What could this mean?

Whether you are an aspiring Tarot reader or creative thinker using Tarot cards for inspiration, it will benefit you to get to know the cards well. Do you remember the game called Odd card out? Here is another one that asks you to examine a card in detail.

You don’t have to know anything about this card or its traditional meanings to play this game.

Shuffle the cards, then draw one at random.

Ask yourself: What could this card mean?

Then, ask yourself the question nineteen more times. (Yes, I know 20 is a lot, but you will find that if you stretch yourself, your imagination really comes into play, and you notice details that you have missed before.)

Done?

Now ask yourself: What does this card not mean? Try to come up with ten items.

A sample exercise

Suppose we draw the Six of Cups from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

What could this card mean? Here are my suggestions:

1. Giving is better than receiving.
2. A secure relationship (see the guard walking away from the scene?).
3. The lady is picky (she discarded five other bunches of flowers).
4. Sweet memories of first love.
5. Spring has sprung!
6. The pleasures of childhood.
7. Making the best of a situation. (Children playing during a time of war, perhaps.)
8. The sixth suitor (the previous five also tried flowers).
9. The tentative beginning of a relationship.
10. Taking good care of someone.
11. Kindness.
12. Poisonous plants (see her gloves?)
13. Pretending to be grown up.
14. Giving flowers to the hostess.
15. Dwarfism. (Doesn’t she look fully grown, instead of a child?)
16. A scene from a play set in the middle ages.
17. Taking flowers to put on a grave.
18. Wanting to stay young forever.
19. Making the best of imprisonment.
20. A giant courting the most beautiful girl in town.

What does this card not mean?

1. Women always appreciate being given flowers.
2. Secure relationships are boring.
3. Women always want more.
4. A cynical attitude towards relationships.
5. Use yellow paint on everything.
6. A drug transaction.
7. Domestic violence.
8. A funeral (they don’t look sad, do they?)
9. The pressures of corporate life.
10. A small child being bullied.

Do you think some of these items could serve as interpretation for the card in a spread? Number 12 in the first list (poisonous flowers) and 7 in the second list (domestic violence) might be good interpretations if the card is reversed? And most of the items in the first list are possible interpretations of the upright card.