From:	Cobra <wgallas@*****.FR>
Subject:	Re: RM Tarot Mage in SR
Date:	Wed, 13 May 1998 17:12:47 +0200

>It's been a while since I've studied much about tarot and magic, so feel
>free to correct me on this.
>
>The suits in a tarot deck typically have an element associated with each of
>them. Buy any tarot deck and it should be in the little crappy book that
>comes with it. You could also just buy a book on tarot that would be a bit
>more in depth. The suits also correspond to the magical tools in a
>hermetic-style magical altar, which also correspond to elements, though the
>tools are scaled down a bit where necessary (daggers instead of swords,
>wands instead of staves). Pentacles are Earth, Cups are water, and Wands
>and Swords correspond to Fire and Air, though which corresponds to which
>I've seen explained differently depending on the author. I prefer
>Swords=Fire and Wands=Air, but others have different logic on the matter.

No, no. Typically, the sword represents spiritual matters and isn't
material at all. The wand is strongly physical, or more correctly strongly
conflictual. So fire is better for wands and air for swords. When you
consider tarot cards, you must appreciate them as symbols and not as
figures. The sword is in no way a symbol of war.

>As for which elements go with which spell catagories, just look up
>Elementals in the BBB. Each one aids with a different type of sorcery.
>That's how it breaks down. No elementals are associated with Health spells
>though, so it looks like Max associated them with the non-element-specific
>cards, the Major Arcana.

IMO, major arcana should be something else than health spells. I would
state that the tarot mage isn't able to cast health spells. To balance
things, you can make tarot mages adepts or you could give more power to
major arcana.

In my current campaign, I've got a bit use of the tarot cards but in a way
different than yours. If you're interested, I could tell you more on this.

- Cobra.