inuit for the Mediterranean? The Australian for the South American?

I think it'd be practically impossible to distill things down to bare bones because those bare bones are still biased by the cultures they're taken from. No matter where you pull from, it won't be 'pure'.

If you go back to the 1400's do you take from the English/Spanish/German/French/Italian or do you start pulling from older Rome/Greece/Egypt/Babylon/Macedonia/Russian Steppes/India (they all had trade routes going). Then there's the Swedes/Norwegian/Fresian/Andulusian...... Persian.....Romanian......................

 

[Major Tom]

In order to do a good reconstruction job, you have
to edit out christian bias,

wholistic Tarot; the mythical architecture of the
16 heros, their loves, their conflicts, and their
perpetual and entirely accidental genesis of the
physical universe.
The 40 locations upon the space time wheel, the 24
evolutionary steps, ...
those patterns are larger than any one card, and
only by seeing the larger pattern can you with
authenticity fill in the blanks of any given card.

Hi Pan, Welcome to the community.

I would strongly urge you to visit the Tarot History and Iconography board.

Near as we know from historical evidence the tarot was invented in the late 1400's in northern Italy. The Catholic christian bias was there from the start.

I've never heard of the mythical architecture you mention. Perhaps you could fill us in?

 

[pan]

wow, thats a very well informed response, and i would like to thank you for it.

It is true that if you take away the biases given to us from the cultures mentioned not much is left. However, certain very easy basic understandings fill in huge gaps.

The best of these is that the four elements
thus imply a wheel of the year and the elemental
shamanic perspective. Studying the wheel of the
year in almost in any culture will give you the
same basic results because the wheel of the year
is a fundamentally basic aspect of our experience.
Climates may differ, but the seasons are experienced to some degree or another almost everywhere save right on the equator.

So the answer is that the patterns that underlie
tarot point to things that are truly fundamental
and basic. ABC basic. From those underlying patterns, you spread a base and start your sorting.

The next answer is back to square one of what Tarot is; the experiential alphabet.
what is the experience of being in air or fire or water or earth?
These things are encoded very deeply into the racial and genetic memory.

Which heros to use? which mythologies? I think thats the hardest thing; coming down to a particular. Finding an exact fix where in truth the whole information simply doesn't exist any more.

However, just because its almost impossible to accomplish it truly and honestly in full is no reason not to bother; quite the contrary. We owe it to ourselves and to tarot to do the best we can
to uncover the closest approximation to the original meaning as we possibly can.

 

[pan]

I would strongly urge you to visit the Tarot History and Iconography board.

Near as we know from historical evidence the tarot was invented in the late 1400's
in northern Italy. The Catholic christian bias was there from the start.
----------

I am very aware of the popular myths that have been generated about Tarota Arota rota otar.
I don't really care and beyond arguing about it.
I left this biard after briefly examining it a few
years ago precisely because i found those lies and
misinformations to be conveyed here.

I returned at the invitation of the owner by email, and after testing the waters with him.

If indeed, Tarot started in the 14th century, then
i have a few questions for you.
1. in the roman catholic atmosphere, what was the impetus for creating them? the motivation?
2. Why, in the vaccum of the roman catholic power,
after the roman catholic church had conquered and destroyed the pagans, do we find in tarot all of that pagan symbology and mysticism?

And, more to the point, the point of alleged origin itself is highly suspect, considering that
rome had just conquered the world in the form of the roman catholic church. Occams razor would seem
to favor a much more likely explanation; that once
all of the pagans had been slain and the evil satanic forces of paganism extinguished, certain pagan relics were discovered amidsts the storehouses of spoils in rome.

Of course, thats not the official version of history, but i think its pretty obvious why not.

 

[pan]

I've never heard of the mythical architecture you mention. Perhaps you could fill us
in?
-------------
sure, i would be happy to.

Mush like a movie storyboard, the Tarot represents the heros journey in four worlds, basically represented as the four elemental worlds of the
primitive minds conceptualization of hyper-elementalized realities.

Unlike our heaven and hell etc, pagans visualized
worlds or universes paralell to our own and based
not upon good or evil but upon the elements themselves. This idea was not wholly extinguished from pop culture and even survived into modern roleplaying games as "the elemental planes".

These planes or universes were not merely elemental in a one dimensional way, but were thought to be fully representative of the entire table of correspondences that the pagans used to order and understand their universe.

The heros journey thus takes us from one elemental
"plane" to another, and this is interestingly enough roughly analgous to the modern brain science which has discovered that there are four
states of consciousness.

These are Air=Beta; thought, mind, intellect...
Fire=Theta; passion, energy, will, healing...
water=Alpha; emotions, the deep unconscious mind..
Earth=Delta; the physical body, mundane reality...
"THIS" universe.

 

[pan]

i quit mid speach as i don't know how long the program will let me rattle on.

The mythic architecture thus delineates essentially a shamanic system of trance inductions
into altered states of consciousness. Unfortunately, most of that information cannot hope to be recovered directly, though it may be
surmised and to some extent recreated modernly.

In the myth, 16 archetypes (of four times four elements representing aspects of each individuals own psyche or alternately universal archetypes of
personality)make their way through the labyrinth
created by ascending the tree of life and returning back cyclically into cause and effect
and thus origins. Fives are not big ugly difficult
problems for no reason; the classical "dramatic tension cycle" can be seen easilly to be playing
out per suit.

mapping in wheel of the year correspondences gives us then the correlates to understand the cross mapping of the major arcana; which represents life events, or a sequence of evolutionary stages that
each of our 16 personalities moves through in a different place and at a different time.

 

[Cerulean]

I'm interested in your opinion of these two:

Maybe these two styles come close to what you are thinking of? I'm not certain, but would these samples below be close to your descriptions?

I think you are suggesting something similar to the I am One Tarot in archetypes or universal allegory?

http://www.learntarot.com/iadesc.htm


And perhaps a seasonal cycle of the year, tree of life kind of perspective?
This is the handbook for the Greenwood Tarot:

http://www.herebedragons.co.uk/chesca/cp/green.htm

Hope this is relevant to your topic. I don't have the I am One, but was considering it, since I've seen the deck in two places this past week...

Unfortunately, the Greenwood Tarot is out of print.

 

[pan]

the greenwood tarot site is very kewl and right
on. I think i would identify very strongly with it. The use of the labyrinth shows me right off
that the person was definitely tuned in to the
right frequency.
" a wonderful map,
combining and explaining psychological states, deities, archetypes, and the
natural world. The Greenwood Tarot is a form of eco-psychology, a modern
shamanism. I believe in magic, in wonder, in the extraordinary that can occur
when one’s heart is open to possibilities."

I think thats very close to what i am driving at yes.
"The Greenwood Tarot aims to give a coherent European shamanic system
so that there is no need to steal imagery from other cultures. "

That would be a long shot to accomplish but well
worth the effort.

"It is obvious that to an earlier hunting and gathering culture, subtle
observation of seasonal change was essential for survival. The tarot is
subtitled the ‘pre-Celtic Shamanism of the Mythic Forest’. This means that I
have traced the origins of the archetypal figures in the tarot back to their
pre-historic roots; taking what is most ancient and updating it, so that it is
relevant to the contemporary world. "

That indeed is the task of the tarot purist in a nut shell.

 

[pan]

The other deck takes far too much liberty with the major arcana and i can't seem to find much information beyond the image and title, so i don't really know what to say about that.

thanks for turning me onto the greenwood deck.
to bad its out of print;
i would order it like right now.