Eh, I pretty much apply modernist thinking to my mystic symbolism: I like the symbols clear and concise. Excessive decoration just takes away from the message of the symbols, and suggests either that the author might be unsure that they can impart the symbols well enough, or that there are additional meanings in these details—which is probably untrue.

Plus, in this post-psychedelic age, the detailed drawings look like self-parody, in the spirit of ‘horror vacui’. Compare e.g. art by Rammellzee and James Koehnline for various outfits of Bill Laswell:

https://www.discogs.com/release/57834-Altered-Beats-Assassin...

https://www.discogs.com/release/2166602-Various-Axiom-Dub-My...

https://www.discogs.com/release/196685-Transmutation-Mutatis...

https://www.discogs.com/release/1228556-Profanation-Preparat...

I feel that this is what Crowley would've done if he had Photoshop in his day. The dude had plenty of troll attitude, IMO.

(Also I discovered this paragraph in the Wikipedia entry on ‘horror vacui’, which sounds sorta funny in this context (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui): There is an inverse relationship between horror vacui and value perception. Commercial designers favor visual clarity in shop window displays and advertising to appeal to affluent and well-educated consumers, on the premise that understatement and restraint appeals to more affluent and educated audiences. In one study, 100 clothing stores were surveyed to find patterns and relationship between how efficiently the store's real estate was used and the store's brand prestige. Bulk sales shops and chain stores were found to fill their window displays to maximum capacity; while high-end boutiques often used their space sparsely, with no price tags.)

Hah, Mr. Crowley was a total troll. But he was an artist's and interlectuarl's mystic, so his tarot was specifically designed to look like it belong to an upper-middle class practitioner, rather than a commoner, with traditional but incomplete understadning of the Art. He basically wanted to elevate Tarot reading from the palmistry tent at fairs to the salons of the nouveau rich, so he chose art and interpretations that would appeal to that kind of person.

A troll and a real marketing genius, I think.

Ooh, this does remind me that I need to figure out mass-culture and highbrow design values before modernism, since I indeed might apply modern thinking where it doesn't belong, sometimes. I vaguely know that it was ‘more stuff = rich’ in the middle ages, leading to the ridiculous outfits of the aristocracy, but not sure when it switched to pure modernist ‘lots of empty space = rich’ (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/67/87/56/678756c714c2bd405964...).

My favorite (for the artwork) to date (scroll down to see all the cards): https://robertmplacetarot.com/the-alchemical-tarot-renewed-4...

Rider-Waite, Marseille, and Crowley-Harris are the trinity for me, personally speaking.