How to Read the Tarot
His [Oswald Wirth’s] attention is directed to the Trumps Major solely
and he has little to say on the divinatory side of the subject, that so-called
practical side which engrosses most persons who would call themselves tarot students. It is none of my own business, but it is clear from my knowledge
of the literature that under this aspect there is room for new treatment.
–A. E. Waite, “Introduction” in A. Thierens,
The General Book of Tarot (1930), 11
In this book, we reveal many of the sources that inspired the art of the Waite-Smith tarot deck, and all the subsequent versions of decks that have drawn from this design. However, we will begin by ensuring that even as a beginner you are able to read the tarot cards either with the Waite-Smith deck or any version of tarot—even those without fully illustrated scenes on the minor arcana such as in the Marseilles deck.
We will do this by revealing the secret of the structure of tarot through correspondence to the Kabbalah.4 This is a complex subject we’ll cover in more detail in a later chapter; however, it can be simplified into just fourteen words to get us reading tarot in about ten minutes. You can then spend the rest of your life practising and building on these basics.
A. E. Waite wrote much on the Kabbalah, the Jewish system of mysticism, and used it as a map of both his magical life and his personal form of Christian mysticism. In doing so, he developed the initiatory system of spiritual development from the Golden Dawn, the Hermetic Order of which he had originally been a member before resigning in 1914. He went on to found his own mystical order, the Brothers of the Rosy Cross—in which he developed his second tarot images with stained glass artist J. B. Trinick.5
The tarot can be mapped onto the Tree of Life, the fundamental diagram of Kabbalah, through a system of correspondences where one element in one system corresponds to a similar element in another system. In layering many systems through correspondence, a magician aims to bring their entire universe into an interconnected totality, ultimately seeing the fundamental patterns and processes underpinning the whole of everyday life.
By using correspondences in the manner of Waite and other magicians, we can learn tarot very quickly from just fourteen keywords. These keywords relate to the forty minor arcana and twelve court cards as they correspond to their equivalent in the map of the Tree of Life.
The ten numbers of the four suits (1 through 10) are equivalent to the ten Sephiroth on the Tree of Life. We give a keyword that embodies the nature of each Sephira below. Although there are many more potential keywords, we find these most useful in readings.
- Seed
- Energy
- Structure
- Growing
- Sorting
- Balancing
- Results
- Changing
- Ending
- Fixing
So these numbers represent ten stages in any creative process, from the seed of an idea to its final fixing in the world of action. Every question we are ever asked as a tarot reader will be somewhere placed along this spectrum, from “How will my new relationship develop?” (Seed and Energy) to “Is my job secure and what should I do?” (Changing and Ending).
However, splitting the universe into only ten stages is not quite enough to make a comprehensive and flexible divinatory map. We need to know which aspect of life is within any of these stages. So we then take the four suits as the four worlds:
- Pentacles: Resources (Earth)
- Swords: Thoughts (Air)
- Cups: Emotions (Water)
- Wands: Ambitions (Fire)
Those are again, rough approximations; if we have to force anything in the universe into just one of four categories, it will always be a tight squeeze! As an example, a pencil would correspond to swords, as it is connected to writing down thoughts. An artist would be connected with cups, for creating art that appeals to our emotions. A career would be pentacles, as it corresponds to the world of resources. These also correspond to the four elements of earth, air, water, and fire and the four directions.
However, we only need those fourteen keywords to now mix and match any of the forty combinations of ten cards in four suits.
If we take it as a formula, step by step, let’s try:
Ace (1) of Swords
This would be the Seed of Thought according to our keywords.
If we think about what that might mean in the everyday world, a “seed of thought” would be the beginnings of an idea, planting an idea; even the film Inception comes to mind.
We can also use this method to work out reversed cards. In this case, a seed of thought reversed would be the opposite—a niggling doubt.
Let’s try another:
7 of Wands
This would be the Success of Ambition. When we look at Pamela’s drawing of this card, we can see clearly how she visualised the success of ambition—you’ve made it, but you have to fight everyone else off to keep your place! If we were to reverse the “success of ambition,” it would be failure and lack of ambition; and when we turn to Waite in PKT, we read this card reversed as “perplexity, embarrassments, anxiety. It is a caution against indecision” (184), which to us sounds close enough to what happens when failing through a lack of ambition.
Let’s try another card:
4 of Cups
This is the Growing of Emotion, so it would be a generally positive card to receive in a relationship reading or a new employment. Are you content enough or do you want to add some more? It shows there is still space to develop the emotion—all the way from the 4 stage to the 10, Growing to Fixing.
To add to our ability to map any situation, we need to know what level of energy is active at the stage (1 through 10) and in the world (suit) of the event. We do this with the court cards, of which we have already learnt half of what we need to remember—the four suits—and now we simply represent four levels of energy as they correspond to four different stages of life: child, adolescent, and mature female/mature male. These are the four courts, and the keywords for those levels are:
- Page: Unformed …
- Knight: Directed …
- Queen: Experienced …
- King: Established …
So the Page of Pentacles is “Unformed … Resources.” He is the youngest energy in the element of earth. So he wants to get on and be practical and rewarded, but is only just starting. This is a good card to receive in a new business reading, for example, although it means you will have to work onwards for success; it will not be immediate.
The Queen of Wands would be “Experienced … Ambitions.” So as a person, she is someone who knows what she wants—and how to get it. She has got to where she is by knowing herself and her abilities. If this card came up as an advice card, it would advise the querent to be like the Queen, or to get the advice of someone who is successful in the same field.
With Fourteen Words,
We Can Now Perform a Tarot Reading
We can now perform a simple reading with only our fourteen words. As we deepen our knowledge of the Waite-Smith deck, we can add on many layers to these core meanings. We have left out the major arcana cards at the moment because as beginners, we read these simply as they are; Strength means “strength” and the Hermit means “being by yourself.”
So here is a three-card reading (without any of the majors turning up) to answer “What should I do to get the most out of the changes in my workplace?”
6 of Cups + 3 of Pentacles + 9 of Swords
We recall our fourteen keywords or look them up and get:
Balancing of Emotions + Structure of Resources + End of Thought
If we now expand those core meanings, we can see how they run together. The advice is to calm down and move on (balance your emotions), get your act together and show them what you can do (structure your resources), and stop worrying because what’s decided has already been decided (End of Thought). When we look at the images of the cards, this should correspond to that reading. In fact, it may even add more layers as you see how Pamela painted these concepts.
We will see later how we think Pamela painted the cards based on a similar set of keywords and concepts, from the Golden Dawn’s Book T, the Order’s teachings on the tarot. In fact, we would suggest any beginner to the Waite-Smith deck and symbolism in other decks use our book here with Book T and not use Waite’s descriptions of the minors at all.
In this example reading, we could pull a court card to see how we should get our act together, and if we got the Queen of Swords, that would be “Experienced Thought.” So, we would want to show our bosses how we had already thought about any of the issues the company faced; perhaps produce a “solution sheet” and pin it over our desk.
To add the majors into our reading, for now, we take them as they appear. The majors are images of big concepts and can be read just as they look—the Star is dreamy and hopeful (“when you wish upon a star”); the Tower is sudden disruption (just look at what’s actually pictured).6
By using the basic keyword method, you can read any deck based on the tarot structure, even non-scenic decks that have pip cards (like the 9 of Diamonds from playing cards, for example) for the minors rather than fully illustrated scenes. With just fourteen words, you can now read the Marseilles deck or use a regular playing card deck if you learn the following four correspondences:
- Hearts = Cups
- Spades = Pentacles
- Clubs = Swords
- Diamonds = Wands
As ever, there are variations of these correspondences, and we advise learning whatever seems most sensible to you in the beginning, become reasonably proficient using it, and then try out variations. It may take longer but it will not be confusing; we have seen many students stuck for years because they cannot decide the “right method” so they do not choose anything and endlessly await the correct solution. There is no “correct” solution; just the one that works for you now.
If we were to list twenty-two keywords for the major arcana, it would be close to Waite’s conception of them when he was producing his more considered work with J. B. Trinick some ten years later. They would be:
- Fool: Redemption
- Magician: Intelligence
- High Priestess: Devotion
- Empress: Soul of Nature
- Emperor: Singularity
- Hierophant: Religion
- Lovers: Marriage
- Chariot: Revelation
- Strength: Existence
- Hermit: Tradition
- Wheel of Fortune: Consummation
- Justice: Law
- Hanged Man: Secret Tradition
- Death: Sacrifice
- Temperance: Communion
- Devil: Temptation
- Blasted Tower: Change
- Star: Aspiration
- Moon: Reflection
- Sun: Transfiguration
- Last Judgement: Calling
- World: Outer Nature
Whilst these keywords seem very abstract, they are profound statements on each of the major arcana as seen by Waite beyond his secrecy, as we will examine later in this book. They may not be the words the majority of readers today would associate with these cards, but they are the words Waite would have recognised as communicating the nature of each card as he saw it.
One-Card Reading with the Majors
As an example of how quickly we can learn to read tarot, here is an exercise that installs the skill of reading just one card of the twenty-two majors for an answer to any question. In the Tarosophy training methods, we always split out skills and methods—we learn the skill first, and then apply it to a method. Sometimes the teaching of the skill doesn’t even involve tarot! Here we apply the major cards to any aspect of life.
The major arcana cards feature images of “archetypes,” fundamental patterns of our experience. So they can be applied to anything; if we take the Tower, this is an image of the archetypal energy of change as we have previously listed. We can apply that to anything; Tower + Learning = “total change of mind”; Tower + Love = “shocking admission that changes everything”; Tower + Residence = “sudden change of house.” So take any major, make a note of one word that has its energy; i.e., the Hermit might be “tradition” as we give it, or “solitary” might come to your mind. Then apply the word to any of these aspects of life:
- Love
- Relationships
- Family
- Children
- Career
- Money
- Residence
- Law
- Education
These are the main areas you will be asked about in tarot reading, according to a survey of some 80,000 questions we conducted. Actually, three out of five questions will be about relationships!
If we take our Hermit card to the area of law, we get “solitary law,” which we might translate as “single law” or “unique ruling,” something that stands on its own ground (the mountaintop in the card image) or apart from previous rulings. If we take the Hermit to education, we get “traditional education” using our keywords.
If you practice this exercise for a while, you will see how powerful these archetypes are; they embody the human experience, universal to every life. When someone then asks you a question, such as “I feel stuck in my job, but it is safe and pays well. What should I do?” and you pull the Star from the twenty-two majors, you might just find yourself automatically and easily saying, “It is time to go for what you have always aspired.”
Waite’s Rose Cross Spread
As a purely spiritual self-reading method using the majors as seen by Waite, we share here a previously unpublished method from a private esoteric group, the Order of Everlasting Day.7 This is called the “Waite’s Rose Cross” method as it uses Waite’s language (actual methods used by Waite appear towards the end of this book). It is a method that uses the majors to divine one’s state of personal connection to the universe.
- Take the twenty-two major arcana cards from your deck.
- Shuffle whilst contemplating the symbol of the Rose Cross.8
- Take the first card and lay it in position 1, saying: “The rose is the first, most beautiful, and perfect of all the flowers. Such is my soul.”
- Lay down the following six cards in order to the diagram, saying:
- It is guarded by thorns everlasting, preserving its purity.
- It is in the centre of the garden of philosophy, wherein the
true rose blooms. - The sun and moon are the red and white of the roses and
herein is all mystery. - The green lion eats of the sun and feeds the rose.
- The rose is a perfume to the wise, and a balm to the blessed.
- It is prepared in blood and turns to the light, to its own
perfection in this art.
Say: “In hoc signo vinces” (“by this sign you will conquer”).
You can now read these seven major cards in the following context, and we will see later how each of these keywords may be expanded for practical, self-development, and spiritual readings.
- The Rose Card: This card shows how your soul is seeking to bloom at this time. If for example you receive the Hanged Man, it is secret traditions, esotericism, and magic you should next explore, not external religion, which would be indicated by the Hierophant.
- The Thorns Card: This card is what protects you, but also hinders you—it is a challenge card to your spiritual progress at this moment.
So if you received the Star card here, it would indicate that your aspirations are worthy but perhaps too much to handle at this time.
You should aim to be more realistic in your appraisal of your progress. - The Garden Card: The Garden shows the situation and environment around you from a spiritual perspective. It includes all aspects of your everyday life, which are seen as examples of the lesson you are being called to learn. The Tower here would show that the events of your life are fundamentally teaching you about change. Only after you’ve fully comprehended this lesson will your life move on from the events of
the present. - The Sun and Moon Card: This card shows what is presently divided or separated in your life and thus what you must get together. If it were Judgement, it would suggest that you are splitting your calling, feeling pulled between two aspects of your life that both have value. Your task would be to unify these two callings, should you receive this card.
- The Green Lion Card: The Lion shows us how to go about incorporating the spiritual lessons of this spread. It is the action
card—if it were the Tower, the Lion would be asking us to make changes in our life; if it were Temperance, then communion would be called for, perhaps in meeting others or seeking fellowship and/or communication with others of like mind; the Hermit however would task us to find solace in ourselves. - The Healing Card: Representing the balm and perfume of the soul, this card is about “spiritual resources” and indicates our best avenue of assistance in accomplishing the work of the Lion. Receiving the World card here would mean that our assistance comes from our everyday and commonplace activities—hobbies, crafts, volunteer work, action, travel, and all the possibilities of the outer world. If it were the High Priestess, we may find assistance and reward in our devotion to a particular task, project, or cause.
- The Blood Card: This card shows the light to which we must turn
our spiritual life above all things. A card such as the Hermit here would show that we should seek more learning in tradition, and teaching; a card such as Justice would tell us that we should look to understand the rules of the universe, science, esoteric sciences and models, and discern all things in the light of law.
This spread is one suitable for consideration, contemplation and journaling, and is given here as a method you can return to several times throughout studying the materials in this book. As you learn more about Waite and Smith’s lives, philosophy, and likely meanings intended in their deck, this spread will continually open to you, for as it is said, we progress “through the rose to the cross, and through the cross to the rose.”