Non-pictorial or 'Pip' Tarot Decks

My personal advice to anyone beginning to read is not to do what I did, buy a deck you think you'll like, but instead to get the jolly old Rider Waite. That is if you want fast results. Reading with a non-pictorial deck, such as the Marseille tarot or the IJJ Swiss, takes one into a whole different world. It is perfectly possible to learn with those decks, but it means either learning the theory behind tarot (a lengthy process to which magicians have devoted lifetimes) or learning a number of book meanings initially. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with learning meanings from books for tarot cards: that is how the reader stops himself from getting stuck in his own little hackneyed interpretation. The great difficulty is that there are 78 of them. Double that if you also want to do reversals.
While there is also no shame in looking up book meanings as you go along, ultimately you'll want to ditch them. *Some* of this labour can be saved by learning with a Rider Waite deck: I recommend this as the original of its tradition & the basis of much 20th century tarot. If you want to learn with a Thoth deck, you will simply have to learn it, study it, devote your life to it & be prepared to have this work make demands on you that you in no way expected. RWS comes out of the same tradition as Thoth, but the pictures allow you a way in to it without too much need for theory.
Like everything else in life, this, the RWS deck's strength, is also its weakness. Because it pictures a particular situation for what is happening in the card, that can be limiting. Don't forget that a pack of tarot cards, understood esoterically, is a map of the universe. The four of pentacles shows a man holding on to his pentacles or coins for dear life in RWS. That mere description can limit the meaning of the card, which shows the power of the number four combined with the elemental vibration of earth. In shorthand: the stagnation or stasis of something real and solid, tangible to us. If you think of the four legs of a table standing on four coins, it kind of gives the same effect of solidity & stability, whether for good or ill.
I have recently found myself moving towards the older types of tarot deck. The reason this post is illustrated by a picture of incredibly well worn playing cards is to make the point that there isn't anything special about playing cards per se. They have a particular map of reality attached to them but you can actually do divination with pretty well anything. The whole of transformative magic can be summed up as one thing representing another. Once you are so convinced that your action (or representation) on one plane equals something elsewhere, you're away.
This is the exact opposite of the Marseille tarot-only fundamentalism that I have been amazed to discover existed. It's right up there with those Christians who maintain that one must only read the King James Bible, or burn. "The true tarot, the authentic tarot, the Tarot de Marseille" is their cry (Source: http://www.tarot-authentique.com/tarot-divination/excellence-marseilles-tarot.html Quotes from Enrique Enriquez in this post also come from that page.). Enriquez phrases the shortcomings of the pictorial decks (which you will note I have already happily acknowledged) slightly better than me. He calls them fantasy decks:

'The Tarot de Marseille (TdM) is as a poetic structure that speaks the language of direct revelations. I would like to suggest that the TdM's language operates under a distinct and separate logic than the language of what I would define as "fantasy decks" (Tarots which are fantastical either because they depict fantasy worlds, or because they have been shaped by the fantasy of their individual authors).
'This distinctive language has been mostly overlooked in the 20th Century. The most evident, and painful, evidence of this is the idea that the pips (Minors) need to be illustrated to be understandable.
It may seem paradoxical, but I will use here the word 'optical' to define this language in opposition to the 'symbolic' language assigned to the Tarot through its many incarnations in the 20th Century. The word 'optical' will be used here to denote a face value language which generates new, fresh, metaphors in us every time we look at the cards. (I would like to think that this is a logic that links the Tarot de Marseille with the elusive 'Language of the Birds'; but this would be the subject of another essay. Please see Paul Williams' "Language of the Birds" treatise on this website).
'This happens because in the TdM's optical language the image is first sign, and symbol second. XVII-L'Etoile would first be seen as a woman kneeling down and pouring water on a stream. Only after this image has been processed both by the conscious and the unconscious mind at face value, may it be seen as 'hope', 'The anima', 'Christ as the morning star', etc, although this is often unnecessary. This would be the opposite of a symbolical understanding of the Tarot, in which each image will always stand for something else than the image itself.
'A sign is a direct invitation to act. L'Etoile signals the act of pouring water, just as a fork and a knife together signal the proximity of a restaurant. Will we take a detour to eat? Will we let go of that water? How many times have you seen L'Etoile, understanding immediately its message, without having to utter a single word? At that point, delving in the possible occult meanings of the black bird perched on a tree that's far away and becomes pointless. There is no need for us to take a detour to explain that "Emperor Napoleon didn't like his mistresses to wash their private parts before getting intimate and that is why the Star has a brownish navel." You simply knew what you needed to know. Emphasizing this may seem silly, but it is very important if we want to understand the value of working with images of high iconic level when our aim is to experience the Tarot as a set of revelations.'

Now frankly he's trying to have it both ways here, or rather would have been better illustrating his argument with a pip card, rather than the Star, which while it is an excellent illustration of the two kinds of imagery, fails to support his argument that the pip cards do not need to be illustrated. His use of this example also lets him down because he's actually writing about the woman rather than the Star. Let me repeat that I don't completely disagree with his argument, but feel that it would be better to say that the Star could merely have a star on it, which would invoke all the associations that we have for stars, & would actually leave it looking more like a Lenormand card. But *that* really is a whole different post.
Guides to reading any deck can be found online, & don't have to be complicated. Alec Satin has a great  example on his website here. I have a copy which I'm sure I downloaded for free. I notice he is no longer giving readings, so perhaps he is concentrating on teaching and publishing now. Suffice to say that if you have a world map of what the suits can mean and what the numbers can mean, by combining the two you can literally read any 78-card standard tarot deck. A very good guide to reading the pip cards by connecting with your own deck, including the significance of what always seems to me fairly extraneous ornamentation, can be found here. This approach also doesn't mean a lot of rote-learning of card 'meanings, since it actually only means learning 16 things: the significance of each pip card from Ace to King, and then the significance of each suit. The LWB that came with my Grimaud tarot de Marseille has another approach, which while being apparently simple has scope for lots of depth.
In this post I mainly want to confine myself to some reflections on the suits & their workings. I know it's taken me ages to get here & I make no pretence that this will not become a personal reflection on some aspects of my own experience of the elements. This does have a purpose of showing how an understanding of the underlying 'vibration' manifests for us, & to show that pictorial pip cards can be truly limiting. Don't forget that the tarot is a - rather arbitrary - map of reality. There don't have to be 78 divisions, in fact inside the tarot there are others, so that all of existence could be divided into four domains. Five, if you want spirit separately, although I think it's better seen as interwoven among all the other domains. This is how the wonderful Donald Tyson puts it:

'The essential meaning for a suit symbol lies in its general shape,, not in its ornamentation or designation. In a general sense, Wands are wooden rods or staffs that are similarly blunt at both ends. Cups are concave vessels for holding liquids. Swords are steel blades pointed at a single end. Pentacles are flat, circular discs. It is these shapes that must be considered when seeking to understand the overall nature of the suits. Wands express balanced force and rule. Cups express nurture and reflection. Swords express directed force and punishment. Pentacles express solidity and substance.' (Donald Tyson: Portable Magic. Llewellyn Worldwide, Woodbury Minnesota, 2006, p. 18.)

Try to forget for a moment that pentacles, or coins, represents the domain of earth, so that we can come afresh to this as newcomers. In fact it may help to refer to the suits of playing cards to illustrate what I mean: hearts mean quite a different thing to us than cups, and similarly spades, clubs and diamonds illustrate the differences between the suits much more graphically for us than the tarot suits. The mutability of the elemental references in the pip cards is very well expressed on the Tarot Heritage website:

 Each of the four suits has been associated with just about every element at one time or another. I find most suits are a blend of more than one element and it’s a personal choice how you assign them. For instance, Coins are made of a solid substance like earth but they circulate like air. Cups are usually associated with water because they can hold a liquid, but the cups themselves are solid containers. Swords are used for stabbing and slicing, which associates them with fiery courage and aggression; but fencing requires finesse and strategy which seem airy. The Rods are often depicted as earthy tree branches, but they could also represent the fiery life force. When assigning elements to the suits you need to consider the court cards. Often the court figures and the pip symbols seem to carry very different elemental energies.
Most contemporary authors use the popular Golden Dawn system:  Coins = Earth, Cups = Water, Swords = Air, Rods = Fire. This system is as good as any, and is the default that most people are comfortable with. But you are certainly free to make your own attributions. Source

We necessarily come to the suits with a layer of preconceptions between us and them, 'knowing' what the suits 'ought' to refer to. Once again I'm both going to agree & disagree with Enriquez. I think that both pentacles (which mean nothing if you have no occult theory under your belt) & coins (which are a very limited illustration of the principle) are inadequate signifiers of the vibration or energy they illustrate. This is what Enriquez says, also excellently illustrating the basic principles of interpreting non-pictorial tarot decks:

'Look at the Two of Coins (Deux de Deniers) from the Marseilles Tarot. Two yellow coins comprise the card's whole format, balancing each other. A band emphasizes the dynamic tension between both coins. Looking at the Two of Coins we are reminded of how one single coin reigned over the whole format in the Ace of Coins (As de Deniers). Now that a second coin came into 'being', they relate to each other through equity and balance, a balance that will be redefined with the arrival of a third coin on the Three of Coins (Trois de Deniers).
'As soon as two elements start sharing the same space, they create a mutual tension that balances them. Think of two pugilists in a boxing ring, two cowboys ready to duel, a tiger and its prey, two lovers whose eyes lock across the distant corners of a bar, or the famous symbol of Ying & Yang. This transit from unity to duality is perfectly illustrated with total economy of resources in the Two of Coins. The distance between the idea and its representation is near zero. You only need one quick glance to get it.
'Now let's take a look at the Two of Pentacles on the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck. (I will be using the RWS deck for comparison here because it is the oldest deck in the tradition of fantasy Tarots, and the deck that started the trend of illustrating the pips, a gesture that implies making these cards less iconic, therefore limiting their meaning.)
'The same two coins, now bearing each one a pentacle, have been inserted into a lemniscate. The symbol of infinite is used here to reiterate the tension between the two coins. On top of that, as if turning the band into a lemniscate wasn't specific enough, the RWS's authors also drew a young guy juggling with the two coins inside it.
Every time I look at this card, I ask myself the same question: "What is that guy doing there?"
'The character and his lemniscate are moving the distance between the idea and its representation two steps back. In the Marseilles Tarot we have a card featuring two circles and a curve. On the RWS we have a card featuring two circles, a horizontal eight and a guy with a Turkish hat. The RWS deck uses three layers of elements to say what the Marseilles says with just one.'

I absolutely agree with what Enriquez says RWS does to the 2 of Pentacles in terms of more is less, and while I have no constructive suggestions as to a replacement depiction for what the coins refer to, I still feel the coins are too limited a depiction. What coins do for us is give us the ability to buy stuff we can't make ourselves, ie the idea of commerce meaning exchange is always there. There is also a suggestion of value in a more than monetary sense. What you would rescue from a house fire indicates what you really value, rather than what is expensive. Insurers insure the replaceable expensive stuff but will not be able to replace a childhood teddy. I feel that this suit genuinely encompasses more than monetary value.
Given the hedge theme of this blog, of course I feel that our understandings of these things - how we personally would draw our map of reality, if you like - are influenced by where we are ourselves. Some years ago I had a 'spot of bother' at work & at the time seriously considered suing my employers. When it became apparent that they would settle out of court to keep their shambolic management under wraps, I came to the conclusion that no amount of money would compensate me. Another important word: one that has become inseparably linked to financial compensation nowadays. What I wanted was something quite different, so first I did a little spell then made a formal complaint of bullying. All of the relevant people's lives became a living hell. Similarly when a...friend decided to run off with my laptop leaving behind a sample of his...DNA in a tissue, I decided not to claim on the insurance for the relatively paltry sum involved. I don't care about the money but if you take the piss you have to pay. So I reported it to the police & gave them the - ahem - evidence he'd left behind. As an Asian man he has far more to lose from his family knowing than any financial amount.
My experience with him also made me realise the full import of swords. They cut. Obvious I know, but they really do. I cast a little spell on him surrounding him with swords cards then dreamt I had a knife to his throat.
Cups? Well, cups contain. Emotions well up & are difficult to contain. They easily overflow.
I'm still waiting for my personal epiphany with Wands, but I can see them both building & being used to bridge things. You can bundle them together, burn them, build things with them.
These apparently simple reflections on the suits can act as springboards to deepening understanding, based on dividing up our experience into four, & the actual functions & energies represented by the suit symbols. Crowley wrote that everyone should create his own kabbalah, assigning events to sephiroth each day, & I feel that this can also go for the tarot. There is of course the traditional daily draw, but it may also help to assign events & actions to suits & numbers. 'I was having a real 3 of Swords day' for example.
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