Jupiter Caelus
You are absolutely right! I couldn't have worded it better, "trying to escape the New Age veneer". I thought I was ready. To finally go over to Thoth. Obviously that is not to say I have achieved total mastery over the RWS, but still I thought I was in a place where I could finally begin my Thoth journey. How does one cross over from the "dread" stage to "learn and accept" stage?
Compared to most of the people here, I'm a "noob" in Tarot. Best let them truly answer that one.
For me, It's only nearing my one year anniversary with the Thoth and it's only in the last month or so that I've been making good progress; probably because I've had the time to really study it. The dread stage, I found, correlated perfectly with my lack of understanding of almost everything that would be considered prerequisite knowledge. In that sense, the RW screwed me over because its main demographic uses it for what seems like aesthetic purposes in their own little fairyland.
The remedy to it was reversing that lack of understanding - I got my hands on all the recommended texts and started on my own knowledge of the basics.
By the way, in my post above I wrote "9 of Wands". I meant Swords. Don't know how I did that.