I realize that there might be minor publication differences between editions of the ‘Rider pack’, as it’s sometimes called (I usually just call it the classic tarot deck, or the 1909 Tarot), such as different hues or levels of brightness in the colors, and of course, different companies. I’m not against people making money; it’s just a little amusing when so many groups all offer the same product, basically, you know; it’s all the same classic deck. Anyway, I’m briefly going to review the old 1909 Tarot for you.

It is a little hard getting distance from the classic pack enough to review it; with most Rider-derived decks, I’ll pick a few cards to talk about how they differ from the 1909 images; obviously that doesn’t work with the 1909 images themselves. But I’ve briefly flipped through—I don’t count them as ‘read’ yet, since I didn’t carefully study a few a day, and Crowley in particular made no sense; it was like, This is a horse of a different color! This is a Fancy Horse!—both the Tarot de Marseille and the Thoth Tarot, which I’m told are the two main other decks that have influenced Tarot history—readings and musings and derivative decks—other than the classic deck, which is what’s shaped most modern Tarot studies the most, being the main image-template for the large majority of Tarot fools, you know. (Although Arthur came before Eden Gray grandmothered the hippie generation, you know. Arthur probably thought of himself as the Hermit, or perhaps a sort of Hermit-Emperor that only he could understand, right.)

Anyway. It must be a let-down after all that—although that’s not long for me—but I guess I can just say that I can get get how the 1909 pack rode off with the Tarot world, you know. It’s fashionable to deride the almost-popular alt culture; it’s certainly cool to say that Wiccans are already too popular, (where? one almost has to ask), although the Thoth has never really made many popularity-contest inroads on Arthur and Pam, you know. But although I get why it might be fun to learn Thoth Tarot, and the desert-sands and/or modern architecture simplicity of Marseilles is also immediately apparent, I can get the value of the classic set of cards. It’s the easily-dismissed middle-way, that the masses often tend to love in all its forms. It’s in between the pictorially ‘laconic’ Marseille and the (to a non-initiate, busy) ‘fancy’ Thoth; 1909 produces images that are simple and sometimes unmistakable, although sometimes ambiguous and often quite profound as well.

It’s as though it mastered the art of seeming commonplace—at least for a Tarot deck; some people see any card, the Four of Pentacles, probably, and run—while actually having layers. While actually being profound. Marseilles isn’t un-profound, of course; but it’s rough. 1909 is simple, but polished: smooth.