delaneyblues said:
Hi thanks for the reply,Im not trying to read the other deck i was just looking at the diffrence in one card which is when i noticed 'wait a minute that acrd doesnt say the same to me' and suddenly thought does every deck tell a diffrent story if you know what i mean
Eddie's advice is spot on and here is why. Before I knew the tarot well, I'd look at two cards, as you did, from different decks and the meanings would seem different. 7/Pents in Rider didn't look like 7/Pents in Cosmic. BUT, once I got to know the tarot really well, I began to see what other deck creators were doing with the 7/pents. Sometimes it's a whole other meaning, but often it's not. Sometimes the deck creator is representing the
same thing in a different way.
Since I don't have the deck, let's use a card I can view on-line. The 4/Wands. In Rider it's 4 wands holding up a garland; it suggests a party, and the meaning is, in fact, related to weddings. In cosmic it's a woman balancing on her toe with the other leg raised. What do these have in common besides those 4/wands?
A lot as it turns out *IF* you really know what that 4/Wands is all about. It's about a foundation, a place to stand and build upon. It's about having solid plans for the future--but only plans. The thing is not build yet. This is all reflected in the Cosmic Tarot's image. The girl is a living "compass" that a draftsman would use--think of a compass with two points and you'll see what I mean. The spiral in to her position emphasizes this, as if she drew it with the raised foot as she came up on point; the four positions of the wands, the pyramids in the background (geometric shapes that would be used by a draftsman to work out how to build something--they'd use a compass, a triangle, a square, yes?), all emphasize this. She drawing out the plans there for the building of a life--as a builder might plan out and create those pyramids. It's not built yet, but she's pin-pointed, there on her toe, the center. The spot around which the walls can be constructed--or where you'd lay down the bricks that would rise up to that point of the pyramid. All reflect on the meaning of the 4/Wands as drafting the future, as an idea on which you can build upon.
I could go on and on about it.
But if you're a beginner, you're going to miss all of this. Looking between two decks at this point is rather like trying to compare two books after skimming through them, reading only a paragraph here, a page there. You might see some similarities, but you're going to miss a lot of them until you take the time to read both carefully.
When ever I get a new deck--one I know is Rider-Waite based, I go through it very carefully, card by card. And I ask myself, "how is the creator trying to express this meaning--like the meaning of the 4/Wands--which I know so well?" Sometimes I say, "Wow, it's exactly the same, even though the images are very different. What a great and different way to show that meaning!" Sometimes I say, "Ah. To this creator this part of the meaning is more important than this other part." (For example, Cosmic 4/Wands doesn't give the "marriage/celebration" feeling as much as Rider does, yet it still, in that dancer, expresses the joy of establishing a foundation on which to build). And once in a while I say, "Wow. This meaning is completely different."
It all depends on the deck. But you really can't know which it's going to be if you're only casually acquainted with the decks. Get to know one, and the similarities/differences of the other will come clear.
