Do Tarot Cards Have Different Meanings When the Art is Different?
TL:DR; The answer to this - like most things I seem to write - is both yes and no. No because the core meaning - the ‘archetype’ of the card - will be the same. But yes because the flavor may be different.
Some people recommend that you should do readings based solely on the art of a card - that one doesn’t even really need to learn the meanings because all that matters is what that art means to you. I’m going to push back against that a little bit. The given meanings of the cards - or the attempt anyway - is meant to represent certain human archetypes. These come from myths, stories, but also just a collective understanding of the human condition. Death, money, love, hardship, joy. These concepts are distributed through the deck in an intentional way. People often use the Rider-Waite Tarot art as guideposts for meaning - but keep in mind that these interpretations don’t necessarily come from the Rider-Waite. Part of the creation of that deck was just illustrating meanings that had already been associated with the cards. It is the origin for some details and meanings, sure - but many of the meanings existed even applied to decks that were not fully illustrated. It was just what those cards had come to mean over time.
There are key figures in developing the art of tarot and the popular meanings, but some of it also came from generations of tarot readers adding their bits and pieces. A lot of people have added their energy to the meanings of these cards and I think that’s part of what make divination with tarot cards work anyway. You can generate your own meanings via intuition, or just studying the art - but it’s like cutting directly across a swamp instead of following the path people have worn over generations of walking it.
When creating a Tarot deck, people are free of course to illustrate the card however they want. That doesn’t mean that the art fully captures the archetype it is meant to represent - and so relying on the images alone may leave you a little bit lacking in information. Tarot is a common choice for artists to illustrate, even if they haven’t actually studied it or don’t necessarily believe in it. It’s just fashionable to create tarot art. Especially in a deck where there is a very particular theme and many of the cards have similar colors, features, and images - relying on the images isn’t going to get you very far. I say this as someone who has been eyeing that The Antique Anatomy Tarot Kit - the aesthetic of that deck is lovely, but I’m not convinced there is enough variation in the art to rely only on interpreting the art for the meanings.
Particularly with that style of deck, or non-fully illustrated decks, it does help to actually know the meanings of the cards. When I say “meanings” I don’t necessarily mean the unhelpful one-line description that comes with many decks. I mean that you really have a sense of the various ways that card can be interpreted. (I know, easier said than done, right?)
So how can the art style affect the interpretation? Sometimes you do get answers from your deck that are extremely literal, and in those cases the actual art may indicate that literal answer. For instance - the Rider-Waite is full of white people. My life is not exclusively full of white people. If your life is not full of white people your Rider-Waite is not exactly going to a have a diverse opinion on what the people in your life might look like. Meanwhile, another deck might have a card that actually resembles a certain person you know. People who are queer may get more contextual information from the art of a deck that contains images that are more representative. There are more literal clues in decks with art that contains modern imagery - the Rider-Waite has no notion of laptops and phones, after all.
And even if the art of the deck is very minimal, and doesn’t add much information at all, you may just prefer to use certain decks for certain readings or spells. Especially if you are using a deck for spellwork instead of actively reading it, you may want to have a charming deck with nice art that you won’t hate when you leave it in some formation on your altar for who-knows-how-long. Minimal cards may also be useful for spells that ask you to trace or draw a certain card and carry it around with you - then you have less work to do.
Or when doing a spell, you may want to choose a deck that gives off the same effect that you are trying to create. If the spell is for happiness, choose a deck with bright colors, if the spell is for wealth choose a deck with a lot of gold, if the spell is for love try a deck with flowers, etc. Those correspondences can only help. And the same thing may go for choosing decks to do certain readings with - maybe you have a deck just for love questions, or just for finance questions. You can, of course, use one deck for everything. (But if you do hoard decks, you may wonder what to do with all of them!)
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