Advanced · 14 min
Landscape, weather and water
Read the setting of a card as part of its meaning: heights and distance, water crossed or ruled or left behind, sky and weather, and the tended ground of gardens and homes.
In this lesson you will
- Name four families of setting in the Waite–Smith scenes: heights, water, sky and weather, and tended ground.
- Use the setting to shade a card's meaning in a position without replacing the meaning.
- Compare the same kind of setting in two cards and say what changes.
You draw The Hermit and the Six of Swords for a question about moving to a new city, and both pictures look quiet. One figure stands on a peak, the other is ferried across water. If you read only the figures, you miss half of each picture: the place they are in.
The setting is part of the card
Pamela Colman Smith gave almost every card in the 1909 deck a place: a cliff, a shore, a garden, a storm. Waite rarely explains the scenery, but readers have long treated it as part of the meaning, because the same kinds of place come back from card to card. Learning a few of them gives you a second layer you can read in any card, even one you have not studied yet.
The rule of this lesson is simple. Read the card's meaning first, then let the setting shade it. The place tells you how the meaning is lived, not what the meaning is.
This lesson is part of Plus
Plus opens every lesson of the Practitioner, Reader and Advanced tiers, with practice that explains every answer.
What the lesson covers
- Four families of setting
- Water: crossed, ruled or out of sight
- Heights and sky
- Practice
Foundations and the first lesson of every course are free.