AUTHOR’S NOTE: I recently had an eye-opening experience regarding the current state of disarray in modern tarot design. (I almost wrote “state-of-the-art” but that would have been giving it far too much credit.)

I joined the Hermit’s Cave Facebook page hoping to find intelligent conversation about the tarot, but what I encountered was an endless parade of scans posted by members from a huge population of tarot decks, mostly new but a few old or obscure, presented one-card-at-a-time. Many of these cards have been truly puzzling for anyone with a solid grounding in the symbolic tradition because they appear to honor no precedent.

I’ve known for a while that there has been an explosion of new decks brought on by the self-publishing revolution that have very little of the conventional tarot about them except card titles (if that). The images often diverge wildly from anything that has gone before, with not a whiff of recognizable content, and they usually reach the point of incoherence. The name “tarot” has been tacked onto this embarrassment of ideological poverty, but almost all of the decks are prime examples of what I once called “TINOs” (Tarot-in-Name-Only) that are cynically miscast as the real thing to achieve product recognition in a crowded field awash with oracle decks of all kinds.

There is an eerie feel of Ayn Rand’s philosophical novel The Fountainhead about the situation, in which “safe” mediocrity was held in high esteem and edgy modernism was discredited, but in this case it is these misguided attempts to overthrow the historical model that deserve our scorn. I won’t repeat the barbs I’ve thrown at them in the past, but the glut has only become worse since that time, so stay tuned for more “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” invective.

Even more recently I came across an essay by Paul Hughes-Barlow that speaks to the same issue in a more specific context: that of contemporary tarot’s (and its inexperienced creators’) inability to assist querents in processing human grief. I’m posting the link for your information, but I wanted to cherry-pick a few key observations that support my own position. https://tarorota.co.uk/Blog/When+Tarot+Fails+-+Why+Deck+Proliferation+Can’t+Address+Real-World+Grief

“Most modern tarot decks exist in an insulated bubble, speaking primarily to themes of self-empowerment, vague “healing” or marketable aesthetics. They provide beautiful images” (a point I might dispute from what I’ve seen lately) “and comforting phrases but often sidestep the harsh, chaotic or unpredictable realities of life. True grief, trauma and the unanswerable nature of loss rarely find expression in the polished world of contemporary tarot publishing.” (Personally, I think it’s the reader’s job to see beyond these limitations, but Paul makes a valid point.)

He presents a couple of reasons for what he terms a “disconnect” between art and life.

“Because designing another pretty deck is easier than grappling with the limits of symbolism.” (I would argue that it also seems to be easier than bothering with complex symbolism in the first place.)

“Because many creators are working from a place of marketing, not spiritual depth or experience with human suffering.” (Amen to that.)

“This proliferation of tarot decks is not inherently bad. Creativity is a vital force. But when it detaches from the reality of the human condition” (a state-of-being I would submit is abundantly conveyed by the classic esoteric symbolism), “it becomes decorative rather than meaningful.”

As a graphic designer myself, I would find the inane artwork in many of these decks laughable if it wasn’t so uniformly depressing and devoid of anything remotely tarotesque. It’s as if the reputed artists lack the talent to pursue a professional career in commercial art so they try to make a “big splash in a small pond” by floating half-baked decks that expose their creative shortcomings as well as their metaphysical bankruptcy. Other than the obligatory suit-and-number associations, few of these cards offer messages of any kind, never mind insights that carry profound significance. I have no idea how one would read with them since even free-association from the pictures would probably come up empty; the Tarot de Marseille with its sparse graphic presentation gives the reader more to chew on than some of the anemic modern examples I’ve seen.

Each new crop is less compelling than the last one, and it’s enough to make the seasoned tarot veteran silently go “Arrrgh!” in frustration and withhold monetary support. I was fortunate to find the ideal deck for my own private use when I set out on my tarot journey in 1972: the Thoth in various editions, along with the later purchase of a few well-executed clones like the Tabula Mundi Colores Arcus. This small group was supplemented by a handful of carefully-chosen versions of the Waite-Smith tarot (headed by the Albano-Waite and the Golden Art Nouveau) for public sessions.

I decided that, although I was once as vulnerable as anyone to DAS (“Deck Acquisition Syndrome”) and now own over eighty of them, I haven’t needed a new deck in a long time and, truth be told, I probably never did. I can count on one hand the decks I’ve bought in the last three years and the majority of those are Lenormand packs, while a large percentage of my earlier purchases haven’t seen the light of day in over a decade.

The thing is, a competent diviner should be able to read successfully with any deck that follows the standard structure of either of these archetypes because the card meanings should have been internalized long ago and the images on the cards are really just memory-joggers. Consequently, if the reader isn’t already sensitized to the “human condition” when conducting a reading, no tarot deck, no matter how evocative, is going to bail them out. As is often said, “The magic is in the reader, not the cards,” and if it doesn’t eventually surface it’s time for the practitioner to seek a new vocation.

But when there is a fast buck to be made I don’t think the ship is going to right itself any time soon, and I cringe whenever I see someone gushing online “I sooo want this deck” when from an aesthetic and philosophical standpoint it is sooo obviously a blatant POS that would never have been published in a sane world ruled by substance and not superficiality.