I was inspired to become a Tarot game advocate from reading this interview with Ron Decker on the Tarot Passages website. “Ron is still trying to build up tarot in the collection, as curators of the collection had previously neglected fortune telling decks. Now, with the understanding that tarot was once played as a card game, he is able to add to these decks. The theme of the collection has always been ‘playing cards’. Decker here is speaking of The United States Playing Card Company Museum. I believe that awareness of Tarot as a card game would lead to these cards becoming more accepted in places such as our public school system. I also believe such awareness could also expand the role that Tarot could play in our leisure activities.

Is the perception of Tarot as a divination tool harmful? If works and artifacts pertaining to Tarot game playing cannot be correctly categorized because folks have not been given any other context in which to view Tarot, then I think there is a problem here that needs correcting. I recall, for example, that one reason Michael Dummett’s book “Game of Tarot” sold poorly is because retailers kept putting it in the occult categories.

Inventions get adapted all the time to new uses, many of which supersede the original application or continue with their own independent history. There is nothing unusual about this. Certainly, when the history of an invention is discussed, it is historically imperative to describe its first use. However when discussing a later specific use it is not always necessary to go off-topic and give a history lesson—not everything is about origins. It is possible to talk about a “branch,” without having to discuss the whole tree. I agree that when history IS mentioned it should be accurate. It is also equally correct to discuss the myths and legends that have accrued around a subject, as long as the difference between myth and history is clear.

On the other hand, those who use tarot cards solely for gaming are equally reluctant to talk about the early uses of the cards in magic and for ‘tarocchi appropriati’ – poems that ascribe personality characteristics to people based on common allegorical associations to the Triumphs. This was part of a Medieval and Renaissance convention of “talking images”—pictures whose meanings spoke clearly to everyone.

Furthermore, most contemporary players of the game of tarot, tarocchi or tarock (except perhaps in Italy) don’t even use decks that would be recognizable to Renaissance players other than in the number of cards involved. The images used for the trumps are now entirely different—there’s no more Justice, Strength or Wheel of Fortune, and the suits use French pips, yet this change to the trumps is rarely mentioned by gamers.

What I don’t understand is why a discussion of a late 19th/early 20th century use of cards for fortune-telling would be perceived as threatening to those who play the game of Tarot? Bridge and poker players don’t protest every discussion of playing card divination. Tarot readers don’t protest the elimination of the historical trump images in contemporary Tarok packs—although some protest changes made to ‘occultize’ decks.

I agree that this article might better have been entitled “Reading Cards” rather than “Reading Tarot,” but that is a relatively minor issue.

Why try to hi-jack an examination of the social conditions surrounding card reading in the late 19th century and turn it into something else—a discussion about how cards were made for games and gambling—unless there is something more than historical considerations that these tarot players fear? I wouldn’t mind hi-jacking this discussion if anyone has a really good answer for that. In fact, it might speak directly as to why card reading is such a marginalized practice.

jk, persuasion comes from the Latin words per suare — with sugar. The rhetoric of aggression and condescension isn’t helping your argument, such as it is.

Anyway, the folks here are very bright and I assure you that they can read this and decide for themselves whether to be mislead by me. Again, I think we’re butting up against the “skeptic v. imagined Christian” framework.

You guys think that you’re justified in coming in here and clearing up misconceptions or proving how I’m wrong because you believe that I’m trying to convert people through proselytizing. This is my guess, at least. But that’s not the case.

I could give a shit about converting folks. I’m just trying to explain how I see it. Folks can take it or leave it.

But back to you, more specifically, jk, aside from some huge errors in assumption on your part, the main problem with your approach is that we clearly belong to two different critical schools. You believe that the intent of the artist should be given primacy and that the meaning of a piece of art is derived in large part from what the artist meant, as best as it can be discerned by studying his biography and social context.

I believe that all that stuff is interesting and certainly adds to the meaning of a piece of art, but that art often has meaning and tells us things far beyond what the author could have intended.

And folks far smarter than you and I have been arguing over which approach is correct for generations. Trying to use one critical school to trump another critical school is ridiculous. It doesn’t prove you’re right. It just proves you have an interpretive framework.

At the least, you are confusing yourself, with your own moody “woo-woo”. At the worst, you are creating an affirming place for simpletons to explore the summits of their imagination.

Of course the latter provides a basis for the content of cartofeminist Tarot, which Mary Greer, among others, has spent a career promoting.

Maybe you should put down the cards and assess your grip.

Weighing in on the skepticism v. “woo” debate: I am a skeptic AND I have a set of tarot cards that are purely for my own personal interest and amusement – that is how I personally choose to use them. I have done readings for a couple of friends at their request and let them take what they wanted from it. I don’t believe it does anything more than provide a sort of structure to sort out what your thoughts and situation involve, as well as going through future plans in a general way.

Tarot holds what you want to take from it, like many other things. Some people take more, some take less, some take nothing at all. This isn’t a defense of reason area – calm down and realize everyone has different opinions and beliefs on things. The OP wasn’t trying to force people to take Tarot as a revelation of divine will or have people make important life decisions on it, so as far as I see, no harm no foul.