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INKEDblog takes you beneath the skin of today's tattoo culture. Our mission is to celebrate tattooing as a modern art form which incorporates art, fashion, style, and pop culture. While paying homage and respect to the past, we look to present a contemporary take on the present and future of skin art.
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Tuesday Feb 14, 2006
Joker Tattoos - An Explanation
Our modern deck of playing cards is based in part on the ancient game of Tarot. The Tarot is a deck of many more cards than the standard poker deck contains today; including twenty-one cards called the Major Arcana.
The Major Arcana are the cards from the Tarot such as the Hanged Man, the Tower, the Moon, and the Day of Judgement (among others) that represent the powerful forces at work in the world.
The Joker is the only remainder of the original Major Arcana from the Tarot deck to survive into our modern playing card deck. Originally called the Fool, the Joker represents eccentricity, unexpected events and possibly madness. The Fool (and the Joker) has also been linked to a sort of innocent mysticism, as well. In the Christian interpretation of the Tarot, the Hanged Man is a representation of Jesus on the cross, but the Fool represents the innocence of Jesus and his teachings during his life.
Joker tattoos often refer to the fact that the Joker has a unique role in a deck of cards with the option to play or not, and never according to the standard rules. A Joker tattoo can also mean that the wearer is a trickster or joker, as well, and that things are not always what they seem…
| Comments
there are 22 cards in the major arcana. the Fool's number is 0, the World is 21. also? tarot is not a "game," nor was it ever. it is a divination tool. Also, according to aeclectic.net, the Fool usually represents new beginnings, or, negatively, naivete on the part of the person whose cards are being read, not madness, eccentricity, or unexpected events. those would more likely fall to the Moon or the Tower.
between this and the tasmanian devil being mysteriously extinct all of a sudden, i think whoever's writing this blog ought to be doing their research a little better. my intelligence is insulted.
Posted by: mackennzie at February 23, 2006 6:05 PM
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