Yesterday, I posted about how the RWS deck was noteworthy in part because it added scenes to the Minor cards. Instead of a few Suit emblems bobbing in a sea of featureless white background, we finally had people and other beings actually doing things in these cards. Granted, the Aces each feature only a celestial hand appearing in the frame, but all of the other Minors offer fully-developed characters.
Except for two: the 3 of Swords and the 8 of Wands. So what might that decided lack of humanity say about the messages these cards represent?
The 3 of Swords is all about sorrow. It’s what happens when we try to let the brain take charge in matters of the heart. The results are often so painful that until a certain amount of healing can take place, there’s simply no bandwidth left available for additional human interaction. Haven’t you been so heartbroken at some point in your life that other people were reduced to moving props in the background of your anguish, all bungling about and mouthing silent, unintelligible words at you, and getting in the way of your grieving…?
And the 8 of Wands concerns the concept of swiftness. Things happen so quickly here that humans can’t even keep pace. The best we can do is try to track the leading edge of progress as it hurtles past us and beyond, and hope we can find those rocketing Wand-missiles when they finally drop down out of the sky and crash to Earth.
The lack of humanity signals us that something extreme is happening in these cards. Other people are swept out of the picture for a time, and it’s like these particular Minors have been set loose to wander an empty, echoing city. Until such time as their effects can die down, these influences will be profound…
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One of the greatest innovations of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was the creation of scenic Minors. Instead of, say, four Cups or six Wands emblazoned on a plain white background (as in early Tarot “pip” cards), you now had Minors that were every bit as populated and detailed as the Majors, with actual characters and fleshed-out scenarios.
Obviously, it’s not always possible to trick out a given area before you get busy with your cards. For example, if you’re reading for someone in a coffee shop, you can’t really violate local fire codes by setting up handfuls of candles and incense, and you can’t demand that the local populace shut its collective pie-hole for half an hour so that you can have the requisite ambience you desire.
Tarot Tip: Point of View Characters.
Along with questions about the timing of events, Tarot practitioners often consider binary yes/no questions to be some of the inquiries that Tarot is most ill-equipped to handle. After all, using Tarot to answer questions isn’t really the same thing as flipping a coin. Or at the very least, it’s like flipping a 78-sided coin — no easy task! But there are still ways of getting these binary queries addressed…
When you practice Tarot, you spend a tremendous amount of energy on examining what’s there in a reading: “What cards show up, and which of their meanings can apply in the context of this reading…?”
♈️ Once you start studying Tarot, you’ll quickly realize that it’s become common practice to use other metaphysical systems in conjunction with it. Some of the cards in the RWS even tell you this outright if you know what to look for, and where to find it. ♉️