Orphalese Tarot Zone Community Forum

I had an idea about a possible future addition to Orphalese Tarot. As always, I'll trust your judgment about whether it's worth pursuing. I may well be the only user out there who would care about this, but I suspect there are others.

One of my favorite things about OT is that it is such a great tool for comparative tarot study. The Compare Cards feature is great. I also like to study a reading using different decks to trigger new insights or, at least, new ideas to pursue.

One problem, though: Trumps 8 and 11. There are many packs out there that use the Marseilles order, and many others that use Waite's order. This makes it a little difficult to compare packs using these different orders when the Strength and Justice cards are involved.

Not your fault, obviously. It's just a fact with a long history behind it.

It might be possible to adjust to this difference in a fairly unobtrusive way, though. Here's one approach that occurred to me:

1: Add a new attribute to the pack info data. Call it Major Arcana Order or Trumps Order or something like that. Let its value indicate whether the pack uses the Marseilles or Waite ordering. (Since the great majority of tarot packs follow one of those patterns, I would allow only those two values, or possibly also allow Null [or something] to indicate other or unspecified...) Allow the user to set the value on the Options for Current Deck.

2: In the Compare Cards screen, use that attribute in such a way that if you select Strength from the menu, you can compare a Marseilles deck and a Waite deck and see Strength from both of them. If that attribute hasn't been set for the pack, then use a default. Since the Compare Cards screen lists the cards in Marseilles order, I would think that would make the most logical default.

3: If the user selects a new pack after cards have been dealt, and if they are switching from one pack-type to another, then prompt user to see if they want to swap 8 and 11 so Strength still equals Strength. Here's why I would ask: Personally speaking, if I have *shuffled* the pack, then I would want to make the switch. If I dealt Justice originally, I still want to see Justice with the new pack. On the other hand, if I'm looking at cards that have been deliberately arranged in Trump order, I might want to maintain that order -- I wouldn't want to read a row ordered ...4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 9, 10, 8, 12, 13... So, I would ask for approval before swapping the two cards. This would only be needed if there are cards already dealt, though, and only if the trump order for both decks has been recorded.

I'll repeat -- this is really not a major issue for me, just a mild, occasional annoyance. There may be negative ramifications to my suggestion that haven't occurred to me. And I have no idea how much work it would take to implement such a thing.

Other users might have feedback on whether this is desirable. Anyone?

-- Brad

Hi Brad,

I for one do not want to see mixtures of Strengths and Justices in the Compare Cards feature (truly a favorite of mine), nor in switching decks within a specific reading. I've found it easiest to simply number all Strength cards 08 and all Justice cards 11, just for consistency among my decks. If I get a deck that someone else compiled in the Marseilles order, I simply renumber those two cards to suit myself. I chose the Waite order for personal reasons, and certainly others can choose the Marseilles order as they wish. A bit of judiciousness is required when dealing with certain off beat numbering systems, as e.g., the Sacred Circle Tarot, in order to get the image symbols aligned, but it's not impossible. The exercise can be rather informative.

I find it's easy enough to notice that the card itself will usually indicate its number, so in those cases where one ordering or another is embedded into the particular deck system, there is no real ambiguity.

While I imagine that the programmer can indeed create a feature that would allow for the user to select either the deck's specific ordering or one of the user's preference, there'd be rather infrequent call for it.

Just my 2 pents,
Gisela

>> simply number all Strength cards 08 and all Justice cards 11 <<

Of course! Much more straightforward, and people can do it or not as they wish.

I guess I'm too used to looking for programming solutions. As the saying goes, When your favorite tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Thanks Gisela.

-- Brad