From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Tue May 25 2004 - 13:32:44 CDT
From: "Jon Hanna" <jon@hackcraft.net>
> Quoting John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>:
> > "Trumps" in English. I suggest that 21 trumps be encoded, but not
> > named, because the correspondence of names to numbers is variable.
>
> Are they very variable? I can only think of the one substitution suggested by
> Crowley. Are there others, outside of toy decks?
There's a strong tradition for the symbolism of these trumps used for
cartomancy. The most famous Tarot of Marseilles kept at the Bibliotheque
Nationale de France has been the base of lots of research to rediscover its
initial graphic design and colors, and it consistently used the same mediaeval
symbolism. This symbolism (and the associated names) are extremely stable and
well known. Good reproductions of this tarot are quite expensive.
The modern Tarot decks for competition do not have this esoteric or medieval
symbolism: Atouts/Trumps are numbered, and the official images display scenes of
people in rural areas or cities during the XIXth century (dancing, militaries,
rural activities, hunting, ...). This tarot is really cheap, simple to
reproduce, with few colors, and sold everywhere. As competition requires using
new decks quite often, these decks have very basic but easily recognizable
designs.
But there are lots of modern variants some of them being completely unplayable
as they don't even display the number, but some other symbolism (like runes, or
astrologic signs...)
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