Moongold said:
There is no Sword in sight on IIII Swords.
Hi Moongold, I'm not sure if this is what you mean, so please forgive me if you already know this, but perhaps this will help. On the Swords cards, those curved black lines are actually supposed to be swords, albeit somewhat abstract swords. So the four curved black lines are actually supposed to be four swords.
lark said:
When I look at seven cups on a Marseilles card I see my Robin Wood seven or Morgan Greer seven.
And then I think" Why am I doing this?"
I just want my Morgan Greer deck.
Hi lark, please don't get frustrated. The questions that you are asking are the same questions anyone asks who has learned on RWS-type decks and then looks at Marseille decks and wonders how to read with them.
There are several posts in the History and Using Tarot forums by Rusty Neon and myself, speculating about various methods one might use to read non-illustrated pips. However, since you don't want to be referred to threads, I won't link to them!
My position is, the Marseille pips were designed to play card games with and not for divination, so therefore one should feel free to read them any way one wants, since there is no one definitive agreed-upon method.
When you say you think of illustrated decks when you look at the Marseille pips, you bring up a very important point. I know some people on this forum think it's completely and outrageously wrong, but the fact of the matter is that there are people who read Marseille and other non-illustrated-pip decks in just this way. In my opinion there is nothing inferior about this method as opposed to the numerology method, because both involve arbitrarily assigning meanings to things which weren't designed to convey meanings.
Personally, for what it's worth, I find the number-plus-suit method by itself to be not particulary enjoyable. I can read in this way, but it's not as much fun as reading with pictures. Nevertheless I frequently experiment with it. I do find that looking at the flowers, etc. on the cards adds an interesting level, although it still feels like a stretch for me.
As to the very good question of why then would one read with the Marseille instead of an illustrated deck, the answer to this is that it can be an interesting exercise to have general meanings in mind for the card but not actually be looking at a picture. I've found it helpful, when reading this way, to call to mind the RWS picture just to remind me of what card it is, and then try to not keep the picture in mind but rather just a general meaning (for example, "sneakiness" for the 7 of Swords). By doing so, you may find that reading with the non-illustrated deck is limiting in some ways but freeing in others, because you can combine meanings and relate them to each other more freely than when you have the pictures in front of you.
Reading in this way (that is, by keeping in mind RWS-type meanings) actually has an advantage, because it allows you to read with any non-illustrated-pip deck (there are lots of nice ones, including the Ancient Italian and the Visconti, and modern ones like the Art of Tarot or the Mystic Meg), because you're not using the pictorial elements which are distinctive to the Marseille, like the flowers and stems.
As far as reading with cold cuts, Umbrae would probably say that that's not a bad idea!
Hope this helps --
Lee