how do you read a card when the depiction deviates from conventional meaning？

Sibylline

For me, it depends on the image and the "mood" of the particular image. Sometimes, I go straight to the RWS interpretations.

For example, The Tower in The Lover's Path is called "Oppression." Rarely does it mean oppression when I do love readings. It usually takes on the RWS sexual meaning unless surrounding cards say otherwise.

Sometimes I like a new take on traditional images. The Chariot in The Lover's Path shows Tristan and Isolde in a tight embrace. I always read that card as a mutual and powerful attraction that neither party can stop or do a damn thing about. They're "stuck" on each other.

The one that really bugs me on the Anna K is the 5 of swords. So violent and very limited interpretation (for me) in the guidebook. But, then again, she did want to craft a deck that made sense to her with a lot of dynamic images, so I have to respect her vision. It's just that I cringe whenever in turns up.
 

JylliM

Thirteen said:
Each time I get a new deck, I go through it card by card. I look at the image, and I think of the conventional meaning. Almost always I can match them up. Almost always...I'll get back to that. Example, that Anna K. image (seen here: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/4b/4a/41/4b4a4198107ec869bdc36141215e879b.jpg). Here is the conventional Rider-Waite meaning:

Let's talk another look at Anna K.'s image: the Woman's almost literally on the threshold of some undertaking. And given the messenger's gauntlets and all, it looks like she's being handed this by a fast horseman. Some swift decision has already happened; one that required this messenger to get this to her ASAP. And look at her face: there's a smile—she got great hope, and she seems to believe that this is a good message, not a bad or dire one. She's eager to read it and "act." So. Spot on Anna K. IMHO, she captured EXACTLY the conventional meaning. :) I mean, I totally understand that some images make you go "Huh? How did they come up with that for this card?" But a lot of the time, we don't bother to really examine the image or the conventional meaning. On the surface they don't seem to jive, and so we assume they they're not the same or even similar. But often, if we do take the time to really think about image/meaning, the picture turns out to not be that off the mark.

I did say "almost" though, didn't I? There is one that I've yet to figure out. 5/Pents conventional meaning is: a crisis that upsets material security (health, home, etc.), also destitution, and often "outsider" status. Which is why it can relate to someone having a mistress, because the mistress and the affair puts the couple outside of society. Here is the Secret Tarot's picture for the 5/Coins: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/346495765062972439/ Hat's off if you can tell me what this card has to do with the conventional meaning of the 5/Coins. :)
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In the Anna K LWB, the creator states that this card's meaning is so simple as to be almost embarrassing (or something like that, I don't have it with me). It just means 'a message. That's what's really offputting here. There's a picture of a messenger delivering a message', and the creator's intention is that it means 'a message', pure and simple. I've had to make the decision to ignore her intention and read a whole lot of stuff into the image that wasn't intended to be there. Which is fine, it was just quite offputting until I decided that that was how I'd deal with it. :)

The Secret Tarot 5 of Coins - maybe it's the photographer who's the outsider. He gets to look, to photograph, but not be part of the action.
 

mydearruby

JylliM said:
In the Anna K LWB, the creator states that this card's meaning is so simple as to be almost embarrassing (or something like that, I don't have it with me). It just means 'a message. That's what's really offputting here.
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Yeah I think what bothers me is the same thing----there is certainly a correlation between "swiftness" and "message." But, swiftness is a much larger and all-encompassing category that can contain "message" as a subset. The other way around, however, does not work...I have difficulty looking into a simple image of "message" and then thinking of "swiftness" in a broader sense. Consider how I sometimes come across 8 of wands as pure adrenaline rush, the image of a hand receiving a letter is a bit confining.

Sibylline said:
For example, The Tower in The Lover's Path is called "Oppression." Rarely does it mean oppression when I do love readings. It usually takes on the RWS sexual meaning unless surrounding cards say otherwise.
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Here for the same reason I found tower in the lover's path confining---that it only cherry-picks a very specific, fixed subset of meaning that does not encourage much free-association.

That said, *simple-minded* decks certainly have their beauty. For those who could appreciate clarity it is certainly an asset rather than liability. Perhaps when Anna K wants to suggest "adrenaline rush" to me one day, she might suggest knight of wands instead=)
 

mydearruby

a lot of problems with 5s as always! Very interesting interpretation of the Secret Tarot 5 of Coins---speaking as a shutterbug, the photographer is indeed a loner separated from all the worldly glamor by his lens!

Sibylline said:
The one that really bugs me on the Anna K is the 5 of swords. So violent and very limited interpretation (for me) in the guidebook. But, then again, she did want to craft a deck that made sense to her with a lot of dynamic images, so I have to respect her vision. It's just that I cringe whenever in turns up.
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Oh I forgot this one. *co-cringe*!
 

seven stars

For me, I try to stick with Rider Waite images. If for some reason I'm reading with a completely different sort of deck, I go by what the deck designer intended for each card, making it a whole new ballgame. It's like, if you switch to Lenormand, of course you're going to read it like a Lenormand & not try to make it Tarot. It's kind of a mind stretching exercise. I do like it when there are decks that are RWS but with a little bit of a twist to them so the meanings are just a little biased...like, Cats Eye. I can always relate to how a cat would "feel" or "respond" to the various situations in those well-thought-out illustrations. The more obscure ones, like Ironwing.....I wouldn't even know where to begin if I didn't look at the card translations.
 

Thirteen

Think of the message as a flag coming down in a race

mydearruby said:
I have difficulty looking into a simple image of "message" and then thinking of "swiftness" in a broader sense.
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You've never bounced in your seat waiting for someone's reply? Checked the door for a delivery? Checked your e-mail, over and over again, your adrenaline rising? And you've never had that message appear, maybe just a "Yes!" to a text, coming quick as quick could be and shrieked with delight? Felt that rush shoot through you as if you'd rocketed up to the sky? Bolted out the door as if given wings?

Look at that woman's face...she's excited. She's going to have that rush, you can tell, soon as she tears open that message and sees that "yes!"

I mean, yes, I understand that she's not moving. But messages MOVE. The message that went out from her MOVED, the message that came back, came back swiftly, moving. And the feeling she's going to get from it, that's going to release her like a racehorse to literally move. Now she can act. So, think of that message more like a flag coming down in a race. Something that says "GO!"
 

Thirteen

JylliM said:
The Secret Tarot 5 of Coins - maybe it's the photographer who's the outsider. He gets to look, to photograph, but not be part of the action.
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That's a good point. Photographers are always outsiders looking in. And certainly this is as close as our plump-boorish-oldish fellow is going to get to a glamorous woman: looking through a lens to snap her picture. So it does kinda-sorta relate to the poor folk gazing in through the windows of wealth and abundance. They can see it, but they know it will never be theirs. The only problem with this correlation is that our photographer (what we can see of him), doesn't seem destitute and saddened by this.

The typical, 5/Pent image of people out in the snow presents a really dire situation. They need food, warmth, shelter, and medical attention. They really could die out there. That help is on the other side of a glass window--they can see it but not reach it--makes it even worse. The photographer, on the other hand, is getting a chance to take a picture, and be in the same room with this woman--a chance he'd never have gotten but for his talent at picture taking. So, in a way, his talent rewards him. Putting it another way: if the Secret Tarot image was of a photographer lost behind other photographers, all getting to take this woman's picture but he could not, then that (IMHO) would be more in tune with the 5/Pents.
 

Thirteen

Addendum 5/Pents...helping each other out through the lean times?

After looking at a thread in the Study Group on this card, it occurred to me that maybe we're viewing the Secret Tarot card wrong by thinking of the photographer as the outsider. What if he and the woman are like the two people in 5/Pents, both outsiders? And like those two, helping each other out.

She gets a photograph that she can use to gain "jobs" (actress?), and he gains a picture that might get people into his studio, wanting their own photo taken.

That is part of the 5/Pents--the two outside may not be getting help from those inside, but they are helping each other to survive. Maybe this mis-matched pair in the photo studio is an example of that kind of partnership. If those in dire situations stick together, lean and rely on each other, they can survive.
 

Thoughtful

l have the Secret Tarot and did use it a lot. So glad the 5 of coins came up for discussion it always puzzled me. She looks quite a refined lady and maybe because she is down on her luck she is having to make a living being photographed by sleazy old men. She is totally out of her comfort zone.
When this card came up l had to fall back on meanings l was familiar with.
 

Sibylline

Learning a deck's language

Thirteen, I really like your interpretation of the 5 of coins in the Secret Tarot because it broadens my understanding of it. I couldn't stand that card in that deck (along with quite a few others). Maybe I should dust off The Secret Tarot and give it another whirl.

On that note, something just occurred to me about working with decks that deviate from traditional imagery. When I get a deck like that, I will use it A LOT until the cards make sense to me. It's like the process of learning a new language. At first, I may just pick out words and phrases but, the more I practice with it, the better I understand what it's trying to say in its own voice. But most importantly, the deck will reveal how it should be read.

For example, after using the Anna K. for awhile, the 8 of wands made sense to me when I felt that the message could be arriving to the woman OR the woman is sending the message out (she hands off the scroll to the messenger). That interpretation is very similar to the one I use when I read the 8 of wands in RWS decks. I always ask, "Who or what is sending the message? Who is the message intended for? What is the message saying?"

The image on the Anna K. seems to make those questions of sender and receiver front and center in my readings. Because of the dynamic images in the Anna K, I discovered the cards on either side will answer those questions clearly. In other words, reading the Anna K. with attention to positionality of the cards' images is that deck's strength.
 
3 cards keep on repeating all of the time 7 of Wands and Knights of Wands as action to be taken