The fashionable tabula rasa intrinsic approach to the TdM could help those who are locked into what are considered to be the 'traditional' Rider-Waite meanings. It is certainly elegant, but it may not work for everyone, nor is it necessarily the way the TdM was read before people allowed themselves to be sucked into Rider-Waite-ism.
We don't know much about how the typical fortune teller used the TdM. Unfortunately (perhaps), we do know something about the philosophical approaches to Tarot by Etteille, Court, Levi, Papus, Wirth, and the like, who did not restrain themselves with the straitjacket of strictly intrinsic interpretation. No doubt some readers would read the minors in a fashion similar to playing card cartomancy, of which there must have been many variants.
It might be good therapy for Rider-Waite addicts to try using only the TdM Trumps, at least at first. Why torment yourself trying to read the minors if you find it so terribly difficult? (Even EE uses only trumps when, as he says, his pockets aren't big enough to hold a full deck.) This would definitely be an anti-Waite approach, since Waite himself was of the opinion that only the minors were really appropriate for divination. Divinatory meanings for the trumps given in his tarot book are a concession to those who feel compelled to use the entire deck.
