Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

Author: Tenzin Pemo

Maybe no divination practice is more widely done then tarot cards. Almost every culture around the world from China to Russia to Europe to the United States has their own version of tarot.

This has led to several inconsistencies over the years between decks. Some of the differences are small, others are quite big.

Let us take a look at seven common differences between decks as they vary from culture to culture.

1) Changes in suits

For most basic tarot decks, there is a major arcana and a minor arcana. The minor arcana is made up of four different suits.

In most decks, those four suits are wands, cups, swords and coins. But in some decks, the suits vary.

Wands have been replaced with shorter, thicker batons, and in some decks, coins have been replaced altogether with pentacles.

With different suits come different interpretations. Most readers use multiple decks depending on their mood that day and will interpret pentacles differently then they would coins, even though the suits are replaced for each other.

It is unknown if the overall impact of having pentacles over coins or batons over wands chances the spirit of the deck, but some readers are very loyal to one or the other.

2) Personalization

One of the bigger changes to come to tarot in recent years, thanks to mass production of decks by hundreds of companies around the world.

Today, readers can buy decks with themes suited to almost any like and dislike out there.

Baseball fan?

There is a deck themed to that. Fan of rock music or goldfish? There is a deck for that, too. It is thought that personalization of a deck is important because it allows the reader to feel more connected to the cards and allow for a more honest, complete and accurate reading.

Some may scoff at this evolution in decks as lacking in authenticity, but many new readers would not give up their personalized deck for anything.

3) Card Numbers

While most tarot decks stick with the traditional 78-card deck, there are some that choose more of a traditional playing card style with 12-card suits, instead of the traditional 14.

These decks are 72 cards, and while the overall interpretation does not change much, it can be odd getting a reading from a smaller deck that is missing certain cards that most fans of tarot are used to.

4) The fear factor

For so many people, even today in the 21st century, tarot is a source of fear and misunderstanding.

There are many tarot cards on the market today that use art to take advantage of this absurd belief. The art used in these decks is gory, obscene or just plain awful.

As long as there is a correlation in the minds of some people that tarot card reading is evil and is associated with the devil, there will be card manufacturers making decks that appear that way.

5) Painted vs drawn

The biggest tarot card difference is the way a deck is drawn. As noted above, some choose to go for an evil look, thinking that this is what most tarot fans want.

In reality, the main difference is between flat, basic drawn cards, like the original Universal Waite decks and the more colorful and illustrated decks like the popular Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot.

It is thought that the best selling tarot deck since the inception of the Internet has been the Crowley deck, thanks to its lush colors and the myth surrounding Crowley.

Most readers have a particular preference between the traditional drawn cards and the highly decorative painted cards, but the overall interpretation is usually the same.

6) Question specific decks

Some readers swear by question specific decks. These are decks used based on what question is asked during a reading.

It can simply be a case of a reader feeling a particular energy with a deck for different questions. Some readers can have a deck that they use for questions of wealth and fame, another for life and death and a third for questions involving love and sex.

While the decks may be identical in the sense that they all have 78 cards and they all may be painted or drawn, they will most likely have a different theme and be used in a different deal pattern.

7) Culture specific decks

As decks evolved around the globe, certain major arcana cards took on different names to suit the culture they originated from.

Greek decks and Roman decks differ based on the names of the Gods in the particular cultures.

As some cultures took on astrology, symbols and astrological signs crept into card design. Card decks are still evolving today with new decks featuring technological advancements and traditional characters wearing modern clothing.

The tarot deck has been evolving since they were first created and there is no sign of that evolution stopping. This is one of the aspects that makes tarot so fascinating.

You can begin your exploration of the ever-changing world of tarot today and see what the deck brings you.

About the Author:

Learn the world’s MOST ancient oracles for BETTER decisions, BETTER Relations! Free Tarot Reading for your and your loved ones. Free i ching online which you can use to understand yourself and your life.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – 7 Fascinating Differences Between Tarot Decks

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Author: Abhishek Lodha

It is the Tarot cards which help you gain an insight into your own self, your desires, needs, talents, attitude, preferences and your skills. These are valuable sets of information knowing which you can enjoy a satisfying and a happy work life.

Tarot cards – a powerful divination tool enables an individual to gain insight into his/her problems or challenging situations by choosing cards. The cards thus chosen are then interpreted by the experienced reader, who explains what they mean in relation to the question asked.

The subconscious mind of the reader as well as the individual is in someway connected to the powerful symbols of the tarot cards. This enables the experienced psychic reader to provide a proper guidance by having an insight into the situation of the individual.

Choice is what makes up our life. You will always have innumerable options in life to pick and choose the one which fits you the best. When you are in the initial steps of planning to start off your work life, it is the deck of tarot cards which help you in decision making.

It gives you proper guidance and shows you the right path to be followed. Focus is led by these divination decks as to which business or profession will suit you the best according to your aptitude and preferences. In addition to these, the tarot cards also clarify a person’s goal in his/her life.

Tarot is nothing but just a form of art. It is an intuitive yet a natural tool. It is a focus on what it is to be human. It is a guide through our conscious allowing us to view the options and choose the better path. Tarot cards are a deck of cards, which at present, are being commonly used to predict the future in terms of probabilities.

It is because of the tarot cards that we understand our colleagues and our employers at the workplace. It makes everything visible and transparent. Issues related to our potential, our partnerships, our conflict and misunderstandings are resolved with the help of these decks thus creating a calm, peaceful and healthy working environment.

It is necessary for us to understand that we create situations based on our own behaviors and temperaments. The tarot readings teach us how to be adaptable and flexible at the workplace.

With the help of tarot we assimilate our selves, our personality and the various negative sides of our character together. As a result we clearly see how our work life and successful careers affects the personal areas of our life and vice versa. In all human relationships we project ourselves in multiple ways. It is with the help of the tarots that we see ourselves as complete beings with multiple dimensions.

Stress is the most common psychological disease in the corporate world today. It is the origin of a whole lot of other problems and physical disorders which has its seeds sown in our subconscious mind. In this field also the contribution of the divination decks is appreciable. Tarot helps us to be stress free and lighter. Tarot shows us the practical side of things instead of showing us what we want to see.

Now it is upon us to believe in all these derivations and explanation. But as far as career, finance and work life are concerned we human beings tend to believe the divination decks for the purpose of living a happy and peaceful life. From this perspective, it can be concluded that there is nothing wrong in going for a tarot reading, as long as we do not become puppets of the mystical world.

About the Author:

Astrology and the Occults are the subjects of interest of Abhishek. This led to the development of MysticBoard. Know what the Tarot Cards have in store for you from http://www.mysticboard.com/tarot. Develop your intuitive skills with the help of MB Free Learn Tarot Software.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – How The Tarot Decks Help Us In Selecting Our Career

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Author: Rhyanna Regan

Tarot cards, in the images we are most familiar with today, evolved from a kind of table game played in 15th century Italy, becaming popular throughout Europe over the next four centuries.

To fully explore the history of Tarot, you can read the expansive book by Michael Dummet, The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City (Duckworth, 1980). Dummet, a British philosopher of high regard, is the author of many books on the Tarot. His scholarship on Tarot is extensive, and provides much of the research available on the origins of the Tarot deck and its variations.

Tarot originally would have been a pastime of the leisure class, those with the time and money to spend on games. Certainly at that time the cards were handmade and illustrated by artists, and each set would vary with the individual artist’s representation of the card’s images.

Especially from the 15th to the 18th centuries in Europe, variations of Tarot games were wildly popular, enjoyed by people of some wealth and intellect, very much like chess or bridge. Through the 1700’s Tarot was an absolute craze across the entire continent.

Tarot Decks

There are several Tarot decks that have come to represent a familiar iconography, each with their own history, interpretation and devotees. The 15th Century Italian Visconti-Sforza deck is probably the earliest surviving deck of this era, with original cards in the collections of several museums around the world. These beautiful, artistic images are reproduced frequently.

A 19th century version from the south of France, known as the Tarot de Marseille, is a very popular deck in Europe.

In the United States, the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck is the most commonly used today. It was conceived by the well-known Tarot authority A. E. Waite, and published in 1902 by the Ryder Co. The simplified graphic style of this deck retains the historic symbolism of earlier decks, but seems fresh and accessible to modern sensibilities.

Ancient Tarot

Other Tarot scholars are convinced that Tarot has its roots in an even earlier time. They see relationships to the Kabbalah, or to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Cards, for games or prophesy, were used in China centuries before they found their way to Europe in the 14th Century, and may have been the original incarnation of the Tarot.

It may be more likely that the Tarot was brought to Europe through card games that were popular in the old world Arabia. In 18th Century France, Antoine Court de Gebelin, promoted the concept that the Tarot was derived from mystic practices in Ancient Egypt, which he described in his multi-volume work, Le Monde Primitif.

Another Frenchman, Etteillla, is considered to be the first to recreate the Tarot as a “fortune-telling” device. He is essentially the first Tarot reader. Reproductions of his Book of Thoth Tarot and other publications by Etteilla are still available today.

The Victorian Embrace

Tarot reading emerged as a new construct during the Victorian Age’s embrace of spiritualism and the occult, setting the foundation for what would become the New Age school of thought on Tarot that we know today.

There is extensive scholarship and research available on the history of the Tarot, whether from on-line sources or in libraries, for anyone who is interested in exploring the subject. For most of us, though, the history is not as compelling as the question of how the Tarot is meaningful in our lives now.

About the Author:

Rhyanna Regan is the director of “Your Psychic World”, the source of Free Online Psychic Readings. She has written various articles on Tarot Cards and Love and Relationships, among others.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Tarot Through the Ages

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Le Chariot, from Nicolas Conver's 1760 deck. Image via Wikipedia

Welcome to Tarot Texas. This site will feature articles on tarot by guest bloggers and by me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am enjoying making it.

I love the art of the tarot, and I collect decks in a casual sort of way. I will review some of them here.

I have been reading and studying the tarot for over 20 years. I used to read at psychic fairs. Now I only read for a few friends.

Come back often for new articles, polls, reviews of tarot decks and tarot books—and more.

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