Playing Card Collector
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In some languages (like German) there is a different expression for tarot used for playing (= Tarock) and tarot used for fortune telling (= Tarot). A full tarot deck for fortune telling usually has 78 cards. Tarot used for playing can have 54, 64, 78 or any number of cards depending on the exact game.
The fortune telling tarots use the Italian suits coin, cup, sword and wand. Each suit has 14 cards (1-10, J, R, Q, K), what gives a total of 56 cards. These are named the minor arcana. Additionally you have the 22 major arcana. These are special trump cards. In the Raider-Waite Tarot they have the cards as follows (in brackets are the expressions of the Crowley tarot if different):
In other tarot decks this order can vary and some cards can be called something completely different. In some games you have a "Pope" and "Popesse" instead of "Hierophant" and "High Priestess". Some tarots consist only of the 22 major arcana; that means they have only 22 cards to be complete. There are tarots that have their own suits for example the four cardinal points, the four elements or in the "Haindl" tarot the coins were replaced by stones. In the near part the number of tarots has increased tremendously. There are tarots to endless themes. They are sold under such names as "Tarot of Love", "Tarot of the Wise Women", "Tarot of the Witches", "Cat People Tarot" just to name a few. Further some artists have discovered tarot for their expressiveness and created their own cards. Because of this huge variety it does not surprise that there are collectors who specialised in tarots. As a matter of fact, it is one of the most popular collecting fields. In this book I do not want to discuss this topic in depth. In the meantime their so many different decks they can impossibly be discussed in one book. Of the classical old tarots the least are still in use nowadays. Most of them can be bought as reproductions of facsimile editions. But they are not used any more for playing or fortune telling. That is why these do not appear in the following pages. These are the games that nowadays are standard cards for tarot: |
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Fortune Telling