Weird Hobbies?

[Menard]

Perhaps Weird might be a bit over reaching, but the question essentially is...

what hobbies do you have that are off the beaten track?


I collect a few things as a hobby and among those are Tarot cards.

Through the early 70s, I had seen Tarot cards in various books on the occult, but did not pay much attention to them outside of thinking of them as something fortune tellers used.

It was not until my second year of high school that I had bought a deck of cards after reading Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent in English class. I bought a deck at Spencer Gifts in the mall, which was a Rider-Waite deck. Now I was used to seeing a particular deck of cards in books on the occult, thinking their was a standard deck everyone used, and was quite disappointed with this rather ugly deck which was not what I had wanted (way too much use of yellow in it).

Most of my concentration on decks early on was traditional decks. After high school, I had an interest in pathworking. When one starts with Tarot, you are usually looking for 'your deck'; one which appeals to you the most either visually or on some other level. Though a friend of mine, in which we both had varying interest in magic and mysticism, collected decks including Crowley's Thoth Tarot, Salvador Dali, and Giger (yeah, as weird as you think it is), my interest was in an older, traditional deck and I went with the Tarot of Marseille (Fournier). Still, though, not the deck I had seen in the books.

The Tarot of Marseille has many variations, though many do stick close to the Claude Burdel design, and the AG Muller Classic Tarot is the Burdel woodcuts. Other Marseille or Marseille variations I have include the Founier as mentioned, Lo Scarabeo, and the Grimaud deck which is also the oldest deck I have (mine was printed in 1963). I also have the Lombardy which takes from the Marseille, more in spirit, and is done in neo-classical artwork that reminds me of some of the art I would see in books of bible stories. The one I like most is from about 1890 (the design) and takes directly from the Lombardy, but has a much nicer and cleaner look to it; t is only called Ancient Italian Tarot by Lo Scarabeo, and I don't have another name for it.

Ah, but the mysterious deck from the books. If you have seen any Tarot cards illustrated in books on the occult from the 60s and 70s, you have likely seen the same cards used for the illustrations. This is a Marseille variant and is known as the 1JJ Swiss Tarot. Took me a while to identify the deck I had kept seeing in these books until I ran across one that named it, so I ordered one and do have that deck; that deck is no longer in print, BTW, but give it time as it is still a popular deck and will be reprinted in time.

Though my initial interest in Tarot may have had an association with the occult, I just collect the decks for the art. They are rather compact collections of art from different times, and even decks designed for today have interesting variations on the theme.

Some decks such as the Bosch and Da Vinci Tarots are what if decks. What if the artist had designed a Tarot deck; what would it look like? I have both. Bosch is an interesting deck that makes good use of the Flemish painter's style to be rather nightmarish. One reviewer of the deck commented that it is the only deck where a pip card (suit) makes the Death card look pedestrian in comparison.

I do not have a standard Rider-Waite deck (which should be called Smith-Waite properly). There is a Universal Waite deck, and pocket version, both of which I have, that recolors the cards and makes them much more pleasant. The Hanson-Roberts deck is a Smith-Waite variation that is considered a friendlier design.

The Smith-Waite deck was not the start of the Hermetic tradition in Tarot, though it did solidify the tradition and did start a tradition of illustrating the pip cards as well. The Hermetic tradition in Tarot goes back to probably the 1700s but the most noted contributors to that which kickstarted it were Oswald Wirth and Papus. Papus postulated an origin of the Tarot back to the Egyptians and preserved by the Gypsies who introduced it to the European continent. Papus and other infused Kabbalistic influences and Egyptian symbology into the Tarot. Though this was interesting, and was a good fit, his presumes origin was simply dead wrong.

Tarot simply was a card game. It was a game of trumps to which story cards were added and used as trumps (triumphs, tarots). The oldest extant Tarot deck, the Visconti-Sforza (eh 1430?) contains the 56 suit cards and 4 trumps added to each suit. Somewhere along the way, 5 more trumps were added, and an unnumbered card called The Fool, which later became the joker card. Many of theses trumps are representative of costume characters, games, events, and stories one may have encountered at a harvest festival. This is just a take on the origin and I do not presume to know the full origin of how the Tarot came to be as we know it.

The Hermetic tradition in Tarot, though, held on quite strongly and Aleister Crowley added to it with his publication of The Book of Thoth which now made the Tarot a book of magic handed down through time only to those querants who possessed the knowledge to properly read it. In some ways, this was an extension of the writings of Eliphas Levi who also considered the Tarot to be a complete book of magic.

The deck Crowley designed, with artwork provided by Freida Harris, was certainly different than anything before. I have a Thoth deck and a more recent variation on it called Liber T.

Past all the speculation, theories, magical claims, paranoia, and accusations, the Tarot is just a deck of cards; but I like the artwork.


Well that went longer than I had intended. I was going to get into pyramids in this also, but I'll save that for later.

What hobbies do you have that are off the beaten track?

[ghouck]

Well, , watching B Movies is the one people that know me point out as being weird. I used to scambait, , , but got bored with it and haven't done anything in 5 years or so. I used to geocache a bit, in an effort to get in shape, , but haven't done THAT in a while. I think I'm becoming a very boring person, in that I have TONS of fun stuff to do and don't do any of it. I have tons of guns to shoot, a Quad that is so fast it scares me at times, some cool nitro-powered RC Trucks, a bunch of cool computer software, and more, , and I just don't do much with it these days. I think I'm getting old. .

I USED to program mods for a computer game (Unreal Tournament 2004), , but the new version came out (UT3) and it sucks, , and since people will abandon the old one and I hate the new one, , I have no reason to do any of that anymore. I gotta find something to do with my time. . .

[indianasmith]

I collect arrowheads, practice karate, and dig up dinosaurs.  I even got out yesterday before the remnants of Ike hit and found this one  . . . . which I will show to you when my photobucket album feels like pulling up!!

Ahh, here it is:





The only obsidian point I have ever found,  over 600 miles from the nearest source for this material!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Menard]

A little frostbite going on there?

[Psycho Circus]

I collect W.A.S.P. memorabilia, 80s LP's & movies, 80s' Kerrang & Fangoria mags and anything to do with Don Johnson. 

[Raffine]

I'm a bassoonist - I play the bassoon

This bassoon-packin' babe is an example of just how hella-cool is your average bassoonist:


More cool: the German word for "bassoon" is "Faggott".   

HELLA-COOL CELEBRITY BASSOONISTS!

GARRISON KEILLOR!


GENE SHALIT!


RAINN WILSON!

[indianasmith]

A little frostbite going on there?

nah . . .just exzema . . .

[Mr. DS]

I  collect horror and other movie memorbilla which I know isn't that wierd.  However I do collect a lot of Halloween deocrations and would love to keep them all out (some stay out) year round if I could.   I have many items I have bought throughout the years like severed heads, masks and other novelties.

[Menard]

Now on to pyramids.


My introduction to pyramid energy was around 1980; a little later than the classic pyramid energy fad of the 70s, but it held on for a while into the 80s, and even is still alive in a very reduced interest.

A friend and myself had been wandering around the mall and went to the bookstore. There was a book, a small paperback, called Pyramid Energy Handbook by Serge V. King. This book introduced me to pyramid energy.

Aside from building a small cardboard pyramid according to instructions in the book, my first pyramid was actually a pyramid mobile that consisted of a 3 foot open frame pyramid (thin aluminum rods) with 9 smaller 1 foot open frame pyramids pointing downward from the base of the larger pyramid. Alas, I no longer have that and have been unable to locate one (they had them up to 5ft models with 25 smaller pyramids).

What I have collected is experimenter kits that were put out by a company called Pyramid Power V (they made the mobiles as well). These kits usually consist of an open frame pyramid 10in to 1ft, perhaps a cardboard pyramid, and several supplies for experiments such as a compass, iron fillings, seeds, growing dishes, etc. I have two different kits, plus a model called the Golden Pyramid.

I also collect books on pyramid energy, or pyramids in general.

Just to make an obsession even worse, I do have the domain PyramidEnergy.org (surprised me that I was able to get it). Nothing there for now.

Still looking for a pyramid mobile and connectors for a meditation pyramid; should anybody have one, or know of a source (not dowsing.com).

[ER]

Remember in Saving Private Ryan when Tom Sizemore's character scooped up containers of soil from the places he'd been, Africa, England, France? Well I do that and have since I was a child and would ask my dad to bring me back dirt (not rocks, dirt) from places he'd go. One time he came home with a vial of earth from Angola, and he made me bake it in the oven before I could touch it.

Right now I'm angling to get a bit of Antarctica brought to me, which is is actually illegal, so, um, no I'm not.

[Alex]

As people may have noticed I am into wargaming and roleplaying.

Back when I was a roadie, a standard game was you'd draw a face on the window every time you had sex with a groupie you'd take a pubic hair from her and stick in on the face. The person with the best 'tache at the end of the tour won. As time went on though and shaving became more popular in the '90s this died out though.

[ER]

Interesting! So the rule was just one single hair? Someone couldn't bone a hippie brunette and make a Luigi mustache just to win?

[Alex]

When you are sharing a tour bus you have a pretty good idea of how many partners the other guys have had...

[Allhallowsday]

Damn, I hope this thread brings back our old friend Menard.     I remember his name and used to talk on the phone with him.  Except RC, Menard was the best friend I ever made here.  I came to this forum because of YOU RM aka Menard.  My man. 

[indianasmith]

Menard was a lot of fun!