New Decks???

[thealien2000uk]

I have been reading tarot cards since I was six years old when I was given an Arthur Edward Waite hand painted deck in an old wooden box from my grandmother who was a roma soothsayer from italy. She arrived from Italy in 1928 because she foresaw the coming of the fascists (brown shirts as she called them) in Europe and came to England... and even burned her horse drawn "caravan" in Calais.

Since then i Have collected Rune Stones, Casting Stones/bones Crystal Balls, Ouija Boards, Tarot Cards Decks, and various unique Playing Card Packs from all over the world... i own over 1200 different card desks both old and new.

I am in the middle of cataloging them but i also wish to digitise (scan) the various card decks for inclusion into a computer tarot casting program like the Orphalese program or visual tarot.

Has anyone got the details of either program regarding the recommended order, prefered size, resolution and colours for both of these programs and any copyright information regarding the inclusion of tarot card scans etc...


Once I have got the decks ready for uploading i will gladly make them available for free including several packs i have designed myself (traditional hebrew deck, true roma deck, egyptian gods deck, Annunaki deck etc) and i will make some of them exclusive to Orphalses members especially the rarer decks.

Thanks for reading.....

May good fortune always be with you....

thealien2000uk

[Programmer]

We have had a bit of discussion here about the "correct" order for Tarot decks, particularly about the order of the suits. The order that Orphalese Tarot uses "out of the box" is, from 0 - 77:

Major Arcana
Wands
Cups
Swords
Coins

Within the Majors by default 8 is Strength and 11 is Justice but this can be easily reversed for any deck or as a default preference in the Options form.

From version 10 of the program each card can have its own name as well as just a position in the deck. Naming the cards is not a necessary part of digitizing a deck, but it comes in useful within the program when you have to choose a card from a dropdown list (for example when you are selecting cards to compare side by side), because it is much easier to pick say "Four of Cups" from a list than to recognise it from the number 39.

The Orphalese Tarot has always been designed with more than just Tarot decks in mind (you may have noticed that several decks on the Deck Exchange reflect systems based on runes or oriental traditions such as the I Ching), so in keeping with this philosophy we introduced the concept of schema - basically alternative listings of position and name. By associating any deck with one of these schema you can ensure the right names appear for each card. Because this is a new development, in the present version of the program there are only a very small number of built in schema (basically for Tarot decks, Poker decks and simple numeric ordering) but you can also define custom names for the card positions in any deck and then use that deck as a model to apply to other ones. In a future development I plan to make a range of alternative "plug in" schema available for download from the website.

Basically the short answer is if you stick to the ordering mentioned above you will be creating digitized decks that can readily be used within the program without any further modification. On the other hand if a deck doesn't fit any standard arrangement the program can still be customized to handle it.

Png and Jpg seem to be popular formats to use for the images. With regard to resolution you should bear in mind the final size of the deck, anything over 10 megs is definitely on the large side.

I hope this helps. Regarding copyright my impression is that as long as you are careful how you use the scanned images you should be OK, for example you obviously should not use copyrighted images on a public space such as a website unless you have permission, but exchanging images for private viewing is unlikely to cause any issues. The Orphalese format allows you to include details about the deck publisher and a link for purchasing online etc.

[thealien2000uk]

Thanks for the information

i have already scanned some decks in high-res as 4096 colour jpgs and named them as what the cards are (eg. ace - wands and the fool etc) so minor changes will be needed.....

I have been told some of my decks are worth a lot of money due to thier age and rareness for example the A E waite deck is original, complete and are hand painted (probably by A E Waite himself) even the Museum of Mankind in London does not have a complete pack and when i enquired about this particular deck they asked if i would be willing to donate the deck to be included in thier collection, i refused of course as the deck is part of my own persoinal collection.

i also have various other oracle sets like an original Napoleon book of numbers and several over 50 year old large scaled European "gypsy" decks which may be of interest.

Again thanks for the information it will be very useful...

[purple_scorp]

Hi alien.

I've just been to the Deck Exchange and discovered a Deck you have uploaded called "Just 17 Fortune Cards".

I absolutely love the artwork and would like to know some more information about the Deck (like author, illustrator and why there are only 17 cards)?

The style reminds me a lot of Chuck Spezzano decks (eg Love Pack etc).

I thought I had a lot of physical decks, but reading your story above, you definitely beat my total and wow, loaded with history too.

I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards

purple_scorp

[thealien2000uk]

Just Seventeen was a teenage girls magazine from the 1970's and the cards were supplied with the magazine as a single perforated sheet of 4 by 5 cards hence 20 cards of the major arcana.