Beginner Question

Thoughtful

along with the "pips-as-trumps" model that draws connections between the numbers.

l use this method a lot when reading the scenic tarots, but for some reason it never occurred to me to use it with Tdm. How remiss is this, thanks for the nudge :)
 

Krystal Mystic

From my own experience, I say, go to where you feel drawn. I felt the same way about the TdM vs. the RWS decks when I first started reading back in 1990. I bought a Rider deck, and after using it only a few times, I didn't like it. It felt contrived. I was very drawn to the older decks and began reading everything I could about tarot history. I loved looking at the pics of the early decks in Kaplan's books. After I bought my first TdM (the Tarot Classic--there weren't many to pick from back then), I felt like I finally had come home.

For many years while I was learning to do readings, I just used the meanings from the RWS. It was easier because most learning materials use that deck or one of its modern clones. I gradually adapted my meanings to better suit the imagery on the Trump cards and experimented with various ways of assigning meanings to the pips, like using playing card meanings (including the Hedgewytchery website mentioned earlier). The lovely thing about not having pictorial pips is that you can assign any meaning you want to them.