BORDERLESS TAROT CARDS GIVE LIFE TO READINGS!

here are two cards from the Chinese Propaganda Art Tarot (Formerly The Cultural Revolution Tarot )

Traditional Tarot decks are usually printed with a border, yet some people like to trim their bordered cards, creating a customised borderless deck where the edges of each image can be placed next to the edges of the following card, creating a scene from two images, or possibly three or four.

The first deck we ever created was King's Journey Tarot, a borderless deck, and since then we've created all of our decks in the same way, even producing a borderless Simply Deep Tarot. (This was originally a bordered deck which we agreed to allow Schiffer Publishing to print and distribute).

Creating one image out of two cards creates a scene which you can use to help for intuitive reading. Watch water flow from one card to the other, or see characters, which in one card are merely walking, leave various scenes and altercations when combined with other cards. A good example of this is the Fool card in a King’s Journey, where he is walking across a drawbridge. Combine this with the 3 of Pentacles, and suddenly he’s walking away from an accomplishment. Combine this with the 6 of cups and he’s walking away from a reunion.
 
We’ve designed all of our cards to be able to be read in this way. The shapes and connections that can be made when connecting two cards together are completely random, as in, they were not planned. Planning a deck of cards where every card connects to every other card in the deck would be next to impossible, but there are a surprising number of random connections in our decks, and we’ve included some of them in this blog.

To the right we see the King of Pentacles meets the 7 of Pentacles in the Chinese Propaganda Art Tarot. In the King we see the crop of barley, and in the 7 we see the corn merge with one another.

Coming from an agricultural background I admit it interests me to see these "farming cards" come together. On the edge of the King we partly see a combine harvester and in the 7 we see workers in the background with a few tractors.

If I had to sum it up I'd say that the best deck for reading about work and job prospects is the Chinese Propaganda Art Tarot because much of the focus is on manual labour jobs.  Yes, this deck does have more of a revolutionary / communist leaning than any of our other work due to the nature of the real life artworks we based the imagery on, but the amount of cards depicting work make it a great deck for reading about jobs, income and so on.

In the set of three cards below from the Chinese Propaganda Art Tarot, we see a water theme flowing through three of the cards. (Blog continues after the image)

Below we see the 6 of wands and the Temperance card, who just so happen to merge due to their brick walls.

The Art in the Chinese Propaganda Art mostly depicts a dreamy idealistic view of a communist China under Mao, and while many may disagree with the reality of the actual events of the Cultural Revolution during that time, this is a dreamy idyllic deck. It's overly optimistic because it is based on overly optimistic Propaganda. Lot's of smiley faces all round!

The Chinese Propaganda Art Tarot is not without its share of morbid cards, such is the nature of life and the time period the propaganda art is based on. Below we see the 4 of Swords combine with the 4 of Pentacles. In the 4 of Swords we see a barefoot doctor administer healing to a wounded soldier. I love this card because it combines a range of occupations; medic, soldier, and farmers (in the background). The card can combine with the 4 of Pentacles through the tree, where we see it branch into the pentacles card. In our card we see healing, even feeding through the bowl of water/soup/medicine, to starvation in the pentacles card connected to it.

To the right we see The Fool from King's Journey attached to the 7 of Spirit card. The card connects by the hill in the background, and again the Fool card is a great card as far as venturing off and doing one's own thing. When seen through borderless cards, it's easier to combine the cards together to see what exactly the Fool is thinking as he walks off from the scene.

We love hearing all the results that people get from our cards. This is also a great way of expanding your intuitive skills.

So far, it seems that Twisted Tarot Tales has the most connections out of all of our decks, but only by a few, and so we've saved the best for last. Like we mentioned earlier, The Chinese Propaganda Art Tarot is great for readings about employment. The propaganda tarot is to jobs what Twisted Tarot Tales is to working through darker issues in one's life. Twisted Tarot Tales is a dark deck, there's no doubt about it, but it's created in a comic book style friendly way. Let's face it, most people who seek out tarot readings do so because they have a concern of some kind.

Occasionally those concerns are deep. Some have deep emotional scars. Some have physical scars. We don't claim to be counsellors, but we supply the tools that help the counsellors in the same way a brick maker may not know how to draw out the blue prints for a house, but without him or her, the house simply wouldn't be.

Want to see our current sent of card connections for Twisted Tarot Tales? Click here to see what we've found

This is a great deck to pull out and read with when a client's issues can't be sugar-coated, and can't be ignored. Even the lovers card has an ironic twist with the lovers involved in a sort of "crash and burn" scenario. It's not a deck for everybody, and it wasn't supposed to be. Art is like food, or music; it’s a matter of taste. It also depends on what kind of clients you have and what way you conduct your readings.

A few people have called Twisted Tarot Tales an excellent tool for shadow work and working through personal issues.

Here's a video that we made earlier in the year when we released Twisted Tarot Tales.