How long did it take to click with you?

Owl Tarot

It clicked for me when I stopped taking a divinatory approach to learning the cards. When Crowley talks about the Tarot cards as being living beings...well he wasn't joking around. For a while I just saw each card as a laundry list of attributions, for example, the Devil is attributed to the letter Ayin, the sign Capricorn, the path between Hod and Tiphareth...etc et. That got me no where. Liber 777 is really what helped me though, it helped me to sort of drag all of it together into one essential spirit or "personality" that defines the card. The Devil is the Devil and there are a range of meanings that it could have. It could refer to animal instincts or outright evil, or it could simply mean having a good time without care or having a good time at the expense of the concerns of others.

Each card is like a personality that will have different things to say at different times.

I kinda feel the same way as you. My intuition guides me far away from divinatory meanings of any writer many many times and I have come to a similar conclusion myself: Each card is so full of attributions and alive that it can mean many different things in many different occasions. Even cards which only have negative traditional meanings can have positive ones as well in the proper context. This is how -I believe- people with all kinds of different faiths, beliefs and viewpoints of this World and not only those who believe in Thelema can appreciate the content and growth procedure ignited by the deck itself through the adventure of understanding it, and give the cards their own unique meaning which may be entirely different from Crowley's or mine or any other person's as well. This is one of the things I love about Tarot generally, and the Thoth deck in particular.