This is supposed to be the magician card of a Tarot deck. Does anyone know what deck this would be?

Never seen it before. Looks Hindu.

Yes it's definitely a Tarot based on Eastern Mysticism. I've searched the data base at http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/list.shtml and couldn't find it. But I'm on dial-up so my seach wasn't complete. I just looked at the most likely candidates.

This is a picture from Franz Bardon's book on Intitiation into Hermetics. He refers to this as the magician card of Tarot and describes all the symbolism in the artwork. But he doesn't say anywhere in the book what deck this card came from.

Of all the frustrating things.

I've looked through the D's. I'll keep looking....my internet is very fast. There are some very disturbing decks out there.

Hey, JB's cards on there!

Yeah and she blows all the other decks away too.

If you're just browsing through them, you might not even see this card because since they don't show all the cards, the magician card might not even be shown for this deck (whatever deck it is).

I'm starting to wonder if there is such a deck, or whether Franz Bardon just made this up. Because the card itself doesn't even say "Magician" on it or anything like that. Although some Tarot decks are like that I guess.

I made it through the M's last night. I'm gonna scroll through some more today. They are interesting to look at.

Yeah, I know they don't always show the Magician card, but the art is usually the same on every card and that's what I'm looking for.

Some of these decks are just silly.

If you make it, they will buy it.

I have an idea for a Tarot deck myself. Of course the big hold up is indeed the artwork. Painting the artwork for 79 cards is no small task. Especially for a person who isn't a quick paintner.

Although I'm sure you've noticed that some of them are nothing more than stick figures draw by hand. A lot of them have really simple artwork that I could do myself. Almost like 'cartoon' drawings.

In fact, the most popular Rider Waite deck isn't really difficult artwork. It has a 'cartoon' quality to it with fairly simple colors etc.

I have a few tarot decks myself. Including Rider Waite, Lewellyn Tarot, Mystic Faerie Tarot, Renanessace Tarot, and Dragon Tarot. I've been thinking about getting the Buddha Tarot just because I know enough about Buddhism for it to be meaningful to me.

I actually use all of these decks, depending on which one calls to me for a specific situation.

The artwork in the Buddha Deck is pretty simple actually. It's just line art filled in with solid colors and not much shading or detail. I think I could draw cards like these:



The Mystic Faeries Tarot has more detail and shading, but I'm getting close to being able to paint like this. It's just more time consuming.



And I'm working toward being able to paint even more detailed pictures like done in the Llewellyn Tarot. These are quite detailed with lots of shading and color tones. But that also requires much more time spent on each painting. When you're talking about painting 79 cards that can add up pretty quick.

Whilst reading Modern Magic it's been brought to my attention that the following two Tarot decks are the oldest known decks.

The Visconti Deck:



More information can be found here:
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/visconti/

And Marseilles deck



More information:
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/ancient-marseilles/

I'm learning a lot of trivial about Tarot today from this Modern Magick book.

For example there's a tarot called, "The Tarot of the Witches", which is a deck that was created for a James Bond movie and is an insult to any serious witch. (so says Kraig)

And then there is the "Witches Tarot" which is created to be pagan friendly and meant to properly reflect the witches' path and practices.

Witches Tarot:



Interesting stuff.

He also states that The Golden Dawn created a tarot deck based on many ideas of the magician and the Qabalah. But when asked by Rider Waite for the Golden Dawn imagery it was refused, and instead the actual Rider Waite images painted by Pamela Smith were imagery that actually served to hide the real meanings of the cards.

So many rumors!

Who knows what's true anymore?

That wouldn't surprise me one bit. They were are a very secretive bunch.