Comparing Tarot Cards and Their Meanings

A Marseille reader and a Rider-Waite reader can lay the same spread and walk away with opposite interpretations. The cards are the same. The systems are not.

This is the first fact anyone learning tarot confronts: two decks, two readers, two entirely different readings from the same ten-card spread. The difference is not skill. It is architecture.

Why Tarot Card Meanings Differ Between Decks

Comparing tarot cards and their meanings requires understanding that no universal lexicon exists. The closest thing to one is the traditional divinatory meanings that predate the modern occult revival, documented in Francesco Marcolini’s Le Sorti (1540) and later collated by Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla) in his 1783 Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots. But those meanings shifted dramatically when the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn reconfigured the system between 1888 and 1896. What follows is a map of those shifts, deck by deck, tradition by tradition.

What Makes Two Identical Cards Mean Different Things?

Two identical cards mean different things because the meaning is made in the context. The same card in the same position can read differently for a different querent, a different question, or a different spread; and the same card in the same reading reads differently according to the surrounding cards. Comparing tarot cards and their meanings requires understanding this context — the card is a word, and the spread is the sentence. The identical card is the same word in two sentences, and the sentences give it different senses.

The Three Structural Pillars of Tarot Meaning

The short answer is esoteric architecture. Each major tarot tradition assigns different symbols, astrological correspondences, and numerical systems to its cards. A change to one card’s assigned planet or Hebrew letter ripples through the entire deck.

The longer answer requires naming the three structural pillars that determine a card’s meaning:

1. The visual iconography — what is literally drawn on the card
2. The assigned correspondences — which planet, zodiac sign, Hebrew letter, or elemental force the card carries
3. The neighboring cards in a spread — positional meaning within a system

The second pillar explains most disagreements. When the Golden Dawn assigned the Major Arcana to the Hebrew alphabet differently than Etteilla had, they effectively rewrote twenty-two cards. The Fool in Etteilla’s system meant the element Air. In the Golden Dawn system it means the Hebrew letter Aleph, also Air, but the corresponding path on the Tree of Life changes the interpretation entirely.

A History of Divergent Meanings: Etteilla, the Golden Dawn, and the Marseille Problem

Jean-Baptiste Alliette, writing under the anagram Etteilla, published the first systematic tarot divination manual in 1783. He worked from the Marseille pattern. His meanings are concrete, event-oriented, and often grim. The Tower in Etteilla’s system means “ruin, overthrow, destruction of fortune.” It does not carry the spiritual crisis or sudden awakening that later traditions would assign.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, led by William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, created their own tarot between 1888 and 1896. They kept the Marseille card count but replaced the imagery. Westcott’s The Tarot: Its Occult Signification (1893) laid out a system where every card carried astrological and Qabalistic weight. The Fool was no longer a warning against folly. It became the spiritual seeker, the zero point before creation.

Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith published their deck in 1909 through William Rider & Son. Waite was a Golden Dawn member. His deck preserved the Order’s correspondences but put them into illustrated scenes for the Minor Arcana, something the Marseille tradition never did. This single change transformed tarot reading. A Marseille reader interprets the Five of Cups by its number (Five, meaning conflict) and suit (Cups, meaning emotion). A Rider-Waite reader reads the image: a cloaked figure staring at three spilled cups, two upright behind them. The image carries its own narrative.

Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris published the Thoth deck in 1944, thirty-three years after Waite. Crowley rejected Waite’s attributions for several Major Arcana cards. He assigned the Hebrew letter Tzaddi to the Star, not the Emperor, which Waite had done. Crowley wrote in The Book of Thoth (1944) that “the attributions of the Tarot are the foundation of its interpretation.” Change the attribution, change the meaning.

The Marseille vs. Rider-Waite Divide: A Card-by-Card Comparison

The Marseille and the Rider-Waite divide over the Minor Arcana. The Marseille shows the number and the suit — the four of cups as four cups, without the scene; the RWS shows the scene — the four of cups as the figure under the tree, the three cups before him, the hand offering the fourth. Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris published the Thoth deck in 1944, and the Thoth carried the RWS approach further, giving every card a full symbolic field. The divide matters because the Marseille asks the reader to supply the meaning, and the RWS supplies the meaning itself.

Marseille vs Rider-Waite: The Core Divide

The deepest fault line runs between the Marseille tradition (15th century French, anonymous engravers, unillustrated Minor Arcana) and the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition (1909, illustrated Minor Arcana, Golden Dawn correspondences).

The Fool (Major Arcana 0)

Marseille: A man in ragged clothes, a bundle on a stick, a dog biting his leg. The card means folly, madness, thoughtlessness, a warning against bad judgment. It carries no spiritual dimension.

Rider-Waite: A man at a cliff’s edge, a white rose in his left hand, a small dog barking at his feet. Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) describes the meaning as “the spirit in search of experience.” The cliff is not a warning. It is the leap of faith.

Death (Major Arcana XIII)

Marseille: A skeleton wielding a scythe, severed heads and hands at its feet. The meaning is literal: death, ending, destruction, loss.

Rider-Waite: A skeletal knight in armor, a white horse, a bishop kneeling before them, a child offering a flower. Waite wrote that the card “signifies transformation, change, a new cycle.” The death is metaphorical.

The Five of Cups

Marseille: Five cups arranged in a pattern, no figures. The meaning derives from Five (conflict, instability) and Cups (emotion). Emotional conflict. Disappointment in love.

Rider-Waite: A cloaked figure, head bowed, three cups spilled black, two upright behind them. The image emphasizes loss and grief, but the two standing cups keep the reader from total despair. Pamela Colman Smith’s illustration introduced hope as a walking figure.

How the Thoth Deck Breaks from Both Traditions

Crowley’s Thoth deck (1944) does not merely reinterpret the Rider-Waite. It replaces the astrological attributions of several cards, changes the elemental associations of the court cards, and renames four of them (Knight becomes Knight, but Queen becomes Queen still, the change is subtler in the Minor Arcana).

The adjustment that causes the most confusion: The Star (Major Arcana XVII)

Rider-Waite attributes the Star to the Hebrew letter Tzaddi (meaning fishhook, associated with Aquarius). Crowley assigns Tzaddi to the Emperor and moves the Star to the letter Heh (associated with the Empress in Waite’s system). This means the Star in Thoth carries different astrological weight, it now corresponds to the element Air rather than Aquarius. The meaning shifts from hope and inspiration to a more intellectual, detached clarity.

The adjustment that changes every reading: The court cards

Marseille tradition assigns the court cards simple social roles: King (father, authority), Queen (mother, intuition), Knight (youth, movement), Page (child, message). The Golden Dawn assigned elements to each court card: King of Wands is Fire of Fire, King of Cups is Water of Fire, and so on. Crowley added a fifth court card to some decks (the Princess, later dropped) and changed the elemental associations. A Thoth Knight of Cups carries different elemental weight than a Rider-Waite Knight of Cups.

Minor Arcana: Illustrated vs Unillustrated Meanings

The Minor Arcana (56 cards, 14 per suit) differ most drastically between illustrated and unillustrated decks. A Marseille reader works from a framework of number and suit. A Rider-Waite reader works from narrative scenes.

The Aces

Marseille: A hand holding a suit symbol from the clouds. The meaning is raw potential, the essence of the suit. No additional narrative.

Rider-Waite: The Ace of Wands shows a hand holding a flowering branch from clouds, a castle in the distance. The Ace of Cups shows a hand holding a cup from which water spills into a pool, a dove carrying a wafer. Each scene adds a layer: the castle suggests ambition, the dove suggests divine love.

The Sevens

Marseille: Seven of Wands means “advantage, gain, victory through struggle.” Seven of Swords means “hope, confidence, but also theft or betrayal.” The number Seven carries the meaning of challenge and victory.

Rider-Waite: Seven of Wands shows a man defending a hilltop against six raised wands below him. Waite wrote “valor, but on the verge of contest.” Seven of Swords shows a man sneaking away from a camp with five swords, two swords stuck in the ground. The image makes the “theft” meaning dominant.

The Tens

Marseille: Ten of Wands means “oppression, burden, difficulty overcome.” Ten of Swords means “tears, sorrow, affliction.”

Rider-Waite: Ten of Wands shows a man carrying a bundle of ten wands toward a distant house. The burden is visible. Ten of Swords shows a man face-down with ten swords in his back, the sea calm in the distance. The Rider-Waite Ten of Swords is catastrophic. The Marseille Ten of Swords is sorrowful but not necessarily fatal.

Court Cards: Kings, Knights, Pages, and Princes

The court cards are the most contested territory in tarot comparison. Different traditions assign different genders and elemental correspondences to the same card.

The Pages, Knights, or Princes

Marseille: Page is the messenger, the child, the student. No element.

Rider-Waite: Page carries the elemental association of Earth of the suit’s element. Page of Wands is Earth of Fire.

Thoth: The Pages are replaced by Princes. Crowley assigned Princes to the element Air of the suit. A Thoth Prince of Cups is Air of Water. A Rider-Waite King of Cups is Water of Water. The two cards share a suit but not an elemental personality.

The Knights and Kings

In the Golden Dawn system inherited by Waite, the King of Wands is Fire of Fire, and the Knight of Wands is Air of Fire. In Thoth, the Knight is Fire of Fire and the King is Fire of Air. The Knight and King have swapped elemental seats. A Thoth reader must adjust every court card interpretation accordingly.

Common Myths About Tarot Card Comparisons

“All tarot decks share the same meanings.” They share the same structure (78 cards, Major and Minor Arcana, four suits) but the meanings diverge by tradition. A Marseille reader and a Thoth reader will disagree on what the Star signifies.

“The Rider-Waite meanings are the original meanings.” They are not. Waite’s meanings date to 1909. The Marseille tradition predates them by at least three centuries. Waite’s system is a Golden Dawn revision, not an original.

“You can swap decks mid-reading.” You can, but a card’s meaning changes with its system. Pulling the Rider-Waite Fool in a spread interpreted by Marseille meanings will produce confusion. The two cards do not mean the same thing.

“The Thoth deck is just a Crowley-ized Rider-Waite.” It is structurally different. The astrological attributions, elemental assignments, and court card architecture all differ. Thoth is its own system.

FAQ

Can you use multiple tarot decks in one reading? Yes, but each card must be interpreted within its own tradition. A Marseille card and a Rider-Waite card in the same spread require switching interpretive frameworks mid-reading.

Which tarot deck is the most accurate? Accuracy depends on the reader’s training and the question asked. Marseille decks favor concrete, event-based readings. Rider-Waite decks favor psychological and spiritual interpretations. Neither is universally more accurate.

Do tarot meanings change depending on the deck’s art style? Yes. The imagery is the primary vehicle for meaning. Changing the art changes what the reader sees and therefore interprets. This is why Marseilles, Rider-Waite, and Thoth produce different readings of the same card.

Can you learn tarot from one deck and use another? Not without learning the new system. A reader trained exclusively on Rider-Waite will misread a Marseille deck because the Minor Arcana lack the narrative scenes they learned to read.

Comparing tarot cards and their meanings reveals something the cards themselves teach: no system is universal. The Fool in Marseille warns against a cliff. The Fool in Rider-Waite invites you to step off it. The Fool in Thoth opens the path between Kether and Chokmah on the Tree of Life. Three cards, one number, three different conversations.

What matters is not which tradition is more authentic. What matters is that you know which system you are working inside. The card is not the meaning. The card is the vessel. The meaning lives in the architecture you bring to it.

For a deeper walk through the Major Arcana’s architecture, see our guide to tarot card meanings and symbolism. To understand how the court cards map to elemental forces, read our companion piece on tarot court card elements. And for a glossary of the astrological and Qabalistic terms that underpin these systems, visit the tarot glossary.