Eclectic Tarot Forum

just to update everyone: The Beatles Tarot and The Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot are now available on their respective websites, which are:
[url]beatlestarot.com[/url]
&
[url]goldenageofhollywoodtarot.com[/url]

with the decks and book now printed and available, i have reduced the price. The Beatles tarot deck & book is now $60 for the set, as is The Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot deck & book.

You can see an interview with the creator of this deck, The Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot.

It's posted [i][url=http://eclectic.jomay.com/viewtopic.php?f=226&t=1118]here[/url][/i]

it strikes me that if one looks for it, one'll will find it. as with "as above, so below", or the periodic table, multiple complexities are built on the same simple patterns. looked at another way: when all is said and done, reality is actually rather limited, and we being animals with a limited understanding make those limitations even smaller.
to my mind, a new set of inter-related things used to create a tarot is akin to one artist covering another artist's song - like marvin gaye covering "yesterday". the song has a pre-defined structure - the words and melody - but the result is a variation on what was heretofore understood... it can stick strictly to the structure or disregard it, but that itself doesn't dictate whether it'll be better or worse; that's an issue for the individual.

I'm very interested in whether any inter-related set of things can and do reflect a variety of meanings, whether this is the same set of meanings as presented in the Tarot or not. I guess Tarot is more marketable but it does constrain the cards to a pre-defined structure.

Welkin, you have created a truly fascination deck here! It's not my normal style of deck but I am always a sucker for a good companion book and cards that have layers and depths to them. It shows you have done a lot of research, and have put a lot of time, effort and love into the deck :icon_mrgreen:

I'm amazed at that too, Nemia. But then, that's not only the "magic" of the tarot, but the nature of the world we live in and the universality of human subjectivity. I firmly believe any inter-related set of things can and do reflect the variety of meanings intrinsic to the tarot. there are simply 2 prerequisites: a firmly prescribed time frame, and a deep and diverse enough reserve with which to work. Because Hollywood films alter reality - that is, they falsify nature - a deck which relied solely on the films themselves as its basis would reflect this falsification, this untruth. That is why for The Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot I incorporated real aspects of the players' lives, as well as the political real world nature of why and how these films were made. I used a similar technique also for The Shakespeare Tarot and The Beatles Tarot - since neither written works nor musical ones are natural, rather they're human made - and I believe this has resulted in much richer decks with far more interesting and acute reading potential.

Welkin, you did it! I'm totally enabled. I'll have to save up money though. I love both the Beatles and the Hollywood deck - both are obsessions of mine, and any deck with Carole Lombard in it, or Stuart Sutcliffe, is a must-have for me.

I'm always amazed where the archetypes of the tarot can turn up. In 1950s kitchens, in 1920s Berlin nightclubs, in 1940s Hollywood or 1960s London... and there they jump up, with shield and helmet, battle cry on their lips, like Athene from the head of Zeus... fascinating.

That's fascinating. Thank you for the explanation Welkin.

I can see how this would be very readable once you had grasped colour/studio associations, which doesn't look at all difficult.

I love the Wizard of Oz card.

Thank you for your kind words.
The suits work in the same way as they do in a standard tarot deck, and retain their same core meanings. Each Ace is something of the suit's symbol - it's mascot, if you will. The Cups suit Ace is King King - primeval emotion in our modern world. The Swords suit is called Spades, for Same Spade, because its Ace is The Maltese Falcon - an idea, something people kill for, something which may not even exist...

[url=https://postimg.org/image/15kozw1zcb/][img]https://s1.postimg.org/15kozw1zcb/1_spades.jpg[/img][/url]

The pip cards almost always have the studio logo or full name on the card. On the Ace of Spades you can see the Warner Brothers logo, which is in the shape of a spade. Warner Brothers corresponds to Swords in part because it was the most violent studio, the home of James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, and the gangster film. Each pip suit is also colour-coded; part of the thin frame of each card - a detail which, once picked up on, makes determining the suit very easy. The suit of Batons for instance is red:

[url=https://postimg.org/image/2j8i1qrnrf/][img]https://s1.postimg.org/2j8i1qrnrf/8_batons_sabateour.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=https://postimg.org/image/1nos0gox0r/][img]https://s1.postimg.org/1nos0gox0r/13_batons_babara_stanwyck.jpg[/img][/url]

The suit of Coin is yellow:

[url=https://postimg.org/image/9qpi7ffee3/][img]https://s1.postimg.org/9qpi7ffee3/5_coins.jpg[/img][/url]


[url=https://postimg.org/image/4qbgrudtjv/][img]https://s1.postimg.org/4qbgrudtjv/10_coins_wizard_of_oz.jpg[/img][/url]

So, in short, while which star worked for what studio and what style of film that studio specialized in is pertinent to the underlying integrity of the Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot, it's not something someone has to know in order to read with the cards. As with any good tarot deck, these additional meanings exist layers below the surface, there to broaden the meaning and hence, ultimately, one's understanding.
Similarly, I very carefully chose films which not only correlated to their respective studio suits, but also directly related to their corresponding card's meaning. Whats more, they also had to relate indirectly - that is, in a hidden or off-screen way. And at the same time, the films had to be fairly well known to the average person, and also be of a certain quality in themselves. Example:

[url=https://postimg.org/image/3nd1erugwr/][img]https://s1.postimg.org/3nd1erugwr/6_cups_city_lights.jpg[/img][/url]
6 of Cups - Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. Note the blue border. City Lights is imbued with childish innocence; it is a film about giving. It was a silent film released in the era of talkies - from the world's most beloved comedian, albeit from a by-gone era. The film was made by United Artists - the little studio with heart, formed to counter the big industrial studios by performers - one of whom was Chaplin, the Little Tramp. Of course, by the end of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Chaplin had his work-Visa revoked by the HUAC commission for being "Un-American". City Lights is probably Chaplin's most perfect film.

Shipping, of course, can be a problem; and it depends in part on how the parcel is shipped. With my Shakespeare Tarot, I sent the book and deck to Europe for a cost of $33 US, or £25. I believe The Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot deck and book will be somewhat cheaper, as the book is not the tome the Shakespeare Tarot Key was.

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What a stunning deck!

And I do love a decent book. This deck might be a little challenging to read with without it. Plus I'd personally want to understand all the references to studios etc (which sounds fascinating).

I like that this has more to it that just a simple collaging of photos of Hollywood stars into a RWS clone. A sort of cross between Housewives Tarot and Hexen 2.0 just sprang to mind.

I wonder how do the suits work and match to the usual tarot suits? It's not very easy to immediately identify the suits on some of the scans.

I like this a lot. I don't think the pricing is at all unreasonable either for an independent artist deck and substantial book. Though shipping to UK might take it into the expensive bracket.