{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2236", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2236, "subject": "Tarot deck", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2000-05-06T15:56:56+00:00", "last": "2000-05-06T15:56:56+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "pei047 at attglobal.net" }, "date": "2000-05-06T15:56:56+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Tarot deck", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Adam asked" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "When was this posted? I'd like to read it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It was part of my essay on \"The Deep.\" I put it in at the last moment,\nas I had just found a good book on the Tarot, and I notice it's not in\nthe version I sent to two or three of you; it's probably in a final\ndraft at my office. So I'll type it out from the published version:\n\n\"Similarly [I had been nattering on about how cleverly JC uses late\nmedieval conventions to his own ends], the Neither-nor's pack of cards\nis both accurate and adapted. Playing cards (all with greater trumps)\nfirst came to Europe at the end of the 14th century, very likely from\nthe Islamic world, and became common in the 15th. Today's Tarot pack is\nstandardized at 78 cards, but there was no standard at that time: the\nlargest pack that we know of comprised 93 cards, but another had only\n62. Crowley's has 59 [52 plus 7 greater trumps, as noted earlier], and\nhe has also changed the pack by giving each ordinary card a seperate\nface and identity rather than putting them in four numbered suits.\"\n\nMantis is quoted (but he got it from me):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "the tarot deck varies in number of cards (there isn't really a\n\"standard\"\nexcept by more or less arbitrary), but it is alway much more than\n52. The\n52 deck, aka the deck of standard playing cards, forms the basis for\nthe\nJCdeck (not to be confused with \"the Crowley Tarot\"!!) as it appears\nin THE\nDEEP and LITTLE, BIG.\n\nSo you see where I'm heading with this: the old \"real\" Tarot\nreflects the\nold order of fairies. The shifting of numbers, arranged from high\nto low\nas if a sequence across time, reflects their real dying off." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Through the" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "history of the real Tarot deck, from many cards to fewer, we see\nreflected\nthe hidden history of the fairies.\n\n(Over-reading? Who, me?)\n\nThe Alice family was given their freakishly short deck (only 52\ncards) a\nfew generations prior to the big transition. The fairies, their\nplan; the\nhumans, \"learn it, live it, love it.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "After my earlier post, I went looking for the passage where Sophie\nfirst\nguesses that the fairies now number only fifty-two. I found it,\nunsurprisingly, in the section entitled \"Fifty-Two\" (VI, 1), although\nthe evidence that the fairies' original numbers were in the hundreds\nor\nmore is more inconclusive than I had remembered. But I also found the\nfollowing passage, where Sophie is trying to number the fairies by\nputting them in correspondence with the cards of her deck:\n\n\"Fifty-two?\n\"Or was it only that at that number (with only the Least Trumps, the\nplot which they acted out, left uncounted) her deck ran out?\"\n\nThe clear meaning of this is that fifty-two is not the total number of\ncards in the deck, but the number of suit cards in the deck (usually\nreferred to as the Minor Arcana, as opposed to the Trumps, or Major\nArcana). This is confirmed by the fact that there are four suits (the\ntwo suits not mentioned in this section are mentioned in \"A\nGeography,\"\nIII, 4) and thirteen cards per suit.\n\nThis isn't quite the same as the deck most generally used, which has\nfourteen cards per suit (four court cards instead of three), but it's\nvery close. So on mantis's theory, only four fairies would have been\nlost, which seems much too small. Moreover, while my slight researches\ndid not turn up any mention of a tarot deck with fifty-two Minor\nArcana\n(alga?), there were decks with fewer than fifty-two, obtained by\ndropping some of the numbered cards. In the light of this evidence,\nI'm\nafraid mantis's theory reduces to (in the immortal Walt Kelly's words)\n\"a miserabobble absurdity.\"\n\nAs to why Crowley made the change from fifty-six to fifty-two suit\ncards, I have a couple of guesses. One likely possibility is that\nCrowley wanted to bring the cards in line with Edgewood, which has\nfour\nfloors, seven chimneys, fifty-two doors and 365 stairs (the last\nsection\nin the book). He may also have wanted to show that the fairies did\nkeep\nup-to-date to some extent, since the dropping of the fourth court card\nis a fairly modern innovation. Incidentally, Crowley's deck has\ntwenty-one Trumps instead of the more usual twenty-two, for those\ninclined to numerological investigations." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "See above on TD. And I think you're dead right about the house. It's the\nkind of thinking that put TD together. A very different book, but the\nsame mind when it comes to games. LB isn't quite so compulsive about it.\n\n-alga" } ] } ] }