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color cycle (slow)

Kistaro Windrider, Reptillian Situation Assessor

Unfortunately, I Really Am That Nerdy

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color cycle (slow)
  • 10:24 Anybody have a good recommendation for a dragon-themed Tarot deck that actually has useful Rider-Waite-related symbolism? #
  • 11:21 My body temperature plummets when I get hungry. Naturally, that means I don't especially feel like even getting up to go to the cafeteria. #
  • 13:47 The more I use vim, the more I like it. It has a nasty learning curve, but it speeds up my work significantly. #
  • 15:27 This hyperproductive afternoon brought to you by caffeine, @sooj, and trying desperately to write some automation before I get a new task. #
  • 19:59 Sleepy. Have been all day. going to bed early. #
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These are the same four I ran across. It's comforting to know I didn't miss anything readily accessible, I guess. It does leave the market open, though!

I don't have the Pracownik-specific book, but reviews on Amazon marked it fairly poorly. I love the art in that deck, I just can't read it very well; I suspect it's just more practice that will help me, because I don't know the card meanings well enough. Still. The Minor Arcana aren't illustrated quite vividly enough to reinforce my shaky knowledge.

I know a good chunk of the Minor Arcana well, but a good third of it I'm really quite weak on the meaning of. The sweeping majority of the Tarot readings I've done, I've done for myself, and those cards simply don't come up. So yes, I need more practice, but with subjects other than me; I tend to fall into my patterns, as do we all, but it doesn't help me see variety in the cards!

I'm browsing learntarot.com right now, and realizing that I have, literally, never seen the 2 or 4 of wands in any reading I've done for myself. Same for the 3 of Cups or Pentacles. That's not a large number of cards I've never seen, but given the number of Tarot readings I've done for myself, it still sticks out as an anomaly.

I do want to go back to using the Dragon Tarot deck, I just don't have the meanings of the minor arcana memorized well enough for the subtle hints on the cards to be sufficient.

I agree with your conclusion with the Celtic Dragon Tarot being the most visual of the decks. I'd have to get over my distaste for paying royalties to D.J. Conway, though- which is a step I might be ready to take; I've got a post on that in the works.

I had the opportunity to buy the Scarabeo deck last weekend. I'm glad I didn't, I think. I'd rather have the Rider-Waite meanings down before trying to learn a different system of interpretation and symbolism, and a plurality of reviews- yours included- mentioned it being quite a bit darker than I might want. Not that I need a happy fluffy deck o' light, but pain, anguish, and strife don't need to be primary themes, either. It's enough to distract from the other meanings of the cards.

I might pick up the Suckling deck to use for the handful of games I've got rules for that use Tarot decks. (Two of them are board games more than card games...) I'd just as soon not try to do readings and game-playing with the same deck, mostly because the latter would probably provide headaches to all involved.

Anyway, thanks for this information; I'll be looking around at the other decks, too!

Re: Never seeing certain cards come up in a reading.

That's happened to me, too, but I haven't heard someone else talk about it before. It's weird. Even though I'm familiar with all the rest of the Tarot, I'm still very hazy on the entire suit of Wands because it comes up in my readings so rarely. It doesn't even matter which deck I'm using, so it's not like it's just a case of a bent or sticky card fouling up a shuffle. All the rest of the cards come up with the odds that you would expect. I'm more likely to end up with a bunch of Majors than a couple of Wands.

As the Penny Arcade version of Aleister Crowley would say: "It needs more wand."

Re: Conway.

I dunno, I've decided Conway is OK after all, in a friendly shrug kind of way. I realized the other day that one of my biggest, hugest mistakes that I've made since getting into communities of otherkin and magic-using people is in becoming snobby about books I haven't read based on somebody else's bad review. It's really just snobbery, and I wish I'd been wise enough to never fall for it in the first place. Some of the books, I might have really loved them if I hadn't heard bad things about them from other people.

Re: Gaming with Tarot decks.

If you're gaming with Tarot decks, you need to look for a specific kind of design: the suits need to be easy to tell apart at a glance. Decks where the suits are distinguished by color-coded borders are the best for that, because you can tell what you've got in your hand by fanning them out and just looking at the very corners, the way you can do with Poker cards. (There are some Tarot decks designed for gaming that have the number and the suit written on the corners, like Poker cards, so they're ideal, but relatively hard to find in the US.) Otherwise, you've got to pull out the whole card to look at it if you want to see what it is. Or you can fan them out vertically so you can read the caption at the bottom edge of the card... that looks silly, but that's how it works.

By those terms, I don't think the Suckling has a huge advantage for functioning a gaming deck...? *takes a look to make sure* Well, the Majors have a subtly different border and a turquoise caption bar... but the Minors all have the same border as each other, and the same blue color of caption bar.

If you want a fantasy-themed Tarot deck for gaming, I'd recommend the Tarot of the Elves (published by Lo Scarabeo) instead, which does have color-coded borders... I was thinking of picking it up just for playing Klondike solitaire. It has illustrated minors, which might actually be less good for gaming, even though it's better for divination.

What games are these that use Tarot decks? I've never heard of any, aside from Tarock. I am super curious, do tell! :D

I'm sleepy now and will respond to the rest of this later. But, re: nontraditonal Tarot games: I was thinking of Gnostica- and, by extension, Zarcana, from which Gnostica was refined. Check them out at the Wunderland Toast Society: http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Ginohn/games/Gnostica/GnosticaRules.html

Ooo pretty. *bookmarks*

Gnostica can be played with a non-stacking Icehouse set. Modern plastic sets stack, but classic wood and several varieties of homemade sets don't. I have punched cardboard sheets intended to be folded into Icehouse sets, which I bought on clearance for $0.50/full Icehouse set, so if you're curious about the game and need pieces, I can get a set workable for Gnostica to you.

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