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The Worst Tarot Deck In The World

Last night I was talking a friend who is an expert on tarot, and she showed me what has to be the most hilariously awful tarot deck I've ever seen.

The deck was called...wait for it...the Love Is In The Earth Crystal Tarot.
. . . Oh dear me. Fluffbunny Thelemites. Whatever next?
Eternal gratitude to Zarathustraspake, gone but not forgotten, who started this thread, and respects to those others, also gone but not forgotten, who have contributed so much to this little corner of the world.
 
That's a really interesting website you linked to, AlchoPwn. Apparently having a tarot cupboard is a thing:
The Soprafino deck comes with "definitely a box in which you can store your cards and it looks good in any tarot cupboard."
This is good, since the World card of the Soprafino deck is glued to the top of the box instead of available for use like the other cards in the deck.

We can only hope that the TV Series Tarot is stashed in the cupboard behind the lovely box of the Soprafino deck.
 
so... "love is in the earth". how do they do, for instance, the Devil? Or else the collapsing blasted tower? And the Nine of Swords, classically a corpse floating face-down in a river with nine daggers embedded in its back? The three of swords? (sorrow) or the seven of swords (desolation) or the five of swords 9abject miserable failure)
 
The TV series Tarot. I got that the related blurb is "multi-lingual". But I still only recognised at most three of the TV series being referenced. So... if at least half the pack references TV shows thar have only ever screened in the USA. That kind of limits the utility or the reference pool for people not from North America, and renders multi-lingual blurb a bit of a waste of effort?

(Well - four. Bewitched, Wagon Train or perhaps Bonanza, the Addams Family and Xena Warrior Queen. The reset... a procession of Huh?, lots of question marks, and occasionally the "don't tell me, Granada ran this umpteen years ago, I'll get it in a moment" show.
 
Wonder what a British version might look like... I'll have a think about this. Could you have radio programmes or is this, well, not getting the idea of Tarot being a visual medium... The Devil would have to be Andy Hamilton (Old Harry's Game).
 
Wonder what a British version might look like... I'll have a think about this. Could you have radio programmes or is this, well, not getting the idea of Tarot being a visual medium... The Devil would have to be Andy Hamilton (Old Harry's Game).
I'm realising this quickly skewed towards British kids TV. Anyway, here's my first draft of suggestions for some of the major arcana. Real life calls, which is a shame, because this could keep me distracted for hours.
The Magician: Derren Brown
The Fool: Wallis (of "and Gromit" fame)
The Hierophant: Skullion
The Emperor: David Attenborough
The Sun: the sun baby in the Teletubbies
King of Pentacles: Bagpuss
Knight of Swords: Professor Yaffle
 
And The Fool also features a dog who is wiser than the Fool who keeps him out of harm's way, or seeks to.
 
The Empress (Earth Mother surrounded by all that is green and growing) - Felicity Kendall in The Good Life. Or else, Charlie Dimmock.
 
In some contrast to The Good Life, I've just spent a good hour looking for a still of Sheffield City Hall being blown up in Threads. I was thinking that might make a good Tower.

But I'm coming round to the idea of Fred Dibnah: he brought a lot of tall buildings crashing down, and his own biography was arguably an excellent advertisement/warning for the life-changing impact the tower can bring.
 
There's an obvious quiz show - yes, there was a UK version.

For another card, I'm torn between

250px-Whickers_World_1980_title_card.jpeg
And
download (1).jpeg
I suspect the first one is actually a better choice, but the second one was such a formative text/show for me.
 
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China Mieville has a great horror story about "hidden suits" that spontaneously appear, and then disappear, in high stakes card games. Usually they bring small and great disasters. There are "forfeits" that will have to be paid:

The second time I saw a hidden suit was in Manchester. (…)

We all looked at the young woman. Her eyes were wide. She looked at me. The back of her card looked the same as all the others. I didn’t feel drunk any more. ‘Show, I said. She lowered it face up. Its background was dark flat grey. The design was of two rows of four links of metal picked out in white. She swallowed. She said, ‘Eight of Chains.’
Someone went to bar the door. ‘What now?’ her opponent said. He was terrified. ‘I don’t know what happens. ‘None of us do, I said. (…)

The guy looking with the rulebook raised her hand. … He started to read. “Old Maid: Rules for Hidden Suits.” It’s the what of Chains?’ (…)

‘I only saw one other, Belinda told me once, carefully. ‘The Nine of Teeth. But just for an instant. (…)

No matter how proper you are, there are questions you'll end up hearing asked, or asking. What bird is it flying above the Detective of Scissors? Where’s the missing link on the Nine of Chains? Why does the Ace of Ivy grow on bones? You might feel you know these cards, whether you’ve seen them or not. ‘We all end up getting to know certain cards pretty well, I guess, Belinda said to me once. ‘One way or another.’ You might have a favourite.

The third time was Lublin. We were playing Bourré in a deconsecrated church. I'd faced two of my opponents before, and had had a fist-fight with one. Belinda and I were taking turns: she stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder. She could see my cards but no one else’s.

I picked up my hand. Five cards. One of them I'd never seen before. One two three four blue smokestacks, protruding into blue sky, gushing stylised clouds of blue smoke.

I showed nothing. Belinda’s hand twitched. I wasn’t afraid anyone noticed but to me it was as if she screamed, ‘Oh my God!’
I went into my memory for whatever I had about the Four of Chimneys. What it would do in combination with my other cards. I weighed up possibilities. (…)
 
so... "love is in the earth". how do they do, for instance, the Devil? Or else the collapsing blasted tower? And the Nine of Swords, classically a corpse floating face-down in a river with nine daggers embedded in its back? The three of swords? (sorrow) or the seven of swords (desolation) or the five of swords 9abject miserable failure)

The Devil card is a bearded, bespectacled guy with a man bun doing yoga. He always finishes any post on Instagram with #livingmybestlife. The nine of swords shows one of those clean eating influencer types one sees on social media, floating face up in a pool of lapis lazuli blue. She clutches nine white roses to her breast. Despite this, her beautiful and normally serene face is troubled, she forgot to leave the bins out! The five of swords shows this same #blessed influencer in a state of abject despair because her main sponsor has ditched her over some "regrettable, historic posts" from back in the days when she was a Holocaust denier.
 
There must be something wrong with me. I kind of like it in a not-as-intended way.

I'm with you. It's obviously pretty kitsch, but it's not unimaginative or bad quality art.

And heck, tarot is silly anyway..so why not go whole hog.
 
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I thought, what a good idea, then I saw she'd made Scooby and Shaggy "The Lovers"! I'm absolutely certain they're good friends and no bestiality is involved. No wonder she isn't selling them, Warners' legal department would have conniptions.
 
If it wasn't for the fact that my house is full of junk (sorry collectibles) already I could really get into collecting Tarot decks.
 
I thought, what a good idea, then I saw she'd made Scooby and Shaggy "The Lovers"! I'm absolutely certain they're good friends and no bestiality is involved. No wonder she isn't selling them, Warners' legal department would have conniptions.
Surely Shaggy is the Fool. He's even got the dog.
 
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