Fiamma
November 26th, 2008, 11:28 PM
Considering that the tarot traditionally has a strong masculine/feminine polarity, does anyone besides me have an issue with decks that ignore or diminish the masculine?
Earlier in the fall, I was at Barnes and Noble one night with my girlfriend and she picked up a deck I'd never seen before, the Mystical Dreamer deck.
The artwork that we cold see was absolutely astounding, appearing that many of the cards were modeled after the traditional Rider-Waite images (I can't stand the Rider-Waite deck but it's the style of the artwork and the garish coloring, not what is depicted within the images that I have issues with. There are some great Waite clones out there that I wouldn't mind having)
There was no sample deck to look at, but on a whim, I decided to buy it. Once purchased and the seal broken, we started going through it and realized that while a lot of the cards are modeled from the RW deck, there are very few men in the deck. There are a couple of cards where the model looks a bit androgynous, but we're pretty sure that they're women.
I don't know, it just seems to really detract from the deck for me, seeing as the polarity is one of the traditional elements of tarot. The artwork is astounding, but I haven't been able to even make a decent attempt at reading with them.
The Gendron deck is another one that I use to have, but couldn't really read from for the same reason- even moreso. That deck removes men altogether from the Majors, except for the emperor, who basically is a man in a dress, and you'd only really know that he was a man because of his facial hair.
It just seems that tarot isn't tarot when it's changed like that.
Earlier in the fall, I was at Barnes and Noble one night with my girlfriend and she picked up a deck I'd never seen before, the Mystical Dreamer deck.
The artwork that we cold see was absolutely astounding, appearing that many of the cards were modeled after the traditional Rider-Waite images (I can't stand the Rider-Waite deck but it's the style of the artwork and the garish coloring, not what is depicted within the images that I have issues with. There are some great Waite clones out there that I wouldn't mind having)
There was no sample deck to look at, but on a whim, I decided to buy it. Once purchased and the seal broken, we started going through it and realized that while a lot of the cards are modeled from the RW deck, there are very few men in the deck. There are a couple of cards where the model looks a bit androgynous, but we're pretty sure that they're women.
I don't know, it just seems to really detract from the deck for me, seeing as the polarity is one of the traditional elements of tarot. The artwork is astounding, but I haven't been able to even make a decent attempt at reading with them.
The Gendron deck is another one that I use to have, but couldn't really read from for the same reason- even moreso. That deck removes men altogether from the Majors, except for the emperor, who basically is a man in a dress, and you'd only really know that he was a man because of his facial hair.
It just seems that tarot isn't tarot when it's changed like that.