cjxtypes
I'm sure this has been covered elsewhere but does anyone know the color symbolism of the Rider Waite Smith. I notice alot of red hats! And the colors in the Lovers card is all over the place. Just curious. Thanks
I don't have the answer, but I think it's a good question. What puzzles me, though, is exactly what are we to learn about color symbolism in the RWS deck when the colors vary so widely from printing to printing? The colors of the vintage decks from the '70s have different color intensity than the current printing. And those decks looks very different from the so-called Original Rider deck--and none of the above have the same color shading of the Waite-Smith centennial deck. The coloration is similar, but the hues are completely different, as are the color saturations.
I'm currently taking the Amberstone's correspondence course from the Tarot School. They have a module that explores the symbolism of the RWS deck. I'm not far enough along to have gotten that lesson yet. However, to make a confusing matter even worse, in the lesson I do have, they explore the symbols of the Ace through Five of Swords. They talk about the woman in the Two of Swords wearing a blue and white gown being a reference to the High Priestess. That's all very well, but I have no idea what they're talking about. In no edition of the RWS deck that I've seen is the woman in the Two of Swords wearing blue. Her gown/robe/dress is white and gray--not blue. Likewise, in their description of the Five of Swords, they talk about purple mountains. Again, in no RWS deck I've seen are the mountains purple. I can't for the life of me understand what I'm missing.
Its a process running through the tarot programme like ebola.
The idea is you give the visual, image, symbolism any meaning you want from your own personal perspective and experience.
What happens is, with the loss of the internal knowledge in the deck, people become more outward and literalistic; A purple mountain, a hand drawn badly, even the artists signature all give substance to 'some' interpretations ... ummmm even a misperception of the picture (like the 'evil dwarf' in the 6 of cups trying to 'trick' the little girl .... <looks closer> I mean the midget old Lady ).
Apparently now you can pay and go to a course where you can hear someone explain their own process of this.
Yes, Case writes far more clearly than Waite. The book is just on the Major Arcana and goes deeply into all the symbols on each card. There's minimal information on divination as it focuses on the wisdom teachings of each card.Thanks for the recommendation. Does Case write more clearly than Waite? I've tried reading Waite and I just never get very far. I even got the audio version of Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot, thinking I'd like/understand it better if I heard the words out loud. It didn't help me; I didn't get any further with that than trying to read Waite on my own.
Yes, I can understand that. What I find puzzling, though, is that the first lesson in the Tarot School correspondence course talks about the woman in the two of swords wearing blue and white. I'm looking at the card right now--she isn't wearing blue and white. She's wearing white with shades of gray.
From interviews with the Ambestone's on podcasts I've heard, I know their preferred deck is the Universal Waite. I don't have that deck (yet). I've seen images of the card online and they don't show the woman in the Two of Swords wearing blue mixed with white either. Not that that means anything without taking screen color calibration into account. Either the lesson is imagining detail not present in the card, or I just can't see it in the examples I've found in the cards I own. It's not terribly troublesome--it just makes an already complex issue more confusing.