The Rider Waite Tarot Before, After, and all Shuffled Up (Part II)

This is my follow up post about working with decks that illustrate new twists on the popular Rider Waite Smith Tarot. The first post described a few of these RWS “twist” or “spinoff” decks and supplied few exercises for working with them. Today’s post will briefly highlight a few ways to incorporate one or more of these decks with the RWS in a reading.

The first method is to simply draw the cards for your reading from the RWS deck and then pull the same cards from the Before, After, and/or Shuffle Tarots. If you are using a large spread, you can always limit the extra cards to specific spread positions or to cards that are ambiguous or difficult to decipher. Alternatively, you can supplement each RWS card with a random card from the spinoff deck/s of your choosing.

Another method is to design your reading to accommodate the various decks at your disposal. If you have the Before, After, and Shuffle Tarots, you could design a spread that utilizes cards from the Before Tarot to describe the foundation of the issue or past influences, the After Tarot to illustrate potential outcomes, the Shuffle Tarot to denote advice, pros and cons, etc, and the standard RWS for people. (You could even extract the 16 court cards from your RWS for those people positions.)

Let’s take a look at a sample reading that explores the useful nuances that these methods can provide.

This is a simple three card past, present, possible outcome spread. First, I pulled the three RWS cards -the Emperor, 4 of Cups, and 5 of Wands. Next, I pulled the Emperor card from the Before Tarot to supplement the past position, the 4 of Cups from the Shuffle Tarot to supplement the present, and the 5 of Wands from the After Tarot to further describe the possible outcome. It should be noted that this is just one of several ways I could supplement the original 3 cards. I could have used the same twist/spinoff deck for all three positions, a random card from each spinoff deck, the equivalent card from all three spinoff decks for each position, etc. Do what makes sense to you and remember that the goal is to make the reading more useful and precise, not complicated or chaotic.

For the sake of brevity, I’m giving this spread a cursory analysis that touches only on each card’s major themes. The Emperor calls to mind the role of leadership, maintaining order, and stability. The Emperor is just getting ready to sit down in his throne in the Before Tarot, so one interpretation could be that the client has recently acquired a position of leadership or responsibility. Perhaps it’s a new job or promotion, or they’re a lead on a new project.

The 4 of Cups can illustrate a meditative state, boredom with one’s options, dissatisfaction, or the inability to see an opportunity presenting itself. Adding the 4 of Cups from the Shuffle Tarot provides additional details that suggest our new Emperor is struggling to move forward with the resources at hand and carry out the game plan. He’s in charge and people are counting on him to make things work with the options available to him, so he wants to consider things very carefully. He’s giving matters a lot of thought, sleeping on it, not acting too quickly, and perhaps even waiting for a better option to come along. As we can see with the possible outcome card, he might stay in that contemplative state for a little too long. The perfect option or resource might not manifest, and he’ll need to make due with what he has if he wants to prevent the discord and confusion of the 5 of Wands.

The supplemental 5 of Wands After Tarot card shows the need for coordination and a leader to delegate tasks in order for things to come together. Maybe one of the other team members will take on that role when things start to get messy. Or perhaps the central figure is the client, and he’s doing some damage control after failing to get things started on the right foot. (I prefer the latter interpretation since the “leader” in the 5 of Wands is wearing red and a hat, which corresponds best with the clothing of our “Emperor” in the previous cards.) In any case, this client is capable and can probably create a pleasant outcome to the situation as long as he doesn’t lose himself in that 4 of Cups analysis paralysis.

Without the spinoff decks a very similar interpretation could be made for these cards. However, a narrative was especially easy to articulate once I had the extra details. I found them useful for homing in on which themes were at play and how the cards were connected to one another. The reading shifted from general to specific very quickly, which is especially handy for readers who rely heavily on visual and intuitive methods. That being said, I think folks who utilize systems-based methods will also find the supplemental information beneficial for similar reasons. Systems provide a lot of pointers about mood, atmosphere, and the trajectory of a situation, but making the general information into the specific can still be a challenge.

I hope these ideas provide a fresh way to enjoy the classic RWS deck and engaging methods for performing your next Tarot reading.

Happy Shuffling!