Start with Tradition

The Female Pope or High Priestess with her book

Start with Tradition

Embarking on a project this big can be intimidating, so it’s good to have a traditional model to guide you through references and resources.

Comparing Traditions

Starting your deck from a tradition does not mean that you have to give up your creativity for correctness. Think about some of the modern tarots you have seen. They likely have a type: Waite-Smith, Tarot of Marseille, and so on. But they are not necessarily carbon copies of their model. Instead, each tradition can be seen in varying degrees across a few different dimensions. For example, some of the ways to separate the popular tarot traditions include the cards and their order, the imagery, and finally the interpretation and meanings.

Card Names and Order

Many modern tarot decks were based on the Tarot de Marseille pattern. Each tweaks the names and orders of the cards to a different degree: in the 18th century Etteilla completely reordered and renamed the trumps, Waite-Smith (1909) made only small changes to names and order, and the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck (1938-1943) retained the ordering while changing titles. Here are some examples of distinguishing features of each tradition.

Tarot of Marseille

The Fool is unnumbered and XIII is unnamed.
Justice is VIII and Strength is XI.
Trumps II and V are Popes.

Waite-Smith

The Fool is 0 and XIII is named Death.
Justice is XI and Strength is VIII.
Trumps II and V are the High Priestess and Hierophant.

Etteilla

Trumps begin with Biblical creation story.
The Hanged Man is replaced with Prudence, the fourth Cardinal Virtue.

Thoth

Virtues are changed (Strength to Lust, Justice to Adjustment, Temperance to Art).
Court cards are prince, princess, queen, and knight.

Imagery

The different traditions all have their own imagery in the trumps (or major arcana), but one of the simplest places to contrast them is in the pip cards (or minor arcana).

Tarot of Marseille

Non-scenic pip cards.
Suit symbols are depicted with flowers and other decorations.

Waite-Smith

Scenic pip cards.
Almost all feature human characters interacting with the suit symbols.

Etteilla

Non-scenic pip cards.
Less prescribed imagery, but some versions feature alchemical and mythological decorations on the pips.

Thoth

Non-scenic pip cards.
Highly-decorative paintings are based on sacred geometry.

Interpretation and Meanings

The three more modern traditions gave specific divinatory meanings to every card. Etteilla is considered the first to set standard meanings like this, and those meanings influenced the British Golden Dawn society, from which the Waite-Smith and Thoth decks sprang.

Tarot of Marseille

No known author to set meanings, so interpretation is more loosely defined.
Some people read with trumps only, some interpret pip cards based on numbers, cartomancy meanings, or visual features (see Matthews, 2018).

Waite-Smith

Widely-accepted meanings described in Waite (1911).
Minor arcana scenes combine Etteilla’s meanings with the artist Pamela Colman-Smith’s own interpretations (see Huson, 2004).

Etteilla

Upright and reversed meanings are printed on every card.
See Orsini (1850) for French keywords.
English translations can be found in Huson (2004) and Howard (2012).

Thoth

Widely-accepted meanings described by Crowley in The Book of Thoth.
Minor arcana have a printed keyword.
Major arcana have astrological and Hebrew letter correspondences.

So, along with choosing a tradition, it helps to decide how strictly you will stick to it. Are you making a new clone of an antique deck? Do you want to build a new divination system from the ground up? Or do you fall somewhere in between these two extremes?