Tarot: the RWS System & Action-Mapping
From a Milanese card game to the pictorial revolution of 1909: the deck we use, the three-layer method, and why advice always lands on a verb.
Origins: from courtly game to symbolic system
Playing cards reached Europe from the Mamluk world in the 1370s; tarot proper — carte da trionfi, "triumph cards" — emerged in the courts of Milan and Ferrara around the 1440s. Among the earliest surviving decks is the Visconti-Sforza, which we offer as an artwork option. For its first three centuries tarot was, first and foremost, a card game (the settled conclusion of Michael Dummett's The Game of Tarot, 1980).
The divinatory turn came in late-18th-century Paris. In 1781 Antoine Court de Gébelin declared tarot a surviving fragment of the Egyptian Book of Thoth — a claim without any historical basis, long since disproven, yet one that shaped two centuries of imagination. Within years, Etteilla (Jean-Baptiste Alliette) built the first professional cartomantic system and published the first deck designed for divination. In the mid-19th century Éliphas Lévi linked the twenty-two trumps to the Hebrew letters; in 1888 the Golden Dawn systematized the correspondences. Then in 1909 came the Rider–Waite–Smith (RWS) deck, conceived by A. E. Waite and painted by Pamela Colman Smith. Its revolution: full pictorial scenes on all 56 minor arcana, turning every card into a readable stage. It became the lingua franca of modern tarot. Crowley and Frieda Harris's Thoth deck (1944) is the other summit, taking the abstract-symbolic road.
Ask Akasha's meaning system follows RWS; Visconti-Sforza is offered as artwork, with meanings still anchored to RWS.
Structure: the grammar of 78 cards
| Part | Cards | Read as |
|---|---|---|
| Major arcana | 22 | Great themes and life stages — the Fool's journey in 22 stations |
| Minor pips | 40 | Everyday situations: four elements unfolding from ace to ten |
| Courts | 16 | People or postures: page, knight, queen, king |
Suit-element correspondences (Golden Dawn): Wands—fire (will and action), Cups—water (feeling and relationship), Swords—air (thought and conflict), Pentacles—earth (body and resources). Numbers carry their own axis: aces are seeds, fives are crises, tens are fullness and handover.
The three-layer reading
Each card unfolds through three narrowing layers:
| Layer | It asks | Example (Seven of Pentacles) |
|---|---|---|
| Literal | What does this card itself show | A farmer leans on his hoe, surveying the vine |
| Positional | Where does it fall in the spread | In the "present" slot: you stand at an assessment point |
| Contextual | Multiplied by your question, where does it point | For this project: stop adding, take stock standing up |
Spreads are the skeleton of the question: we offer a single card (the daily draw), the three-card past–present–future, a relationship spread, a decision spread, and the ten-position Celtic Cross popularized by Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911).
Action-mapping: where advice comes from
RWS imagery is an action script — the figure in the card is always doing something specific. Our readings follow the participatory lineage of Mary K. Greer (Tarot for Your Self, 1984; 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card, 2006) and Rachel Pollack (Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, 1980): name what the figure is physically doing, then translate that action into its equivalent in your situation.
- The farmer of the Seven of Pentacles leaning on his hoe → stop adding investment; assess the harvest standing up;
- The blindfolded, seated figure of the Two of Swords → you are postponing a verdict; set a date for opening your eyes;
- The watcher of the Three of Wands on his cliff → the ships are already out; the move now is to ready the next step, not to keep watching.
Position × card × question — three narrowings down to one verb. Which is why you will not get "be patient," but "like that farmer, stop adding this week and take stock."
Reversals: the same action, blocked
In The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals (2002) Greer catalogues a dozen possible ways to read a reversal — delay, internalization, excess, deficiency, projection. We commit to the single most operational one: a reversal is the same action, blocked — effort aimed the wrong way, made too early, or given to the wrong recipient. The reading's job is to name that specific blockage, never to flip the meaning into its opposite.
In Ask Akasha
Cards are drawn server-side with cryptographic randomness; the AI cannot alter the draw — the cards are the source of truth, and interpretation may only build on them. Every reading runs under our Answer & Specificity Contracts: answer what was asked; advice must be falsifiable.
Honest boundaries
Tarot does not predict a fixed future. A draw shows the present arrangement of forces and your place within it — clearer sight, with the decision always yours. The "Egyptian origin" is an 18th-century romantic invention, and we say so.
Further reading
- Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (1980/1997) — the modern classic of psychological RWS reading
- Mary K. Greer, 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card (2006) — the method book of participatory reading
- Michael Dummett et al., A Wicked Pack of Cards (1996) — serious historiography of divinatory tarot's origins
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911) — the official RWS companion