Sorry I can't answer all the posts I would like to as I am on my phone. I will try to do so in the morning.
In any case I think it depends what kind of range we are talking about. While the Thoth and RWS aren't the same deck one can glean much about one from the other. The Lord of pleasure does have a sinister side to it. There is what Crowley says about the card and the dark waves of the ocean and vines like tentacles. I find it ironic that although Waite chose to accentuate the brighter aspects of this card its darker ones still manage to filter through.
But that range should be based on something, if only because the Six is what it is because of the Five and Seven and also because of the Emperor, Justice, Hermit and Lovers. It is easy to ask "what if" when that serves free association but then any discussion becomes simple art appreciation, valid in its own way but ultimately as onanistic as, well, Sun in Scorpio itself, when discussing Tarot cards. It can be again easy to ask "what if" Waite used this or that influence and he probably did use all the ones Tehuti posted but we know what were his main influences and can, perhaps even should, use those as our base. Without that we have no structure to our enquiry. This is because the images have passed through several filters of interpretation and are second or third hand.
What a card means and how it is used in a reading are very often two very different things. Even Waite understood this, adding the chapter on related meanings for the cards at the end. This chapter is often at odds with the first part but it does constitute an important section for readers. Not necessarily for occult purposes, though.
This isn't to say I believe my own interpretation to be "correct." It is my own, subject to my own fallacies and biases. As has been shown, my own interpretation differs from ravenest's, even though we use more or less the same tools. I myself tend to see the negative aspects of the card highlighted while he sees the positive ones. The difference is that I can back up my conclusions about the card by attempting to recreate the working process by which the card was made. I didn't make up that process. Rather I have observed several coincidences and tried several hypotheses. At some point coincidence becomes evidence. It walks like a duck and quacks like one, so it isn't too far fetched to conclude what it is. Whether it is a loon or something else of that family can be debated, but it is highly unlikely that it is in fact an armadillo. The ultimate difference is that I can do that, and not just say "that bleeping dwarf creeps me out."