Welcome to Tarot Card of the Week!

This journal is for people who want to design their own Tarot deck or just learn about how to read tarot cards.

Each week, on Sunday, we will post a summary of a single card. Not all decks or all tarot readers read every card the same way, and we are open to many interpretations of these cards, so you are welcome to comment back with your own interpretation of the card, stories about the card, or relevant material/ideas about designing the card.

You are welcome to post during the week as well. You can design just one card or work at building a deck. Work week by week or at your own pace. You can simply read along or look at other people's designs-- just be respectful of whether they want their cards to be distributed or used.

Posts during the week should either focus on the card of the week, previous cards we've discussed, or discussions related to tarot iconography, history, and design. If you would like to talk about a specific deck, that is fine, too, as long as the discussion is focused on the design of the deck. We have a sister community for lighter chit-chat, tarot_chat.

A few rules

1) Please keep on subject. Posts should be about Tarot. Posts about general religious or occult issues or questions belong in communities about those respective topics. Posts should be about iconography and tarot design. If you have a post about tarot that is not relevant, please join tarot_chat, our free-for-all chat community.

2) Please keep positive. We would like to foster an encouraging environment for everyone. If you disagree strongly with someone or disapprove of something they are doing, please hold your breath and count to ten. If you feel someone is being patently offensive or insulting toward a person or a group, contact the mods-- don't try to handle it yourself.

3) Please do not post about specific readings here. The reason for this is simply to cut the clutter and to keep non-members from thinking that they can pester our members to ask for readings.

If you are looking for tarot readings, please visit our sister community, tarot_guild, a community for matching up readers with readees.


Thank you for joining!

Useful links:
Facade.com has a variety of tarot cards and spreads and free 'readings.'
Aeclectic.net has many articles about the tarot.
LearnTarot.com has lessons and descriptions of the cards.
Tarot Teachings.com has lessons and descriptions of the cards.
Tarot.com has FAQs and articles about Tarot.
Trionfi.com has a very large collection of tarot designs.

Has any one ever tried using two different decks in the same reading? I'm not thinking of shuffling them in together, but rather using one deck for a reading and another as sort of a clarifying layer. Thoughts? Experiences?

Hi! Sorry for the delay! I got my computer working again but then got massive sick and just was not up to writing up the post this week. Here's this week's card. We have another Wand card this week. It's sort of funny how the cards are falling because we have gotten a ton of Majors relative to how many are in the deck, and still have not gotten any swords.


Six of Wands




Pictured here: Tarot of Marseilles, Visconti-Sforza Tarot, Rider-Waite Tarot, New Orleans Voodoo Tarot (1992)

Card Description

As we've seen before with the numbered suit cards, both of the older-style cards simply show a design of interwoven wands or batons on these cards, decorated with a floral pattern. In both cases, the way the wands are interlocked create a diamond pattern in the middle-- although on the Marseilles card, the wands are more clearly arranged in an over-under weave pattern, while it is difficult to tell how the wands interlock on the Visconti-Sforza.

The Rider-Waite interpretation of this card shows a rider, depicted not unlike a Knight, on a horse, but unarmed, wearing a wreath. He is carrying a rod in his hand, with another wreath tied to it. Behind him we see several other people, walking, also carrying rods. It is of significant note that these rods are all bearing leaves-- they are very much alive.

For our more modern card this week, I chose the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot, which is one that replaces the suits and symbolism with similar motifs from Voodoo lore. Rods are replaced with Petro, a Voodoo tradition that is here associated with fire, the element most often associated with wands. Petro is the strain of Voodoo that is usually associated with things like the raising of the dead and vengeful spirits, and is rarely practiced in modern culture. The figure on the card is
Papa Legba, who is actually not a character associated with Petro at all-- he is one of the chief figures in Rada Voodoo and is known as the intermediary between the living and the dead-- he is the one who guides the living when they wish to contact the world of the dead.

Interpretation

We've already talked a little bit about how even-numbered cards are usually considered to be completed steps on the path, and also about how as the numbers ascend, we get closer to a goal of completeness regarding the general concepts related with that suit. So, for a Six card, we are just slightly past half-done, but still have a long way to go.

Since wands tend to represent things like creative pursuits, action, and adventure, a six of wands frequently can be read to represent a personal achievement or recognition for a personal achievement-- the kind of thing that is nice and satisfying, but also generally temporary. One of the important messages of the Six of Wands is to remind us that we might be at risk of losing sight of the bigger picture by resting on our laurels-- laurels which are very obviously apparent in the Rider-Waite version of this card.

The image of the rider on the Rider-Waite card is also frequently seen to represent order or command, or a restoration of order or rule in a situation that had previously been chaotic.

This is where the image from the Voodoo card comes into play-- I think that the Legba image brings in a whole lot of more mystical meanings that are not normally associated with the Six of Wands, but the idea of a person who keeps order over chaos and is responsible for overseeing what would otherwise be a messy and dangerous interchange definitely falls in line with this meaning of the Rider-Waite card.


References

Reference: the LearnTarot page for The Six of Wands
Reference: The Tarot Teachings Page for The Six of Wands
Reference: Wikipedia Page for The Six of Wands
Reference: Aeclectic page for Six Cards.
Reference: Trionfi page for all 78 cards—click on batons…6 to get to Six of Wands. (Good for designers)
Reference: Tarot.com Iconography page for the suit of Wands.
Reference: The LearnTarot page for Minor Arcana.

As always, if anyone has any complaints or questions, please let me know!

Everyone, please feel free to add more below! Don’t worry about whether you are a beginner; if you have any thoughts about the card we’re studying, please don’t be shy!

Hi, I'm new to join the group, though I have been watching for a little while. I'm mostly here to motivate myself to work on my own deck, but I have two initial questions:

1. I am making a tarot template for myself in inDesign so when I have the actual drawings, I can just drop them in. The cards are roughly the size of the Osho Zen deck, with a similar black border, but no color-coded diamonds for suits. Would anyone be interested in me sharing this when it's finished? Keep in mind that you would need the program to use it.

2. The main decks I am going off of are the Thoth and the traditional Waite deck. A couple of cards have different major arcana names, such as 8 (either adjustment, justice, strength, or fortitude); 11 (justice, lust, strength); 14 (temperance, art, integration); 20 (Judgement, the Aeon); 21 (the world, the universe). I am trying to decide which interpretation to follow and was wondering which meaning other people were following? Any advice on interpretation?

Crossposted from tarot_chat (I'll get the hang of the difference eventually!):

I finally got my hands on the DruidCraft Tarot, a deck which seemed to almost actively avoid me at times. It's generally not in stores, as far as I can tell. One store said they'd be getting it in a few days for the past few weeks, and when I broke down and ordered it online, the carrier said it was "on the truck and due in a half hour" and I got it some days later.

Wow, it is a gorgeous deck. The paintings almost glow and I find myself having an emotional response to them. I particularly am fond of The Lovers, and normally I'm "eh" about that one. The cards are big, though, so I have to shuffle them with the long sides facing each other.

Something has been on my mind. Isn't it funny that my last post was on The Devil? Normally I don't focus on that card so much, so it's odd that the posts I do make are about it.

In this deck, Card XV is Cernunnos watching over the sleeping lovers. The intention is that the forces generally though of as evil, like sensuality, aren't in an of themselves bad, but that they get used the wrong way.

Well... isn't using those forces the wrong way and getting trapped the usual definition of The Devil? That's the way I understood it, at least. Where's our card for that, now?

So, here we have a card that's normally in The Devil's place, with a figure that said Devil is visually based on, but meaning something a little different, which leaves me feeling kind of confused. They're not the same deity, but he's been put in the same spot with sort of a modified meaning, so there is a relation after all? Some years ago I encountered something like this in another deck and felt kind of confused about it, and I didn't give much thought to it until now.

On top of that, the meaning seems to be something like The Moon, that the primal forces and madness are just a step away in the dark. They're not necessarily bad, in fact, they can be very good, but they're there and they're potentially harmful and frightening.

So, to recap... we have a card that feels sort of like The Moon, an absence of the card that means you're doing something stupid, and this lovely, glowing picture with this imposing figure with one kind of angry-looking eye and I can't stop encountering and looking at it. It really is beautifully unsettling.

So, what are your thoughts on this sort of thing?

And maybe it's the shadows, but it looks like the woman is wearing blue eyeshadow, which is weird, if you ask me.

This week's post is going to be a day or two late as I'm having some computer problems that are preventing me from getting graphics together! Apologies.

We recently had the death card as our card of the week for tarot_week which sparked some creative thinking for me. I want to know for all of you out there creating your own decks; What imagery speaks to you for this card? When making your death card, will you go traditional skeleton/death or is there some other image that calls to you for the meaning of this card? If so what is it? What are your plans?

( my ideas for the death card/reation to it. )

Hi, everbody! I hope you had a good week!

Just a note on the community split: it seems like y'all are being even more conservative than I would be in deciding which comunity to post to. The main reason for dividing the communities was so that people who wanted to, say, ask a question about a reading they got, or find out where to buy a certain deck, or who had very simple questions, etc., could do it over there and this comm wouldn't be flooded. If your post is about iconography or about designing your own deck, please feel free to post about it here.

We have another Major Arcana card this week!

XIII: Death




Pictured here: Tarot of Marseilles, Visconti-Sforza Tarot, Rider-Waite Tarot, Enchanted Tarot (1990))

Card Description

Before we discuss these designs, it's important to know that in the original Visconti-Sforza, it is likely that the Death card was the last of the Trumps (the other cards were added later). So the cycle originally would have run from the Fool to Death. T

The Marseilles and Visconti-Sforza images are very similar, but not identical. Each shows a skeleton, but the Marseilles skeleton is depicted as the traditional Reaper, with a scythe, and we see body parts and heads coming up from the grass below. It's important to note that the two heads are of a peasant and a King-- to show that Death affects everyone equally. There are no dead mortals on the Visconti-Sforza deck, though, and Death carries a bow. He also appears very large-- dwarfing the mountains in the distance.

The Rider-Waite card is one where the design deviates greatly from either traditional card. Here, Death is depicted as the Rider on a pale horse of the Book of Revelations, and he carries a flag emblazoned with a white rose. The only dead person on this card is a king, who is being mourned by a girl and a child while a bishop prays over the body. There is a sun in the distance, although it is not entirely clear whether it is rising or setting, it is usually considered to be a rising sun.

The modern deck I chose is the Enchanted Tarot, which is a deck made of decoupage collages. I think it is an excellent depiction of a way to use the traditional motifs of the Death card- the skeleton, the mountains, the rising sun, and roses, but uses them in a way that mades the card lurid, flashy, and almost joyous, to show another side of what the death card is about. The card also has a row of pink butterfly cocoons along the lower edge.

Interpretation

Death is the Thirteenth card in the Major Arcana, and there is a lot of speculation that in the earliest decks, it was the last card. It's also one of the most misrepresented and misunderstood cards in the deck-- because on the surface, the symbolism seems so obvious, whereas with a card like the Tower or the Star, you don't necessarily know what it means just from the name. The Death card is considered unlucky by a lot of people and many people won't read with it in the deck.

However, the Death card does not stand for actual death-- it is really the card of metamorphosis. A lot of modern decks-- including the Enchanted Tarot-- use not only roses, but butterfly motifs on the card, to get across this idea of change and of death only as a stripping away of the old to begin anew. In this spirit, the Death card is also often read as being about shedding old ideas in favor of new ones, or leaving behind an old way of life to start over. The card is not so much about endings as it is about transitions-- Death recognizes endings as an important part of the tranditional process, but, like they say when the King dies, as he does on the Rider-Waite card-- "long live the King!" Death is part of a cycle, and death only serves to make way for the new-- the sun can't rise without setting.

I know my interpretation post this week is a little more abstract than usual-- I had a bit of a crazy day on account of the snowstorms on the Eastern seaboard of the US, so apologies for that!

References

Reference: the LearnTarot page for Death
Reference: The Tarot Teachings Page for Death
Reference: Wikipedia Page for Death
Reference: Aeclectic page for Ace Cards.
Reference: Trionfi page for Death. (Good for designers)
Reference: Tarot.com Iconography page for Death.
Reference: The LearnTarot page for Major Arcana.

As always, if anyone has any complaints or questions, please let me know!

Everyone, please feel free to add more below! Don’t worry about whether you are a beginner; if you have any thoughts about the card we’re studying, please don’t be shy!

as stated in my intro i am designing a deck of tarot cards for my own use. i have a question for the more experienced readers/designers.

personally, i associate wands/clubs/staffs with air, and swords/spades with fire. now, every minor arcana card (i have finished my majors) has a name associated with it. but the lists i have associate wands/staffs/clubs with fire/south/summer and swords/spades with air/east/spring.

so the question is this: should i flip my lists, or should i keep my spades/swords so that 2=peace restored, 3=sorrow/heartbreak, 4=rest from strife etc., as they are being associated with air/east/spring? in my mind it makes more sense to switch the lists, so that the associations are correct with my methodology.

either way, i am probably going to do fairly simple cards for the minors, possibly even basic pips for the number cards. but even if i only do pips, i want to have the names of the cards on the faces, so i want the associations to match up.

does this make sense? opinions?

thanks for your input!

(cross posted at tarot_chat)

I finished my photomanipulated old west tarot deck. I have yet to do the full deck compilation and the edited full deck compilation, but the suits and individual cards are all posted. I started the deck on 8 February, 2009, and I completed the deck on 27 February 2009. My goal was 21 days, or 3 weeks. I beat that by two days.

Will I make another tarot? Probably. It was a lot of fun, but I need a wee break.

Before you look at the deck, or at least before you leave me comments or notes, you may want to read my journal entry on deviantART about it. That can be found here: (http://isbrealiomcaife.deviantart.com/journal/23124124/)

Major Arcana: (http://isbrealiomcaife.deviantart.com/art/Major-Arcana-114343252)
Spades: (http://isbrealiomcaife.deviantart.com/art/Suit-of-Spades-114062321)
Clubs: (http://isbrealiomcaife.deviantart.com/art/Suit-of-Clubs-113482417)
Hearts: (http://isbrealiomcaife.deviantart.com/art/Suit-of-Hearts-113062266)
Diamonds: (http://isbrealiomcaife.deviantart.com/art/Suit-of-Diamonds-112495073)

Since a lot of members of this community are tarot designers, I have created a club dedicated to tarot design on deviantART. Basically, the idea is that there are also a lot of tarot desginers who aren't on LiveJournal, and some users here may find their work inspirational or may wish to network with them as well.

Without any further ado, I bring you TarotDesignersGuild: http://tarotdesignersguild.deviantart.com/

Submission rules:

• You must be a deviantART member to submit work.
• We are a guild dedicated to showing off the various tarot decks that deviants have made.
• To submit your deck, send a link of your favorite (or what you feel is your best) card in a note to this group.
• Any medium is fine.
• Only tarot cards will be accepted. This does not include photographs of printed tarot decks or other tarot-related deviations.
• One card per deck, please. If you send multiples, I will pick whichever one I like best.
• If your design contains mature content, let me know what settings you put it on in the submission note.
• Be sure to put in the comments on your original deviation that TarotDesignersGuild can use the image.