Least Trumps

I mentioned a little while ago that I had an excellent plan for a project. I have always wanted to make my own Tarot deck, since I was a young teenager. Well, I say this, but probably since I was nine or ten. At the time I imagined that I would have to successfully pull a wood-block print for all the backs, and paint each one, perfectly, all 78, and then if a drop of water got on them later? I would die. So I imagined having them laminated, but then I considered the state of much-used laminated papers such as those employed in classes, and I thought it unwise to entrust to the process anything about which I cared greatly. Yellowing, bubbling, peeling; these are all terrible. Now many things exist which can facilitate my devising of a deck of cards, such as the use of photoshop to create perfectly symmetrical arabesques for the reverses based on only one properly-inked section. But of course the infinitely more pleasing prospect is that of getting my designs printed on card stock, and the edges trimmed, and then all shared with others! I had only ever intended my own version of the designs in the Waite-Smith deck,* but then I remembered that I had had another idea, which was to make a set of cards based on Great-Aunt Nora Cloud’s deck in John Crowley’s Little, Big. Truly it’s Violet’s deck, but we see it used by Nora Cloud in the course of the book. (Violet is my younger daughter’s name; mine can be her deck also.) Those who have read the book will know that the deck, its reading, and physical disposition figure greatly in the work, and those of you who have not SHOULD GO READ IT NOW DEAR GOD READ LITTLE, BIG FOR THE FIRST TIME I ENVY YOU! Really, it’s maybe my single favourite book.

UPDATED below

In researching for the project online, I found some material, such as this set of interviews with Crowley on the 25th anniversary of the publication of Little, Big. One of the interviewers, Jodi Snyder, has had a life-long interest in Tarot, and is naturally fascinated with this aspect. Crowley says something rather unexpected, to me: “to tell you the truth, I knew next to nothing about Tarot when I began the book, and know not much more now.” John and I agreed we would have guessed he had researched everything about Tarot for ages. The feature of Violet’s deck that makes it different from normal decks is that there are what Nora Cloud calls “Least Trumps” in place of the ‘greater trumps’ or Major Arcana. The ordinary Major Arcana go from 0 to XXI as follows
0 (The Fool)/ I (The Magician)/ II (The High Priestess)/ III (The Empress)/ IV (The Emperor)/ V (The Hierophant)/ VI (The Lovers)/ VII (The Chariot)/ VIII (Strength)/ IX (The Hermit)/ X (Wheel of Fortune)/ XI (Justice)/ XII (The Hanged Man)/ XIII (Death)/ XIV (Temperance)/ XV (The Devil)/ XVI (The Tower)/ XVII (The Star)/ XVIII (The Moon)/ XIX (The Sun)/ XX (Judgement)/ XXI (The World)
According to Snyder, Violet’s deck contains the following (in order mentioned in the text; pages refer to HarperCollins Edition; this list itself is a quote):
“The Traveller, page 19 (card described)
The Journey, 19
The Sun, 19
The Host, 19
The Bundle, 75
The Secret, 92
Convenience, 112
Multiplicity, 112
The Sportsman/PISCATOR, 112 (card described)
The Cousin, 157
The Gift, 157
The Stranger, 157
The Vista, 157 (card described on 158)
Seed, 158
The Knot, 252
The Fool, 253 (card described)
The Banquet, 262 (card described on 263)
[And the following are strongly hinted at via internal monologue:]
Generation, p. 175
Silence, 373
Circumspection, 373”
However, this is quite wrong, as we can see easily from reading the section describing the first cards.

And just then a woman on a porch at Edgewood far away turned a trump called the Journey. There was the Traveler, pack on his back and stout stick in his hand, and the long and winding road before him to traverse; and the Sun too, though whether setting or rising she had never decided. Beside the cards’ unfolding pattern, a brown cigarette smoldered in a saucer. She moved the saucer and put the Journey in its place in the pattern, then turned the next card. It was the Host.

It’s clear from this description that the singular card the Journey (or Via, rather, as we know the Sportsman actually reads “Piscator”) depicts a traveler, and a long road before him, and a sun either departing from or approaching the horizon. For a single card follows (Hospes); Nora has not turned up four cards: first the Journey, then the Traveler, then the Sun, then the Host. Or she would have needed to move the saucer before, for one thing. It is very odd that Snyder should misread it in this way. Now, it is true that there is a card ‘the Traveler,’ as it is mentioned elsewhere, but I think there cannot be a Sun, or how would this make sense?

This was the difficulty. Like the usual deck, Violet’s contained a set of twenty-one major trumps, but hers–persons, places, things, notions–were not the Greater Trumps at all. And so when the Bundle, or the Traveler, or Convenience, or Multiplicity, or the Sportsman fell, a leap had to be made, meanings guessed at which made sense of the spread. Over the years, with growing certainty, she had assigned meanings to her trumps, made inferences from the way in which they fell among the cups and swords and wands, and discerned–or seemed to discern–their influences, malign or beneficient. Death, the Moom, Judgment–those Greater Trumps had large and obvious significance; what did one make though of the Sportsman?

If the Moon is so Great a Trump as to fall outside the compass of the deck, surely the Sun is as well.

Another difference between an ordinary deck and Violet’s is that there are only 52 cards in the suit section. A Tarot deck has four suits: wands (also clubs in some Italian decks), cups (or hearts), swords (spades), pentacles (diamonds or coins), ranging from Ace to ten as ‘pip’ cards, and with the interpellation of a Knight between the Page/Knave and the Queen of the ‘court’ cards. In discussions with Eigenblick, Ariel Hawskquill says there are only 52 suit cards. Great-Aunt Cloud says there are 21 Least Trumps, numbered 0-20. Thus I must eject…my knights, I suppose. It’s better thus, as the pages can stand for Querents of either sex. And yet I have drawn the knights of Wands and Swords already, because I haven’t checked my notes in some time. And they are quite nice. Hmph. I was going to include samples but John suggested I wait till they are all done.

As to style, I had always wanted to do brilliant color, using watercolor paints, but yielding something more like gouache. It was heart-rending to re-read and learn that they are monochrome, “weird minatory images…engraved with dense black detail like Dürer’s, baroque and Germanic…” I had a difficult night. Am I likely to make two full sets of Tarot in my life? And yet what would be the point if I didn’t do them as in the book? And it will take less time. But my colors! Zoë counselled going forth with black ink only, and so I have done, but drawn in my usual style or something like it, and of varying images. So I thought I would ask you all, do you have any good ideas for Multiplicity? The gift I have done already; it’s the box of hash George Mouse found at the Old Law Farm, with a Gothic stained-glass-window behind it depicting the Three Kings.

UPDATE: The funny thing is that I was sure Crowley had done his research and so I at first assumed Violet had an deck of the kind available in the 1880s, the Marseilles deck, or an Italian one. These decks of “Tarocchi” are all the predecessors of our “ordinary” playing cards and thus some have 52 suit cards as modern decks do, absent, as I said, the knight. Then I read on and they are specifically said to have come from what is now Prague in the 1400s. With his ignorance and imagination Crowley created a very historically plausible set of cards—see these. Like, eerily historically plausible, to the point that it is downright fey.

I am not doing them quite like this, though, but rather as I would normally do an inked line illustration, with the addition/change of large lines which go only in one direction, parallel to one another to indicate shading or curves (as well as ordinary cross-hatching) where I would normally have insanely tiny cross-hatching with the .003 Copix. It successfully gives them a medieval look. I am also putting in people of different races from all over the world in traditional dress, just because that was always my goal for “my” Tarot deck. I have quite a nice young samurai for the Knight of Swords now though and what will I do with him? Likewise, my Knight of Clubs has such a lovely, fore-shortened horse, and horses are hard (though naturally as a girl I have lots of practice, having drawn them daily between the ages of three and…thirteen, perhaps.) Why did I fail to refer to my notes, like, ever? I can have two Knights and two Pages, I suppose. But I wanted to make the Pages very beautiful, and with long hair, so that they are truly of indeterminate gender and the younger Querent will have a good representative card be they girl or boy. I liked the Page of Swords well enough as a child, but it was clear I was being represented but hastily. My brother, meanwhile, has had three full cards for his life: Page, Knight, King. Both these Knights I have drawn are long-haired and pretty, but too-masculine of face for this to work? Perhaps I can genderqueer the face and figures a bit? But the mounted wand-bearer rather must be an Eques, if you see what I mean. Better to add another wand and make him a pip card. Oh duh, six of Wands. Prizzoblem. Sizzolved.

*It is usually called the Rider-Waite deck but should really be called the Waite-Smith deck; Pamela Colman Smith was the artist who drew up the illustrations under particular instructions from her fellow member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn A.E. Waite. Rider was just the publisher.