Part IV: THE FANTASY SHOWCASE TAROT

Card on the LEFT above: V, The Hierophant (High Priest) in The Fantasy Showcase Tarot.
Card on the RIGHT above: V, The High Priest (Hierophant) in The Tarot of the Cat People.

And so here's the fourth and final installment in my sharing from The Fantasy Showcase Tarot (a 26 year old deck, 85 card deck, in which each card was designed by a different science fiction or fantasy artist; see previous three posts for details).

Both cards above were done by Karen Kuykendall. The one on the left between 1969 and 1980 (when The Fantasy Showcase Tarot was published) and the one on the right probably subsequent to the one on the left for her Tarot of the Cat People which was published in 1985. There's a clear design relationship between the two.

Karen's Tarot of the Cat People is one of my personal favorite decks to work with and I'll definitely do a review with other sample images in the future. The High Priest above is one of the least impressive cards in this deck. (E.g., one can barely discern the cat faces around his chest. In other cards, cats are integral to the design. In the Knights, they are large enough to be ridden like horses. :-D)

Anyway, I'll leave more on The Tarot of the Cat People for another post and close my exploration of The Fantasy Showcase Tarot with thanks again to Oino for triggering my re-interest in it.

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Resource: The Deck Is Out There: Three Simple Principles to Help You Find the Tarot Deck of Your Dreams; just in case the diveristy of images I share on this blog is confusing, here's some thorough thinking on choosing a deck.

Please see the top of the sidebar for my background with the Tarot and a recommendation to beginners.

‘til next time, keep enjoying the endlessly entertaining universe of The Tarot,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)**** SEE ALSO: Roswila’s Dream & Poetry Realm for some articles about Tarot.****

Part III: THE FANTASY SHOWCASE TAROT

Make sure to see the previous two posts here about The Fantasy Showcase Tarot for more details on this 26 year old, 85 card deck, each card of which was designed by a different science fiction or fantasy artist. I promised in Part II about this deck to post the cards by Kelly Freas, John Kirby, and Karen Kuykendall. But before I do I want to share the Three of Wands, by Evelyn Turner, which IMHO is a perfect progressing of this card into a (no longer so) future scenario:


LEFT: Fantasy Showcase. RIGHT: Rider/Waite/Smith.

This next card is The Star, by Kelly Freas. I can't say I'm overly fond of his art-style, although content-wise it is traditional:

And here's The Two of Cups by John Kirby. I'm not fond of this art-style, either, though again the content is quite traditional for the Two of Cups. My roommate, after looking through The Fantasy Showcase Tarot, showed me artwork by Kirby on a Terry Pratchett book cover. His style works better there, I think, than with Tarot. Though I hasten to add this is a personal preference (i.e, I generally don't care for the idealization and/or objectification of women's bodies in art, or of men's, for that matter):



OK, so now blogger has made a liar out of me again. It won't upload the two Karen Kuykendall cards I wanted to share to end this post. So I'll have to set those aside for a final post about this deck, a Part IV. Argh!

At any rate, I hope the journey through this unique deck is fun. For all the misery I'm having with uploading images, it's wonderful exploring the artwork in this Tarot again.

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Please see the top of the sidebar for my background with the Tarot and a recommendation to beginners.

‘til next time, keep enjoying the amazing unviverse of The Tarot,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)**** SEE ALSO: Roswila’s Dream & Poetry Realm for some articles about Tarot.****

Part II: THE FANTASY SHOWCASE TAROT

Be sure to see the post immediately prior to this one for more complete information on this 26 year old 85 card deck, each card of which was designed by a different science fiction or fantasy artist. As I promised in that post, here are additional selections from the deck. (Now that I am able to upload the images, which I had not been able to do when I was working on the previous post.)

Although the nine cards below give some indication of the amazing variety of styles and implicit meanings of this unique deck, it does not do it full justice by any means. I'll just have to post samples from it in the future.:-)


FIRST CARD -- Five of Pentacles (artist Reed Waller). For some reason I have a King Midas association to this version. It's not clear in this scan but it's a couple embracing in the picture the lion is holding and he looks distinctly disturbed, outside of it all maybe -- a rather Five of Pentacles experience. :-)
SECOND CARD -- Nine of Cups (artist Gary Anderson), I love this space frog, bellying up to the bar. Talk about happiness!
THIRD CARD -- Ten of Cups (artist Randy Bathurst), another amusing interpretation, that can also be very pointed. The scene in the blitzed gnome's dream is from the actual Rider/ Waite/ Smith Ten of Cups.




FIRST CARD -- The Fool (artist Bruce Duncan), usually The Fool is at the edge of a cliff in danger of walking off it. This version is both funny and intriguing. I began to see it as a Fool card up-dated for modern times.
SECOND CARD -- The Wheel Fortune (artist Linda Miller), the traditional title of this card says it all! Though this is an untraditional way of representing it.
THIRD CARD -- The Seven of Swords (artist George Jones), one of the few "hard sci-fi" designs in the deck. I really like how dynamic it is and the light refractions.



FIRST CARD -- The Six of Wands (artist Jane & Philip Hagopian), I really like this art style. The interpretation itself is traditional.
SECOND CARD -- The Hermit (artist James Patrick), another art style I find very moving. It's not usual for The Hermit to be at the edge of a cliff -- this put me in mind of The Fool above.
THIRD CARD -- Lady of Swords (artist Cecilia Cosentini), this is an additional card that the editor, Bruce Pelz, developed that does not exist in the traditional deck (The Lady, who fits between the Knight and the Queen of a suit). I really like both the art style and uncommon perspective.



In my next post, I'll share the cards by Kelly Freas, John Kirby, and Karen Kuykendall. The latter is the designer of the Tarot of the Cat People. Kuykendall created an entire fantasy world for the Tarot of the Cat People, one in which each of the four realms/cultures reveres cats. Her design in The Fantasy Showcase Tarot is The Hierophant/High Priest, and is clearly related to her High Priest/Hierophant design in The Tarot of the Cat People (published in 1985). I'll post both cards here.

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Please see the top of the sidebar for my background with the Tarot and a recommendation to beginners.

‘til next time, keep enjoying the wild and wondrous universe of The Tarot,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)**** SEE ALSO: Roswila’s Dream & Poetry Realm for some articles about Tarot.****

THE FANTASY SHOWCASE TAROT (Comments & Sample Cards)

THE FANTASY SHOWCASE TAROT, Little White Book ("LWB") Cover; The Empress card (artist Maxine Miller), which is in color, of course, on the actual card.

I suppose I could have as readily called this a review, only this deck is 26 years old and out of print, originally published by U.S. Games in 1980, with some of its card designs going back as far as 1969. I recalled it while answering comments to my earlier post here on The Chariot card about what it would be like reading with a deck with artwork by 78 different artists. The Fantasy Showcase Tarot has 85 cards by 85 different artists. The extras being two new Majors designed for the deck ("Separation" XXII, and "The Farrier" XXIII) and an innovation of the editor’s ("The Lady," a young woman who fits between the Knight and The Queen of the Court cards).

The cards were done entirely by fantasy and science fiction artists. Many clearly reflect the style of the times (see the Three of Cups below) and that brings back many memories of my own hippie years. But many still appear timeless and I will post some examples of this type in the future. The cards range from humorous to artistic. Many offer interpretations of the cards that are intriguing to me to this day.

This is not a deck I have ever been able to read with. Not only due to the incredible overwhelming diversity of styles, but because the cards frequently are not clearly labeled. The designs are in a couple of cases so different from traditional Tarot it is a huge challenge to identify which cards they are.* However, I can’t stress enough that for me it is an utterly delightful deck to have as a panorama of possible Tarot art styles and interpretations. And being a huge fantasy and science fiction fan, who at one time collected books and prints of fantasy artists’ work, it’s a particular delight. Kudos to Bruce Pelz, editor, the originator of the idea who pulled it all together.

I initially selected a dozen cards to share, in a range of styles in this deck. However, I have been having an extremely difficult time uploading images to blogger for days now. (I thought, from the coding in my pages, I had succeeded finally in getting all 12 of the cards loaded. However, nine of them are only lovely pastel boxes, with no images in them. Grrrrrr.....) So, suffice it to say I only have the three below to share. Unfortunately, only three cards cannot reflect the incredible, fantastic diversity of this deck's designs.

FIRST CARD -- Three of Cups (very 1960's in style, as many of the cards are, but each in their unique way), artist Ellen Green.
SECOND CARD -- Separation XXII (one of the new Majors), artist Gordon Monson. Meanings from the LWB: Loneliness; inability to communicate with others. Conversely, reconciliation; unity of purpose; sharing of emotions.
THIRD CARD -- The Farrier XXIII (the other new Major), artist Dian Crayne. Meanings from the LWB: Forces of the universe; destiny's hand. Conversely, lack of purpose; randomity.



As blogger's system permits, I'll post additional designs from this unique deck in the future. The Fantasy Showcase Tarot has universes that are well worth wandering through and wondering over. (Note of November 5, 2006 -- the next two posts will be about this deck.)

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* Some cards don’t have signatures or even initials so they cannot be found in the little white book, which has the artists' names by their cards. There’s a note you may have read above on the back outside page of the booklet, that the cards are packed in the order in which they are listed in the little white book. But I only saw that too late. I tend to shuffle and read without even cracking any accompanying book/let that comes with a deck, just to get a first fresh feel of the deck. I can imagine many folk missed that note, too. I may someday re-order the deck by the booklet as much as possible, then see if I can determine how which "left-over" card might fit which "empty" space.

Please see the top of the sidebar for my background with the Tarot and a recommendation to beginners.

‘til next time, keep enjoying the wild and wondrous universe of The Tarot,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)**** SEE ALSO: Roswila’s Dream & Poetry Realm for some articles about Tarot.****