#justice for pamela colman smith tbh

[cookinguptales]

Ah what a wonderful reading to wake up to, surprisingly accurate! (of course tho you always insert your own experiences to fit best into a readin') And a beautiful deck, I'm SUPER curious to see the Lisa Frank one when you get it!

I’m so glad you enjoyed it! Tarot nights are always a lot of fun.

Yeah, like I said, what I love about tarot is the meanings that we affix to the objects we live with. Tarot cards were around long before they had any magical associations (and the cartomancy-esque meanings that came later often boiled down to “saw it in a dream, wow I’m smart” “um excuse me in MY dream it said THIS and my dreams are Smartest Dreams” and then they fight even though neither of them know beans about what ancient egyptians really thought because the goddamn rosetta stone hasn’t been translated yet!!)  -- ANYWAY, tarot cards were basically just fancy playing cards for rich people for quite a while and then people started giving them meaning. And now look where we are! Tarot cards are wholly removed from their original use!

That said, this ukiyo-e deck is interesting because it does actually call back to normal playing cards. I took a picture of some of the cards because you said you were interested in seeing more of them.

The part I love about the Minor Arcana in this deck (the top row) is that if you look closely, you can see the normal card suits that are associated with the traditional tarot suits. Most tarot decks have Cups, Swords, Rods/Staves/Wands, and Pentacles/Coins. Even tarot decks that replace these objects with other objects (like the Halloween Tarot’s ghosts and bats) come with a manual that will tell you which “traditional” suits they correspond to.

This deck used Japanese objects that were reminiscent of those suits, but they also included the normal card suits that these are associated with. There’s a spade floating above the swords. A heart hidden in the pond below the cups. A club next to the wands. A diamond beside the coins. I kind of love how they’re simultaneously mystifying and demystifying the deck. People have done all kinds of cartomancy throughout the years with all kinds of different cards -- including your normal, boring Bicycle decks. Tarot has just become the predominant form.

I love how this deck in particular has adapted the usual Rider-Waite-Smith imagery to the theme. (You can especially see it in The Tower and The Fool.) Tarot has developed a kind of shared language, but I love seeing what artists do with that language. I like seeing how it’s reaffirmed and subverted. There’s so much historic tradition there, but also such a sense of modern creativity. There’s a reason why I end up supporting so many tarot kickstarters lmao.

Anyway, that was all a long way of saying that, yes, tarot readings are really exactly what you make of them. The concepts present in tarot cards tend to be very applicable to a lot of different people, and that vagueness can make it feel incredibly specific. That said, just because people project their own needs onto tarot readings, that doesn’t make them bad. That just means that tarot readings give you a way to reconceptualize and puzzle out the life you’re living. It’s kind of like guided meditation, in a way. You know what they say -- the real way to choose between two things is to flip a coin and see which side you find yourself rooting for. It’s kind of like that. You may not even realize what you need to be thinking about until there’s a loose framework to hang your thoughts onto.

I don’t know whether I believe in things like psychic phenomena, but I do believe that we often hear what we need to hear when we get tarot readings. Not because there’s necessarily anything mystical about them, but because they give us an excuse to examine our lives, priorities, desires, and potential shortcomings in a way that we might not otherwise do. And if that helps you, who cares who’s psychic?

Just my two cents, anyway. I may not wholeheartedly believe in a lot of things, but I believe in humans and what they create together. I believe that our traditions and stories and beliefs are a kind of magic all on their own, and I believe that’s beautiful. Traditions can be good or they can be bad, but the fact that they last hundreds of years in the minds of millions of people is pretty incredible, isn’t it?

tl;dr I’m a fuckin nerd and material culture is my jaaaam

(YOU GOT THIS GIANT WALL OF TEXT BECAUSE YOU WERE ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT TAROT FROM AN ACADEMIC STANDPOINT, THIS IS YOUR FAULT.)