Farzon
I was wondering if this old thread would help you all.
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=112327
I've already seen that! It's fascinating, not to say ingenious, thank you. However, I find it more complicated than any GD instruction I've read so far... I am also intrigued by Ayumi's approach, even if it turns my whole Tarot-world upside down. I guess I'll take a closer look at Mel's Old Fashioned System over the holidays...
I agree with what others have said. One of the fun things about TdM decks is that they free you to explore other ways of deriving meaning for the pip cards. But you can read them any way you want.
And I think that's the thing I need to get used to... although I always interpreted illustrated minors with a theoretical concept rather than just by what I see.
I gravitate toward the same fall-back approach, and it's been said here before that there's really no good reason why we shouldn't use what we know if the result is satisfactory. That said, since there isn't a TdM "traditon" for purposes of divination, I try to stick with suit/element and number correspondences and downplay the astrological and qabala stuff. Since it's the pip cards that give me the most trouble, I've been considering the "pips-as-trumps" model as well, and my thinking on this has been enhanced by my study of the Voyager Tarot, which uses a similar concept (that is, the numbered suit cards share strong connections to the Major Arcana of the same number or that reduce to that number by numerology).
That's my approach as well so far.
The funny thing is, my numerological thoughts seem to be heavily influenced by what GD scriptures have said about the numbers.
I also try to take clues from the visuals. In the reading exchanges and other sources I stumbled across some interpretations that seem to have become common knowledge in interpreting the TdM.
For example the interpretation of the Ten of Staffs as something securing like a net. I rather see a firm stand of two against a crowd, which again brings me back to "too much for one to bear alone", "oppression" and all that. But the TdM card opens up this whole field of cooperation that is not part of the RWS or GD cards. So, in some way, my method starts to change already.