AUTHOR’S NOTE: As I recently told one of my online tarot groups, I’ve saved “the worst for last.” When compared to the majority of modern diviners, I’m very far off the beaten path in my dim view of the RWS deck.

While the Waite-Smith (RWS) tarot may be the most popular deck in the world, as a lifelong Thoth user I find it to be shallow in its treatment of the Minor Arcana and overly circumspect regarding the esoteric principles underlying the Major Arcana. In the first instance, I understand that Waite left Smith largely to her own devices when creating the “small” cards, and in the second case his vows of secrecy prevented him from being more explicit in his handling of the trumps. The court cards hew closely to the historical model and I have few problems with them (although Crowley’s “proto-psychological” descriptions are considerably more convincing), but I find Smith’s overall contribution to be excessively prosaic and Waite’s is far too religious for my taste.

That said, I do use the RWS for public readings because it is what most sitters expect to see. However, I almost invariably apply Thoth meanings to the cards except to the extent that the RWS images (I call them “canned narrative vignettes”) can invite the pursuit of compelling metaphors and analogies related to the scenes, which is sometimes the only way to elicit the “Aha!” reaction.

I realize that its commonplace themes are what makes Smith’s work approachable for the average reader, but they stray quite far from the source material in both the Golden Dawn’s Liber T and Waite’s own Pictorial Key to the Tarot, which already deviates substantially from its Golden Dawn roots. While Waite wanted to keep the sacred book of the tarot out of the hands of the uninitiated rabble, Crowley felt no such compunction since he knew that few of them would be able to comprehend it anyway, so there was no existential threat in presenting the knowledge for all to see.

The challenge of being a metaphysical philosopher and occult explorer working in the field of everyday divination (aka “fortune-telling”) is to frame the arcane rhetoric in terms that the ordinary client can understand and, more importantly, apply to their circumstances. This comes down to cultivating an expansive vocabulary that permits “shifting gears” as necessary to accommodate the degree of sophistication (or, more realistically, lack thereof) exhibited by the typical querent. This hypercritical attitude is not hubris, it is simple pragmatism if we want to get our message across as clearly as possible. Becoming a consummate storyteller with a deep reservoir of cultural, social and historical “ready references” to share with our audience is one of the best ways to deliver a reading that is both easily assimilated and sufficiently on-point while still speaking the unique language of the tarot.

My goal, beyond offering a detailed rendering of the “received wisdom,” is to make the session as entertaining as I can for both my sitter and myself, and a lively recounting of the “story in the cards” is a reliable way to guarantee that result. The extent to which I can nudge clients toward putting my observations into their own words during our dialogue is a convenient measure of my success in divulging what I see. I view this commitment to effortless and transparent communication in the service of an esoteric mindset as a singular feature of my uncommon approach to divination.