giving your own meanings to the pips

nuttyprofessor said:

Thank you for the compliment. I find it a pity I get so little response, because I don't present my system as a showoff, but in order to get valuable feedback. I am still in the process of making up my mind how to read the cards in a non-positional spread. Unfortunately you don't seem to use the TdM, otherwise we could brainstorm about it. Maybe anyone else is interested to share ideas, in this thread or by means of PM?

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I will be buying TdM next week so will be back in touch after that

My Grandmother used them many years ago and like most teenagers I rebelled, did not learn the cards properly, climbed trees and chased boys, much more fun now I have a strong urge to buy a deck, better late than never, more old age witch than new age convert

Worry not I am certain more people will respond

Aunty Anthea said:

I will be buying TdM next week so will be back in touch after that

My Grandmother used them many years ago and like most teenagers I rebelled, did not learn the cards properly, climbed trees and chased boys, much more fun now I have a strong urge to buy a deck, better late than never, more old age witch than new age convert

Worry not I am certain more people will respond

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Without explanation I can tell you that I am totally desillusioned with Golden Dawn. That implies I have not so much regard for the Rider/Waite deck. My distrust expands to all modern decks, as I suspect that they are commercially motivated. The creator of the TdM is a mystery, and that I like.

nuttyprofessor said:

Without explanation I can tell you that I am totally desillusioned with Golden Dawn. That implies I have not so much regard for the Rider/Waite deck. My distrust expands to all modern decks, as I suspect that they are commercially motivated. The creator of the TdM is a mystery, and that I like.

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I use the Mythic Tarot I love the Mythic Tarot

I have never used RW but bought a tiny RW in a tin a few days ago, handy to carry with me, when someone produces a tiny Mythic Tarot in a tin I will carry that with me instead

I have found only 3 modern decks that are exciting and stunning

The vast majority of news decks are boring and mundane

Etene said:

The Tarot card reading experience cannot be captured in singular keywords. Glance around and you will see readers basing interpretation on the artwork details of their particular deck (this is most relevant with novelty decks), down to which way a court figure is facing relative to other cards on the table. Obviously that is a dimension wholly beyond the keywords you might write upon those cards.


For my personal guide I deliberately avoided keywords, instead defining each card with a short paragraph and the agreement and disagreement between upright and reversed readings. As the purpose of Tarot is to reveal hidden information, I believe that it works best when approached as 78 present inspirations, rather than 78 past decisions.

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I've actually come around about using keywords. I'd suggest that using a single keyword might actually be better than a paragraph, because the paragraph sets out more detail from the moment it was written. But a single word is practically just an image in itself. And easier to remember. So "birth" or "change" or "choice" are pretty simple, and then in the moment of the reading itself, you can draw instinctual and visual cues, simply jumping off from that one word but not tied to it. Whereas a description freezes more detail in time, not less. IMO YMMV

ETA: think of like the Lenormand, in which a Dog may be all sorts of things, as well as just a dog.

nuttyprofessor said:

Without explanation I can tell you that I am totally desillusioned with Golden Dawn. That implies I have not so much regard for the Rider/Waite deck. My distrust expands to all modern decks, as I suspect that they are commercially motivated. The creator of the TdM is a mystery, and that I like.

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I've also come around about them. Because, regardless of all the baloney involved, RWS still works for me. They are just tools, and if you (as my favorite RWS teacher Dusty White says) remove the ooky spooky, and make it a relationship between you and the cards, it works. IMO YMMV

But yeah, reading Decker and Dummett's book about the modern occult tarot basically exposed the feet of clay IMO. but ….

nuttyprofessor said:

My distrust expands to all modern decks, as I suspect that they are commercially motivated

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Just to point out my favourite Mythic Tarot is the 1986 version

I do have the New Mythic Tarot to take out with me, it does not feel as good

I will have to get another copy of the original version

I think the best thing about keywords is the time spent in contemplation and study to develop one's own. The idea of a deck you can write on would be great, as long as it is dry-erase!

Cards that have a single keyword printed on them make me uncomfortable because of the constraint. But the keywords I've developed for myself are freeing because I think of them as diving boards from which I can launch into interpretation.

nuttyprofessor said:

Thank you for the compliment. I find it a pity I get so little response, because I don't present my system as a showoff, but in order to get valuable feedback. I am still in the process of making up my mind how to read the cards in a non-positional spread. Unfortunately you don't seem to use the TdM, otherwise we could brainstorm about it. Maybe anyone else is interested to share ideas, in this thread or by means of PM?

Click to expand...

I don't know if this is the kind of feedback you're looking for, but here goes anyway.

Your list of keywords is very impressive. They are obviously the result of deep study and reflection, which elevates your reading style to an art rather than just a system. I went through a similar process many years ago when I first started reading with non-scenic pips. I used the numerology in the book Medieval Number Symbolism by V. F Hopper. This is Pythagoras filtered through a Christian sensibility that reflects how the numbers were understood in tarot's formative years.

Distilling the cards to one or two keywords did not put me in a strait jacket where I lost the flexibility of the story-telling approach and had to read the cards Lenormand-style in an oracular fortune-telling manner. Having a clearly defined core meaning for each card freed my creativity. All sorts of wildly creative associations flowed from the core. For instance, how can your core meanings of the suit of coins be applied if the coins are pizzas, or frisbees, or military medals?

If I freeze or get lost during a reading, I fall back on my core meanings. They serve as a touchstone, not a prison. I try to keep the core meanings as emotionally neutral as possible. Then I see cards as being either too strong, or weak and debilitated, or just right, depending on the surrounding cards (I don't use reversals).

Congratulations on devising such an excellent personal system. I don't see how it can be improved on. Just make sure that you can back up your keywords with the card image. For me, the image is king. This means that a keyword that works in one deck may not be relevant in another. I have slightly different core meanings for each deck I use, rather than generic meanings that I try to make fit every deck.

These are just some random thoughts I hope may be useful.

Wow, those are words that not only make my day, but several days.

I agree with you about the images, though it gets a little awkward with reversed cards. This is also if I turn them upside down again and position them lower than the others, as is my way of doing. Many cards look just fine, and don't suggest negative connotations, for example,looking at the Pope it is not easy to see a false guru, though it should be one of its meanings if reversed. This is also true for many court cards.

Still, I find it important to use reversals, because, if we believe in tarot's divinatory quality, it gives very very much extra information.

By the way, I have given also keywords to the court cards. http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=4461515&postcount=2
I am not sure about the King of Coins. I am considering to give the King and Queen of Wands the addional meaning of steering and facilitating respectively.
Do you have any suggestions?

PS. I found this post from some time back:

But I do want to note something my dear Papus said. In his Tarot of the Bohemians, he writes that one advantage of his number + suit system over the other ways of reading is that you don't have to remember a second set of meanings for reversed cards. And he specifically mentions that he's talking about all 78 cards, and not just the Trumps. The deck he recommends in that book is the Marseilles. So it looks like there has been a tradition of reading the TdM pips with reversals for a while.

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About the King of Coins: To me he seems to be evaluating his reality clearly and objectively. He holds his coin loosely and isn't looking at it because he's confident his money will always be there when he needs it. He's sitting comfortably in his chair in a relaxed position that was used in portraits to indicate a person who was so powerful and confident that he could cross his legs and sit casually, while everyone else had to sit upright and be on their best behavior.

I hope this gives you some ideas.