A New Direction

I have come to believe that there should be 24 Trumps in the Tarot deck. I have constructed a deck with extra trumps and a new face card. I am not the only one who believes there should be extra trumps, but the other decks I’ve seen are simplistic, with only superficial changes. One author believes that this is old knowledge that has been suppressed, that those in the know always had extra cards in their decks, and the addition of the missing cards is all the change necessary. I have found the process to be much more dynamic.

I had been using a now long unavailable deck called ‘The Fantasy Showcase Tarot’. It was one of those specialized decks, showcasing science fiction and fantasy illustrators. But it had 24 Trump cards. It also included a new face card, the Lady. I wasn’t happy with the new Trumps, as drawn, though I later appropriated the imagery of ‘The Farrier’ for my version of Temperance. But having 24 trumps, that was exciting. Everything was stronger, fresher, in sync. I was doing a lot of Tarot readings and they sparked a cascade of new ideas. I felt that this deck took me to another level. I started to take notes about what my ideal deck was going to look like. I thought someone else was going to draw it. I adapted ‘The Qabbala’, the ‘Tree of Life’ diagram, to fit my deck, though it is not the version I use today. I made changes I had no desire to make. They just fit. I had two goals. One was to bring the images on the cards out of the sixteenth century. The other was to bring out more positive meanings through more positive images. I didn't want to sanitize the cards or eliminate all negative meanings. Life is not very pretty sometimes, and the meanings of the cards reflect that. I just wanted a more positive face presented to the world. Then ‘The Tower’ fell.

The loss of ‘The Tower of Destruction’ devastated me. No it wasn’t lightning. Some light fingered street child made off with it. I saw how it fascinated her. I knew something was wrong with my deck at once. I was back at the boardwalk within twenty minutes. But she was gone. After the day of destruction, I went back to the store I had bought the deck from. It was no longer available. They had blank decks, though. I bought a couple. I rightly foresaw a lot of future mistakes being made. My first deck was stick figures. They had a certain something to them though. People really liked my cards. I made a more detailed deck. And many more notes. About two years into it I started a third version. That’s when everything slowed to a crawl.

The deck was fine, I no longer numbered the cards, though, the order kept shifting. Things no longer flowed. I didn’t know what was wrong. Everything still worked, but the torrent of inspiration was gone. It took me 15 years to finish that third deck. I didn’t do any readings for long stretches of time. I felt like I had something important to offer, but was unable to connect to anybody who had a background in Tarot. Gradually I came up with the diagram on the ‘Tree of Life’ page and ordered the nodes and paths as they are now. Maybe it was when I ditched Pluto. I believe I finally have it right. I feel the power again. The world is starting to flow the right way. I’m finally putting up this site.Of course every change makes me feel like I wanted to revise something else.

Now it’s time to change the world. If what I present on this site seems outrageous, I can only say that I put a lot of thought into it. If you have an opinion, please share it with me. I am self taught. This website is an attempt to connect with the Tarot community. I’m pretty humble these days, at least compared to before. I’m not done fixing things, but I need help to finish my work, which is to revolutionize the Tarot, and bring it into the 21st Century. Wait, did that sound humble? I am proud of what I created.

Randeeman      

randeeman@yahoo.com

Site by Randeeman