Temptation

Against all better judgement, I’ve bought a copy of the Tarot Universal Dali to sell at Tarot Chest. Why is this potentially a bad idea? Because it’s a very expensive deck and if it doesn’t sell, I’m going to feel a bit foolish. But I couldn’t resist. It has shiny gold edges. It comes in a furry red slipcase. And…it’s the Dali Tarot. It’s literally a work of art. It took me almost an hour to add it to the site this afternoon, mainly because I couldn’t stop flicking through the scans at taroteca. (Occupational hazard…I can’t tell you how many (wo)man hours we lose to that every year. )

Now I have the difficult task of seeing it on the shelf every day until someone buys it. And I’m not sure I possess the willpower required to let it just sit there. How long can I last? Will anyone save me? Or will I succumb to temptation and make it mine? Tune in again for the next exciting installment…

P.S. This is my favourite card. No, hang on. This one is. And this one.

Uncertainty Spread

Last week I got the Tarot of the Imagination, an OOP Lo Scarabeo deck. It’s very colourful, very striking, but also a little odd, a little foreign to me. Reading it, I think, requires me to “suspend my disbelief” – a term used frequently in my Theatre Studies classes way back when in school. “Theatrical” is a good word to describe it; “impressionistic” is another. The images were painted/chosen to suggest a mood – as such they often veer wildly from typical RWS depictions. It’s a challenge for me as my reading style is very logical.

A few days ago I wanted to try a reading with it. The situation I was reading about was a nebulous, shifting situation. My thoughts kept going round and round in circles, bouncing from hope to fear to sadness to optimism and from question to question to question, without finding any answers. I needed to impose some sort of order to do a reading but didn’t know where to start so I came up with a new spread, one designed specifically to loosely hold the impressionistic images of this deck.

It seems like it would be a useful spread for any time you need to try and pin down a confusing situation.

The position meanings are:

1 – THE DREAM, what I hope for the situation

2 – THE NIGHTMARE, my fears for the situation

3 – THE PAST, where the situation has come from

4 – THE FUTURE, where the situation is going

5 - REALITY, what I need to accept is true about the situation

6 – FICTION, what I need to realise is false

7 – THE PATH, the way out of the situation

If you can’t wait for the Shadowscapes…

I got a pleasant surprise today when I unpacked a delivery for our other store. I instantly recognised the artwork on the cover of Dancers in the Dusk, one of the new roleplaying releases that arrived. Look, it’s by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law!

Aaaahhhh. So lovely…..

What I like about Lo Scarabeo

This week, I’ve had the great pleasure of perusing the new Lo Scarabeo Tarot Gallery, which is a lovely big hardback book featuring full colour samples of all their decks. To a tarot geek, it’s a thing of beauty; even though I know of all these decks, and even though I have – at one time or another – stocked most of them, I still get a thrill at every page turn. Decks that I thought I didn’t like somehow come to life when viewed in a double page glossy spread. Even – and this shocked the hell out of me – the Tarot of Reincarnation, which still may not look much like a tarot deck but does look extremely attractive.

I’m guessing the Tarot Gallery has been produced to create desire in retail stores. Browse these pages and dare to resist our wares!  However, this is much much more than a superficial selling tool. They’ve clearly invested a lot of time and effort in making it. The cards are actual size, which is great, and for those decks that feature gold and silver impressions, LS have glued a copy of the card to the page. Also, the sheer number of decks is mind-boggling. I counted 96! And these are in-print decks mind you, not discontinued ones (and it doesn’t even include any of the upcoming 2009 releases)!

Sometimes a lot of Lo Scarabeo bashing goes on at certain forums. Certain people seem to get personally offended that LS “churn out” so many decks with different themes every year, as if being prolific was a sign of low standards or even worse…gasp…commercialism.

But being prolific is just what I like about Lo Scarabeo: you never quite know what they’re going to do next. You may groan at the thought of a UFO Tarot or roll your eyes at the latest “Tarot of the Little Pink Pixies” (I made that up), but there’s no denying they always give you something to talk about. And there’s also no denying that they produce some very good and very beautiful decks: the Universal Fantasy, the Classic Tarot, the Nefertari, the Tarot of the Secret Forest, the Samurai Tarot…I could go on. Sometimes a deck is a “miss” but often their decks are resounding hits. 

What’s more, they have an energy and enthusiasm that you just don’t get from US Games/Llewellyn/AGMuller/etc. Lo Scarabeo constantly dare to try new things. Why not have a UFO Tarot? Why not a Manga Tarot or Tarot of the Robots? It’s important I think to remember that LS make playing cards as well. Some people like playing cards with cats on. Some like playing cards with cheeses of the world. LS seem to extend the same vision to tarot. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tarot deck featuring mermaids?” Does it need to be justifiable in some serious, studious tarot way? Of course not  – and anyway, who gets to decide what can or can’t be a tarot deck? Sometimes all a deck needs to be is pretty, or interesting. To a collector, all a deck needs is the word “tarot” in its name.

They’re also willing to experiment with the format. They’ve brought out no end of mini tarots, and the lovely - and under-appreciated – grand trumps. They produce bags to match their decks. Last year they added spread cloths; this year they’re trying their hand at rune sets and some shiny chakra thingies. Last year they published a gorgeous book about their first 20 years. And this year they’ve produced this Tarot Gallery.

That’s why I like Lo Scarabeo, and why I think they’re still probably one of the most exciting – and hardest working – tarot publishers around. So there.

Giving Up

I’m giving up on the Deck of the Month. It was a nice idea but…it enforces an artificial schedule that makes me feel all claustrophobic. My Anna K. has arrived and I want to play with that but I’m supposed to be using my Hudes. It makes me want to stamp my feet and say “No! Shan’t!” And that just creates bad feeling all round.

Besides, I just don’t have the time at the moment to do anything with my Deck of the Month, which kind of defeats the whole purpose. It seems I need a more relaxed approach which will allow me to get to know a new deck – say, oh I don’t know, the Anna K. – over a few months, instead of trying to squish it all into one.

And as for Card of the Month…don’t get me started. Ugh.

Anna K Tarot

I’ve just ordered the Anna K Tarot. Yippee!

More on this when it arrives…

Joy Ride

In what will surely become known as “The January of Mad-Crazy Tarot Deck Buying” (see below), I have acquired the Hudes Tarot.

This is a deck I thought I hated and would never own, simply because of the Magician card which “graces” the front of the box. Frankly, it’s an ugly card. The Magician looks old and crabby and snippy whereas in my mind he should be virile and charismatic and crackling with energy. Because of this, I have never really looked any closer at the Hudes (well, that, and the fact that the scans at Aeclectic are truly, truly awful).

Yet, for some unknown reason, I suddenly wanted the Hudes. This has happened before – a strong feeling of suddenly being drawn to a deck I’ve shown no previous interest in – and I’ve learned to just go with it (it’s how I met the Haindl). And guess what? The Hudes is a lovely deck. It’s warm and calm and often very beautiful in a modest way. If the Hudes was a bird, it would be a wren.

As I’ve grown older and more set in my ways, I’ve become less forgiving of tarot decks that don’t align with my own takes on the cards. I rarely buy a deck nowadays that puts Justice at VIII; I avoid decks that cop-out and rename Death; and I almost certainly would poo-poo a deck that used any old circular object to represent the Wheel of Fortune just to make the card fit a theme (okay, that last one is probably still a good reason to avoid a deck).

The tarot world is full of different perspectives – that’s what fascinated me about it in the first place. Yet, lately, I’ve become less willing to experiment and explore. This is a mistake. Instead of looking at the Hudes Magician and thinking “that’s wrong, I don’t like that”, I should think “hmm, what an interesting depiction of the Magician, I wonder why the artist chose to portray him like that – I must investigate further”.

It is perhaps only by approaching new decks in this frame of mind – with open curiosity – that we can continue to learn more and more, to broaden our tarot horizons and keep ourselves from becoming stale. In this way, we are like Fools, and each new deck starts a new journey. Some journeys will be short-lived and take us nowhere (such as the short trip I took with the Tarot of the Secret Forest). Others will take us further than we dreamed possible.

Anyway, this post is my gift to you. Feel free to use it as an excuse to buy a new deck (or more). So far this month I’ve used it as an excuse to buy the Fairytale Tarot, the Hudes, the Truth-Seeker’s Tarot, the New Palladini and the Caring Psychic Family Tarot.

The Prairie Tarot

In my early teens, I went through a phase of wanting to be a cowboy. Which, I’ll readily admit, was a little weird for a middle-class girl from suburban England, but then Young Guns was out and I was easily impressionable.

Anyway… I’d actually forgotten all about that until a couple of days ago when I got a sneak peek at Robin Ator’s new tarot deck. Robin Ator, as I’m sure you know, is the extremely talented person who gave us the International Icon Tarot and the Ator Tarot. This new tarot, however, is something altogether different. I’m going to quote what Robin wrote in his email as it’s far more eloquent a description than I could muster:

“The whole point, for me, has been to do a deck that reflects my own experiences growing up in northern Montana.  It was a high-prairie, bare, sparse place, with its old echoes of farmers, cowboys and, of course, the animals and Indians who were there before any of us. 

The Prairie Tarot is a very personal deck.  It’s made only for myself, really, and is not an attempt to create any sort of universally-accepted canon…It reflects my own experience of the people, and stories of the place I heard and read growing up.”

And here are the images he sent me (which he also kindly permitted me to reproduce here). Quite frankly, they took my breath away:

       

        

It may be a personal deck but, from these few images, it’s clear to me that it will be a highly readable deck. A sign of a good deck I think is when you can instantly connect with an image the very first time you see it – when meaning is conveyed through the image, without any need for explanation or deciphering. These images speak to me that way.

The Hierophant, for example, stands as a living example of ages old tradition and wisdom passed down through Native American culture. His clothes and headdress convey a sense of belonging, yet he stands alone, and his face is in shadow, making him seem distant and austere. It’s a very solemn card, but also strangely reassuring.

The Wheel of Fortune, with it’s full spectrum of colour, shows sometimes the wind blows hot and sometimes it blows cold. Sometimes circumstances complement us and sometimes they oppose us. Even in the 21st Century, when we try to manage our lives down to the smallest detail, the weather is a reminder of forces outside our control – that there are things bigger than we are. The power of the wind can be harnessed and bring us good fortune, but it can also flatten houses and destroy crops, making this card a perfect symbol for the Wheel of Fortune.

So, beautiful and meaningful. Suffice to say, I’m very much looking forward to seeing the finished deck.

In Search of Justice

This afternoon I spent quite a bit of time searching through all my decks looking for Justice. It couldn’t be any Justice though. What I was looking for was my ideal representation of Justice - or, at least, as close as I could get to it in my small collection of 20+ decks.

What’s my ideal representation? Cold, analytical, detached, impartial. I thought it would be easy to find but actually, most of my decks seem to have a rather lax view of Justice. I almost gave up. The facial expressions were all wrong, you see. I can’t have Justice sitting there with her sword held straight and true, and her scales perfectly poised, with an expression of doubt on her face. No, she needs to be certain, unwavering, inscrutable. Robotic almost.

Thankfully, I found her – in the second from last place I looked. And here she is. Justice from the Crystal Tarot. Nothing else in my collection comes close.

The New Mythic Tarot

If you frequent any tarot forums anywhere then you probably already know that the Mythic Tarot is being re-released and that the publisher has chosen to replace Tricia Newell’s lively art with copies by Giovanni Caselli. The Mythic Tarot is one of my favourite decks so I am not amused. It seems so disrespectful to the original and also smacks of “hey, I’ve got a great idea to make some more money”.

Anyway, as I was mindlessly surfing tonight, I came across some scans from the new version of the deck that someone had posted in a thread at Aeclectic Tarot. I encourage you to take a look, just to see what can happen when you mess with something that really was perfectly fine in the first place. It makes me shudder.

Let this be a lesson to us all.