The Romantic Tarot

[Sar]

I am using this deck right now, the images is surprisingly deeper than just romance and sex.

 

[Myrrha]

I've received the deck and I find the imagery very nice, very colorful, and downright enjoyable to take in.

Now for the bad part.

I'm completely confused. Is this a RWS deck? Or Thoth based? Or maybe like the Mary-el where it does it's own thing (sort of) and yet ultimately makes sense (well, to some of us). A good number of images in the Romantic Tarot make no sense to me in terms of tarot meaning and the LWB isn't helping me much.

For example, why in the 2 of Pentacles is one kid kissing another kid on a cart pulled by goats? What does this have to do with "balancing" according to the LWB?

7 of Swords. I don't get it.

6 of Wands. She's on a boat with a loved one (in this case Tweety) taking a journey across water in a row boat. Shouldn't this be 6 of Swords?

2 of Chalices. What the? I know, I'll read the LWB and see what it says! What the????????

9 of Swords. Oh come on, there's no point in going any further.

Maybe I've got a screw loose. Maybe I'm being obtuse. But I have to call it as I see it. If I were to be blunt I'd say that this isn't a tarot deck, and that it's a deck of pretty images that somebody tried to cram into a box with the word tarot on the cover.

Sometimes decks like the Mary-el go in very different directions which work for me. So what am I missing here? What's the framework that makes this a valid tarot deck?

Thank you for this because you have convinced me to take a closer look at this deck.

I will take a look and if it appears that too many of the cards slavishly follow the RWS I will pass but if enough of them are interesting I will pick it up. I hope it isn't like the Ghost Tarot where a few cards were original but the bulk of them disappointingly compliant. I agree with the idea that many endeavors, such as work life, revolve around various relationships so it will be a useful deck for lots of readings.

It is a bit jarring, all these posts saying decks are only really tarot if all the cards follow RWS meanings. Not sure where that comes from. In the eighties when I was learning what you heard a lot was that the RWS meanings were a sort of back up for when your intuition didn't provide an interpretation, or a way to prime the pump. Anyway there were real tarot decks long before the RWS was published and if every card of every deck boiled down to a standard RWS meaning we would each only need one deck.