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tarot

1JJ Swiss

Classic Swiss tarot deck from nineteen seventies with traditional card imagery.

by Stuart Kaplan · 1975

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The record

This was my first Tarot deck. It was not my last. Early on, I became somewhat uncomfortable with it, because of things I was reading. I bought it at a Spencer Gifts or some such purveyor of enlightenment. This would have been in 1975 or so. I would have been around fifteen. First, most of the books assumed that you owned a Rider-Waite-Smith deck. I found it less than adequate because the RWS deck had all the extra pictures and mystic symbols and this one did not. Then I checked out some library book that said that the Marseille cards had all of this arcane lore connected to the colours and shapes of the original Marseille. And this isn't one of them, either. But I stuck with it, learning to read it by studying the RWS images in the book and calling them to mind with the pip cards of this deck. This perhaps was not the easy way, but I stuck with it. And later, when I (moved beyond)/(rebelled against) some of the imagery of the RWS scenes, the 1JJ was accomodating, but the RWS scenes are much harder to ignore. You try telling somebody that the RWS Ten of Swords might just mean a looming bar exam. This would be a "Soprafino" Tarot if it were Italian. The images are finely detailed col

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The cards

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