If you feel like it, could you elaborate on how learning playing cards as playing cards made you a better tarot reader?
The system I use for playing cards uses a few specific techniques I hadn't seen for tarot before.
This includes things like using the numbers on the card to gauge intensity (a 10 representing great gains/growth, while a 3 represents small or minor growth, for example). Or that the color of a card (red/black) determines whether it is a good or bad outcome. For example, if you draw three red cards that's a great outcome, but if you draw two red cards and one black card, that's a good start but things go bad at the end.
Translating these techniques over to tarot, you can get very in-depth readings that have nothing to do with the picture of the card. If you draw a three, a five, and a nine, we would say that the situation starts out mildly but grows in intensity as we reach the end.
And by assigning portents to the elemental suits, we can read the suits of the cards to quickly predict outcomes.
I started making posts about it but it's such a clunky concept to explain that it's probably better suited for a book.
But the real assistance for me is that it makes it a lot harder to get "lost" inside of tarot spreads. If you consider that the numbers and elements of the cards provide a framework for energies, intensities, and outcomes, the pictures/book meanings only need to come in at the end to explain nuance and details. This makes it a lot easier to determine which meanings are applicable, because the numbers/elements have already given huge context to what is going on.
Part 1: Portents – Determine Outcome First by Using Elements
“This But Not That” spread, with elemental portents
