Different interpretations

Hello everyone.

I have just purchased another deck, and I am noticing more and more that different decks tend to have different meanings...

I find myself more confused as to what cards mean what and how should I link them together.. (Especially in some of the "specialty decks" I have.)

Do you tend to use one interpretation universally?

Thanks for your help,

The Newbie

I either use decks like the Marseille which have non-scenic pips, or else decks which can use the Rider-Waite meanings, such as the Aquarian or Magic Forest. For the Marseille (and similar decks), I use my own system.

Nixx said:

Hello everyone.

I have just purchased another deck, and I am noticing more and more that different decks tend to have different meanings...

I find myself more confused as to what cards mean what and how should I link them together.. (Especially in some of the "specialty decks" I have.)

Do you tend to use one interpretation universally?

Thanks for your help,

The Newbie

Click to expand...

I have found that as I experience more decks, there becomes greater depth to the meanings of the cards. Each deck brings a slightly different point of view or even points out things previously unseen.

At first, it was confusing, but eventually I stopped trying to fit everything into a "Rider Waite Box" and allowed the cards and their authors to express their opinions. I began to see the connections and a flexibility in the Rider Waite system. Now, I have a kind of Thoth-Golden Dawn- RWS- Pythagorean system going on in my head. And it makes sense to me and the readings seem to work.

On some cards, I have a sort of "central" interpretation that tends to show up through most decks. On other cards, I see a much wider range of how I interpret them. Yes, whether a deck is RWS, Thoth or TdM-based is part of it. Some of my decks are stand-alone and not based on any of the others. Some of my decks stick closely to the original they are patterned after; other decks sometimes swing a wide ways away from their original.

How similar or different the decks are from each other seem to have to do with the vision of the author/artist. How the artist/author sees tarot overall, how she sees the suits and the numbers, how he sees the world and the human experience, how she sees the Fool's Journey all seem to inform how a person devises each card in their deck - and therefore how he intends it to be read.

And then on top of all that, there's how much I'm reading the card intuitively or how much I'm using or remembering the book, relying on the meaning the author gives and intended! Whew

I started noticing that different deck artists/LWB writers gave different interpretations of the same card, oh, about the time I started collecting decks. I really don't worry about it too much. I memorized the RWS interpretations years ago, promptly forgot them, then got hold of a copy of Richard Roberts' book Tarot and You, currently back in print as The Original Tarot and You, which totally changed the way I read the cards. I started reading the image I saw on the card, rather than going by what The Book (or LWB) said, and started getting better readings that way. It's a lot less hassle, too. No more looking up the "meaning" of a given card that I've forgotten, only to find that the "meaning" has nothing to do with the question I'm asking.

What I do now is, when I buy a new deck, before I use it, take the LWB and read each card meaning side by side with the actual card. Then I put the LWB back in the box, put the box in a drawer, and... read the images I see on the cards, with the LWB meaning as just one of many possible meanings for the card. My intuition may lead me to the meaning in the LWB that came with the deck, the RWS meaning, the Thoth meaning, or something completely other. I just let my intuition guide me as to what the card is trying to say to me.

You should see me reading with my Bosch Tarot sometimes. The Bosch is a great deck for reading intuitively, and the meanings I come up with for the cards are usually totally different than the ones in the LWB. I just figure, the LWB isn't the one doing the reading, I am, and the LWB can get stuffed.

Chiska said:

.....At first, it was confusing, but eventually I stopped trying to fit everything into a "Rider Waite Box" and allowed the cards and their authors to express their opinions. I began to see the connections and a flexibility in the Rider Waite system........

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Indeed! By "Rider-Waite meanings" I refer to interpretations which are compatible with the RWS imagery, inclusive of Book T and other GD documents, the amplications of GD concepts by P. F. Case and A. Crowley, Waite's own adaptation of the GD system as explained in PKT, and lots of other astrological, alchemical, psychological, and numerological material. The memorization of meanings given in some nondescript LWB may be okay for a start but becomes unacceptably shallow and confining after awhile. I personally prefer the interpretive flexibility of the pre-GD/Waite decks with non-scenic pips.

After I started thinking of each pip as similar to a Marseille (number + element), I realized that an Ace of Wands is still an Ace of Wands, whichever deck I'm using, and it got less confusing. I have a general feel for each card. Each deck expresses a different range of the meaning of a card, so if I think of it that way, out of all the decks I read from and the experiences from reading with them, I've acquired several different takes of the same card. All those different takes and experiences as a group make up my meanings. I sometimes use a meaning specific to a different deck in a reading if it pops into my head.

Chiska said:

I have found that as I experience more decks, there becomes greater depth to the meanings of the cards. Each deck brings a slightly different point of view or even points out things previously unseen.

Click to expand...

Agreed, with experience being the key word. I think any single interpretation can only be a personal perspective of what is beyond definition by any single individual. Like many in this thread I have "my own" system, which is "based on many" sources.

Chiska said:

I have found that as I experience more decks, there becomes greater depth to the meanings of the cards. Each deck brings a slightly different point of view or even points out things previously unseen.

At first, it was confusing, but eventually I stopped trying to fit everything into a "Rider Waite Box" and allowed the cards and their authors to express their opinions. I began to see the connections and a flexibility in the Rider Waite system.

Click to expand...

I agree with this so much! I think that the longer you study Tarot, even if you only study one deck, the meanings and messages multiply. The cards are like lifelong friends--even after knowing someone for decades they can still suprise you! I prefer to read mostly from my one primary deck, but as a collector, comparing different artists and writers interpretations and seeing what they illuminated in the cards has enhanced my experience so much.

I totally feel your pain. Until fairly recently on my journey with Tarot I dreaded buying and using any other deck. I mean, I have a few others which were gifts but I only liked looking at them, not working with them. I convinced myself that all of the 'correct' meanings would fall out of my head if I couldn't associate them with the symbols and pictures that I've learned from and am familiar with. Nowadays, especially since blogging about Tarot and lurking like mad on this forum, I've come to see the different options in various decks as liberating. You have to trust your abilities as a story teller and interpreter and that can be tough at first. I used to get these visions of flipping over a card from an unfamiliar deck and just coming up totally blank, but now I let the imagery guide me much more, so that I don't feel bound to the Rider Waite interpretation all the time.