The Enid Blyton Society

But I bet even you couldn't stretch to buying a pack of Betty Maxey tarot cards though?

I think we were just being ironic, with our made up predictions about scientists and ginger beer, Carlotta!

I think my dislike of tarot cards comes simply from a dislike of what I would consider to be 'black magic' - but each to his or her own.

Oh I completely understand where you're coming from re black magic, I hate any forms of 'black magic' that are used to harm someone or something,
Trouble is with tarot, because it's a spiritual type of thing, people tend to think of it as something bad, when in actual fact it's harmless and is a tool for prediction, it's impossible to use it to cause harm. But I completely understand that it's not for everyone.

It tends to get a bad reputation because, being a spiritual practice, it gets classed with other spiritual practices, some of which obviously can be used for bad as well as good.
Same with voodoo, people just see it as zombies, spells and tropical islands, but its actually not an 'evil religion' when you read more about it.

pete9012S wrote:But I bet even you couldn't stretch to buying a pack of Betty Maxey tarot cards though?

I would!

Just for the record, tarot cards were not invented for fortune-telling, but for playing card games, in particular Tarocco, which dates from medieval times. The fortune-telling nonsense was grafted on much later. The 22 special cards are the trump suit. The objective is to score the maximum number of points by taking certain cards in tricks. The World, The Juggler, and The Fool are known as Honour Cards (worth 5 ponts each).

Dave

Domino wrote:Just for the record, tarot cards were not invented for fortune-telling, but for playing card games, in particular Tarocco, which dates from medieval times. The fortune-telling nonsense was grafted on much later.

Absolutely true, Dave.

Rob Houghton wrote: I think my dislike of tarot cards comes simply from a dislike of what I would consider to be 'black magic' - but each to his or her own.

Is that a racist remark there, Rob??

That deserves a few black looks from me!

Or black marks against your name? Or shall we just blacklist you??

seriously, as I said earlier, in teacher training college, all these phrases were put forward as being racist!!!!

I guessed as much. And yet, when I hear those words, I don't even think of "black" in the sense of a person's skin colour, or make any association at all between those terms and black people. The two concepts just aren't in the same category for me, despite the word being the same. I would guess a lot of other people feel the same way.

I've always thought it's a bit silly, anyway, to use the terms "black" and "white" to refer to skin colours and racial categories. If only we went for simple accuracy and described people as brown or pink (or whatever shades in between), there'd be no more of these debates over good/bad connotations!

Whist I don't think 'The Famous Five' are very well suited to Tarot cards, (especially given th difficulties cutting a deal with the copyright holders), I think her fantasy characters might work quite well on the other hand. Moon-Face, The Angry Pixie, Chinky, Dame Snap, etc. would be more in keeping with the Tarot theme I think.

I've got a set of Faraway Tree tarot — er, playing cards! See, look at some of the fortunes one could tell with them...

Let me see if I can see into the future .......

You will meet a short bearded stranger, your father will hate him so you'll run away. After years of scrubbing his dirty socks you'll get away as fast as you can and teach at Malory towers.

Lovely cards but I can't help noticing that they all cause you to lose a turn. How do you win at that game?

Its a great game - but those cards are used to stop other players from winning. The object being to complete your full line of cards while preventing your opponents from completing theirs.

You can see all the cards and the full rules here in the Cave, Lucky Star. I just chose some of the penalty cards because they had the most amusing "fortunes"!