AUTHOR’S NOTE: Those tarot readers who use decks with non-scenic or semi-scenic minor cards are already masters of approximation since they aren’t being steered by someone else’s vision. They had to come up with a personal set of definitions that is not dependent on prosaic scenes, so their divination is often fresher, more extemporaneous and less folkloric in complexion even though they may not be applying mystical or intuitive speculation to their work. There is no precedent to speak of in tarot history for reading with these decks, so the guiding principles are few and they are largely dominated by suit-and-number theory augmented by private deliberation.

I salute those who are able to dispense with the visual crutch of “canned narrative vignettes” and have been trying to emulate them (particularly the Tarot de Marseille contingent) for years. As a life-long Thoth user I already had a head-start with its semi-scenic Minor Arcana that I’ve dubbed “glorified pip cards,” so it was only a short leap to devising my own interpretive framework for the TdM pips.

Aleister Crowley knew where the wellspring of tarot inspiration lay when he set out to “execute a pack after the tradition of the Medieval Editors” (although I think his actual point-of-departure would have been the early Italian Renaissance) and – despite acknowledging the insurmountable difficulties that artist Frieda Harris faced in attempting to capture his arcane ideas – he largely succeeded. His deck is the “gold standard” for readers who want to remain within the occult fold.

I didn’t own a Waite-Smith deck or anything close to it for over forty years, so I was never captivated by its pictorial allure, instead opting for intensive study and practice of the core knowledge formulated by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at the end of the 19^th Century and disseminated in popular tarot literature – most notably Crowley’s Book of Thoth – ever since. The main challenge I faced when embracing the TdM paradigm was to “scrape the esoteric mud off my boots” as I entered.

With invaluable editorial input from tarot author Lee Bursten, I made a credible stab at defining the pip-card population on my first attempt. The court cards I dedicated to the portrayal of human nature (primarily as exemplified by Crowley’s “moral characteristics”) without leaning heavily on the trappings of the aristocratic hierarchy of old. It took me two tries and a galvanizing critique by Sherryl Smith of the Tarot Heritage blog to nail down the trump cards, but I think I arrived at a workable solution that departs from the archetypal norms of the Jungian mindset in favor of the cultural and sociopolitical milieu of tarot’s seminal period. (See Cherry Gilchrist’s book Tarot Triumphs for one of my sources.)

When it comes to crafting an “approximate” narrative while working with the TdM, there is little help to be found in visual free-association from the pip-card images (what there is must be extracted solely from their graphic elements), and the creative imagination also has few hand-holds to grab onto other than the impressions that can be gleaned from the suit meanings and the Pythagorean number scheme. For the RWS fan weaned on Smith’s theatrical artistry, it is a barren landscape indeed.

Apart from the standard playing cards, the TdM is the least conversational form of cartomantic divination and must be coaxed to give up its insights. It is equal parts freedom from predisposition and responsibility for innovative reflection. Its cryptic minor cards are the bane of modern diviners who are used to having an anecdotal script from which to launch a reading. Lacking a spark other than the stimulus of suit-and-number cues, the divinatory fire may never be lit for the average practitioner. Where scenic cards provide an interpretive safety-net, “pip” decks offer a refreshing but also intimidating release from conventional delineation. Using them is not a matter of internalizing established meanings or riffing fortuitously on canonical images, but rather of taking ownership of a private library stocked with personal observations that can only be gathered from experience and contemplation.

Quite frankly, this is what I appreciate most about it: I have before me an uncharted territory with only a few signposts by which to navigate. Freestyle intuition typically falters in this wilderness and I wind up engaging directly with the relationships between the cards in both meaning and spread position to come up with a logical progression of events and circumstances. I’m able to wander at will within the bounds of this domain, finding inspiration here-and-there without having to create anything from the subjective “whole cloth” of intuitive guesswork. As I see it, mastery of this improvisational fluidity is what separates the great readers from the merely good ones; it’s an advanced state of expertise in which conjecture plays “second fiddle” to observation and rational elucidation.