The Trumps as Tarot

[Lady Vivamus]

I don't know how much it'll actually come up in game, but something has been bothering me for a while. The RPG book suggests that the family's Trumps would be the court cards, and in terms of reading as a tarot deck this makes sense; the court cards are traditionally representative of people anyway, and that way you still have the major arcana in its traditional incarnation. But Corwin phrased it such that this does not seem correct; he referred to the "Greater Trumps" as being different from a normal deck, and these being the ones he recognizes as family. This would indicate that the suits are all standard, ace through king of each suit, but in lieu of the major arcana are the Trumps. This would make reading the cards very different. As I said, I'm not sure whether it would ever matter for a game, but it's been bugging me. Thoughts?

[RPGPundit]

Yes, I think that its clear that most of the time, Zelazny wrote what he knew.  You can tell, reading the Amber novels, at what point in his life he really got into asian swordfighting, when before he was clearly into fencing.
You could see what he knew about horses, about jazz, etc.
When he started smoking a pipe seriously, half of the Amberites became pipe smokers too, and if you're a pipe smoker you could tell that Zelazny was definitely a real pipe smoker and not just writing characters who did something he didn't know.

But with the references to Trumps as Tarot, Zelazny makes it abundantly obvious to anyone who's studied the Tarot that this was one subject he really knew next to nothing about.

RPGPundit

[Corvus]

I always figured that the Trumps operated somewhat differently from Shadow Earth Tarot.  Similar, but not the same.

[RPGPundit]

I think that probably the best way to handle this, in game, would be if you had the 1-10 numbered cards, and then 16 of the Elders in place of the Court Cards, and no major arcana at all.
Alternately, of course, if you were to make a really gargantuan effort you could do a set of 22 major arcana with symbols and themes that would matter to Amber.

RPGPundit

[Lady Vivamus]

I think for game purposes I'll just leave out the major arcana... but if I were to get it into my head to do an Amber Tarot (which I might, because I do silly projects like that), I'd do the second.

[Nihilistic Mind]

This reminds me to ask this:

Does anyone have a list of the Florence Magnin Amber Tarot and the correspondences of the cards and the Amberites?

I recall (perhaps incorrectly) that Corwin is King of Wands.

Better yet, does anyone know where one can find the trump images?

[Croaker]

Yes he is.

Quick search: You've got some on this page, just follow the underlined links:
http://www.tarotpassages.com/amberrev.htm

[Lady Vivamus]

That review confirms what I've heard elsewhere-- that the assignation of the characters to their cards is strange and makes little sense in the context of tarot. If the family's cards were simply going to represent themselves, then it would seem to make the most sense to have them in lieu of the major arcana. If they are to be the court cards, shouldn't the traditional meanings for such be tied as closely as possible with the people chosen for each card? Like Fiona, for example, as the queen of pentacles-- why? Basic meaning for that card: "Sensual and earthy, she enjoys abundance in many areas of her life. A lover of luxury, she is quick to share her wealth." Does anyone here think that fits Fiona? If the usual meanings are going to be ignored, why place the characters on traditional cards at all? That is... irksome, to me.

[RPGPundit]

Yes. It makes no sense. If anything, the redheads should be wands, corwin's branch (plus Benedict, of coruse) should be swords, the three bros (Julian-Gerard-Caine) should be Disks, and Llewella, Flora, and Random could be cups.

RPGPundit

[Spike]

Damn. That link makes me very sad.  I'm neither a 'canon ninja' for Amber, nor a huge Tarot devotee, but seeing such a half assed job done, with so little thought, is just saddening...


It does occur to me that, if I had any artistic talent, that either the Major Arcana should be the 'Trumps' from Amber (that is, the major personalities of the books), or assigned to the minor arcana based on the particular code of the Tarot, with the Major Arcana being replaced as much as possible with the symbology of the universe (amber itself, the pattern, the logrus, unicorn, serpent and so forth... possibly filling in roles appropriate to the Major Arcana they replace (Amber itself as the Tower? Hrm....)

[Lady Vivamus]

I had some thoughts on what each major arcana might be drawn as, nothing definite but there's a few that fit really well. My deck would of course be Amber-centric, if it contained the family Trumps, so the symbols that people normally regard as bad would be Chaos-- the Logrus for the Tower, perhaps, since it represents breakthrough and violent change, and perhaps the serpent itself for the Devil. Thus things that are positive would be taken by Amber symbols-- the Unicorn for the High Priestess, perhaps, and Amber itself for the World. It gets problematic after a point-- I'd put Dworkin as Magician, I think, but there are other places he might fit, and eventually you run out of simple symbols.

But such a deck would not be representative of the Trumps of the book, it would be a personal project I found neat. Anything that represented the Trumps in the book would have to represent the state of affairs in Amber at the time when the cards were drawn, and that would be hard. So either generic major arcana with Trumps as court cards, or generic court cards with Trumps replacing major, or generic cards with no major and Trump court cards. For some reason, the idea of assigning them to the court cards and leaving the major arcana 'above' them doesn't seem to suit. I just don't know.

[Spike]

Mind you most of the lore I have for Amber as a whole comes not from the books (I've read Nine Princes two or three times and none of the others) but from the RPG books and internet discussions but: It seems to me assigning 'good' and 'bad' values to Amber and Chaos respectively is.... misguided.  Oberon is hardly a shining example of a just and goodly king, for example, though the idea of Oberon and his chaos counterpart (Savawilly or whatever...) as a Major Arcana, ditto Dworkin and Suhuy, while leaving the rest of the family/courts as minor arcana raises an interesting contrast, likewise the suggestion that only so many cards are available to be filled as Trumps.... as this would certainly be moving away from Canon by simple virtue of being more in line with how Tarot works compared to Zelazny's writing/knowledge.

I can see putting up a list of the traditional cards and Arcana and trying to fill them from there as discussion. My tarot knowledge is a bit rusty, but obviously trying to keep the intent of the suits, in addition to the meanings of the specific cards, would be an interesting challenge.

[Nihilistic Mind]

Our own Tarot is only a reflection of the Amber Trump deck, after all... If the deck is an actual set that Dworkin has created, additions might fit in differently.

I would place all elders Trumps as Major Arcana, whereas minor arcana could feature places and Shadowfolks? That's a weird thought and I doubt anyone could really justify this, but heh.

Who's to say there aren't more than 22 Major Arcana cards in the Amber Trump deck 'set' btw?

[Lady Vivamus]

Mind you most of the lore I have for Amber as a whole comes not from the books (I've read Nine Princes two or three times and none of the others) but from the RPG books and internet discussions but: It seems to me assigning 'good' and 'bad' values to Amber and Chaos respectively is.... misguided.

Not if one is a patriotic Amberite-- which is what I meant when I said it would be Amber-centric. We as readers may be able to determine that Amber and Chaos are not Good and Evil but merely Yin and Yang, but if you are of the realm then you are almost certainly going to be on one side or the other. If a true Amberite created a deck, I would imagine that yes, Chaos would be represented in the 'bad' aspects of the tarot. A Chaos-centric deck would be very different. A balanced deck would be yet again something else, and difficult to manage.

[Spike]

I suppose, but from a certain angle it would appear that the Trump is presented almost as a power seperate from the Pattern or Logrus (particularly in the disected reading of the RPG books over the novels...), and could be said therefor to represent the... um... amberverse?... as it is, not as how one wants it to be.  You could say that a Trump Artist has no more say in how the cards are arranged than he does in what the subject looks like... he has to draw it 'accurately' or its not really a trump.