This is Playing the High Priestess, part two of a series on tarot in roleplaying games.
So you’re interested in using a tarot deck at the table, but you’re not sure what to do with the cards themselves, and the little guidebook that came with the deck isn’t all that helpful; or maybe you’re old hat at interpreting cards, but your friends find themselves at a loss. Never fear! This episode is all about learning and teaching intuition.
And we’re in luck, because you don’t really have to teach intuition, it came free with your socialization. If you grew up in a culture, you were inundated, nay, bombarded with symbols and icons and metaphors and other such abstractions from a very young age. If you’ve seen a cartoon, you have a vocabulary for visual language. You might recognize this means stop, this means go, this means phone call, this means save. And, depending on how old you are, you might only recognize those last two as abstractions. Once those symbols are assigned meaning, that meaning extends outward; a solid red line across the ground might stop you from going somewhere, despite not being a circle or a light. That’s a super simple example, but interpolating data to make connections and build meaning out of those connections is something you’re doing literally all of the time. Intuition is when your subconscious brain crunches a ton of data and presents your conscious brain with a feeling or an insight. If you pay attention to that little ping of thought, you can often trace it back to the clues that inform it, and follow it forward to deductions and creative problem solving.
The whole mechanism of intuition is fundamental to interpretation, so leaning into that is vital for learning how to play games with a tarot deck. Interpretation is taking information and extracting its meaning into another format; image to words, one language to another. A tarot card is a symbolic, iconographic object; it implies a great deal more than it shows. Not all of that implication will be comprehensible; maybe you’re familiar with alchemical symbols(sailor moon) or astrological signs(homestuck), but not everybody is. But generally that stuff is detail that supports the larger idea of the card, not essential reading. And it really depends on the deck you’re using; lots of people use the Smith-Waite deck, but you can get away with any ol’ deck, so long as it evokes a strong reaction when you look at the cards. That’s a good sign that your intuition is latching onto data it can parse for you. Sometimes that’s what people mean when they say a deck “speaks” or “calls” to them.
Now, tarot has a legacy of specific meanings behind each card. I’ll cover that in detail in a later video, but if you want to learn and use those meanings, you can read through a book like Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom to really deep dive into all the symbology and systems of meaning that are interlaced in a given tarot card. But the best way to learn the tarot, in my experience, is…experience. Find a deck you really like and play around with it. Do readings for yourself or with friends, keep a guidebook nearby to help you along. Play tarot games with your group, or play solo with a journaling or mapmaking game. Most tarot games have at the very least advice for how to interpret cards in play, if not their own guide to the cards it wants you to use. It’ll take some time to encounter all of the cards, but as you do, a patina of familiarity will start to develop on each card. You’ll recognize the archetype it represents, and be able to interpret it in any context. The deck itself will reveal a tone, or a proclivity that it provokes in you when you read it; as if the deck has a voice of its own, and opinions.
But not all oracle decks follow tarot’s rules. Some decks drop all but a handful of symbols, or recontextualize them in ways that tradition can’t account for. Some don’t provide guidebooks at all, and leave it up to you as the reader to interpret the cards as you see fit. There’s a real strength to these cards: the meanings you give them become personal and potent in a way that cards with predetermined meanings can’t reach. But you have to approach them with intent, and there can be a learning curve to get to feeling like you’re interpreting them confidently.
There are several ways to teach interpretation:
Pure vibes: whatever comes up when you look at the card is valid, no matter how much or how little it has to do with the card itself. Dump 'em in the deep end. It’s fine, most of ‘em will float; people know how to see patterns and identify symbols. But this may be discouraging to folks for whom interpretation takes a lot of cognitive load, especially if they’re not accustomed to a big wide open possibility space. It may feel arbitrary in a bad way.
Strong headings: One Big Idea. Strong imagery, narrow and specific prompts. No “actually it means transformation or new beginnings or opportunity” or whatever: if it looks bad, it is bad. This is obviously super limiting, but that can be a good thing when you’re starting out: once you’ve got a feel for it, you can take the training wheels off and start branching out into more nuanced reads.
Cross reference: using a system of meaning they might already be familiar with, like the trappings of a specific genre or a fandom they like. This means the tropes or archetypes used in your game will be those of that genre or fandom, which can dictate the kind of story and the tone of play. It might end up feeling a little silly or limiting, but you’ll be working with a shared vocabulary, which is the important thing.
In any case, a good place to start with a card is to pick one thing that jumps out to you. Maybe it’s the name of the card, or a particular piece of the art: a prominent symbol or a dominant color. Talk about what draws you to it, and what it reminds you of. Try and connect that back to the purpose you drew the card for.
If you’re struggling with a card, sit with the feeling for a minute. How do you feel about it, besides being frustrated or confused? Saying “I don’t like this card here” is perfectly valid–but why? Is the card unexpected? Is its imagery incomprehensible or contradictory? Does its meaning clash with the thing you drew the card to describe? Is it more positive, more negative? Balanced perfectly neutral? All of those–even neutral–are unique positions the card is taking. If it’s inscrutable, what is the nature of that? Is it blank like a brick wall, or too clever for its own good? Don’t be afraid to open interpretation up to the rest of the table if you’re struggling. Sometimes it doesn’t take much outside input to kickstart an idea. If all else fails, you can always discard and redraw.
You can ditch an entire deck, even. My first tarot deck was so completely out of my wheelhouse in iconography and symbolism that, if it had anything to say, I straight up couldn’t comprehend it. And sometimes it’s just that the deck isn’t well designed. Some tarot deck creators make the most perplexing choices.
But with a good deck at your fingertips and some experience interpreting it under your belt, you can answer just about any question—and therefore play just about any tarot game out there. Whether that answer will be true or accurate is none of my business; but I know for a fact it’ll help you tell one hell of a story.