Tarot Deck Question

Izabael Da Jinn on her blog writes:

I have pictures of some tarot cards from a japanese game that teaches how to use and read. i believe i have 25 of them not full deck, so my question is this can i use these cards for only my prediction or do i need the whole deck? i do plan on turning these pictures into cards i have some playing cards that isnt a full deck anymore.

The whole deck. The full 78 represent all that is and could possibly be, good and bad, lucky and unlucky, etc. Hence by only working with 25 one is stuck with one or both of two possibilities: the reading made from such a deck will be limited in its outlook compared to a 78 card deck – or the reading will unrepresentative compared to a 78 card deck.

Of these two the second reason is less compelling an argument than the first, because during the history of the tarot, there have been examples of spreads published in which only the twenty two major arcana are used: the minor arcana are excluded from the shuffle. Conversely, “Fortune Telling by Playing Cards” is really little different from using only the Minor Arcana without the Major Arcana (except there would be three court cards in each suit instead of four). What can be drawn from all this is that there is some historical precedent for not working with a full 78 card deck all the time, but there is always a consistent reason for only including some cards and not others, so that the cards which are used do present a representative sample of the Universe in snapshot. (It is not something I would generally do myself).

What I do object to, and what really gets my Goat, is the practice that some Tarot readers allegedly indulge in, that of removing all the nasty cards from the Tarot deck, so that they don’t ever come up with a reading which is in anyway untoward. This is the sort of Fluffiness that makes a laughing stock of serious Tarot reading. Do these people think, for example, that by removing the 10 of Swords, the card of ruin and catastrophe, they will save their querent from it? Ruin and catastrophe happen in real life, hence the 10 of Swords (and every other seemingly nasty card) needs to stay in the deck for that reason. In any case, the whole point of a tarot reading is that they are symbols of what may happen in the future, so if a nasty card does turn up, that is a warning sign to change ones ways in order to avoid that particular outcome.

I think these pseudo-tarot readers must be doing it because they fear losing money if they give a reading people do not like, rather than the integrity of the art of tarot.

So to summarise: only work with a deck which is representative – I personally would use a full 78 card deck all the time.

Izabael also writes:

(off-topic) Any ideas how get the picture to fit the cards perfectly before printing?

Make a Wizard appear to do it for you – by selecting all the image files and (in Windows Vista and 7) right-clicking & selecting print. A similar Wizard can be used in XP by selecting the image files, right-clicking, selecting “Preview” and printing from there.