Based on the 2,000+ readings’ experience of a practising divinatory tarot reader and neo‑Hermetic mystic (Toby Skibinski).

Broadly speaking, modern students of the Rider Waite Smith tarot tend to encounter two main styles of meanings: those that follow Waite’s cautious, esoterically‑coloured descriptions, and those shaped by contemporary psychological and self‑help approaches. In practice, both streams often downplay overt, predictive divination.

Waite’s published meanings are deliberately reserved and allusive, and his real focus was on encoding into the deck a body of Christian‑mystical and Hermetic ideas drawn from his own spiritual outlook. Meanwhile, the most visible RWS meanings in use today have largely been psychologised and framed in the language of popular self‑help and New Age philosophy, making explicitly predictive work harder to find for the average seeker.

This series, made for practising diviners in today’s modern world, is an attempt to articulate explicitly divinatory (including predictive) RWS meanings for modern RHP occultists. It carries the spirit of the perennial philosophy/ancient wisdom that inspired Waite, yet holds in esteem the practice of tarot divination when contextualised by perennial philosophy and purified of selfish motive. Thus, it may be seen as an attempt to bring back into public consciousness the practice of tarot divination by those aligned with the RHP of Western occultism.

Note: for a scholarly look at the RWS system, see Marcuz Katz’s various works, especially Spiritual Key To The Tarot (2025).

1. Don’t try to tackle all 78 cards at once. Start with just the 22 Major Arcana cards. When you get to the Minor Arcana, look at only the Numbered/Pip cards (the Ace-10s of those 4 Suits) before you worry about the Court Cards.

2. Don’t just study the cards; regularly practice reading for yourself. This is possible to do accurately, but it takes patience and careful practice.

3. Do keep a tarot journal in the beginning. This is to help you organize your thoughts, connect cards together and verify your predictions or intuitive insights.

4. Do use 3-5 card spreads at first. Whilst you can use other techniques such as lines and tableaus, spreads provide a structure for you to lean on that can help you to learn these other techniques much faster. Whereas if you start with lines or tableaus, spreads may be tricky for you.

5. Don’t pull more than a couple of clarifiers. This is a common beginner mistake when someone is struggling to interpret the actual spread.

6. Do shuffle in an occult scientific manner. Without explaining the reasoning here, I suggest that you shuffle and select your cards using a mix of riffle and overhand shuffles, then select cards by intuition. If your deck is new, do 9 or more riffles then a minute or two of overhand.

7. Don’t forget to prepare for every reading through a) thorough relaxation of mind and body b) heartfelt prayer or ritual. This is important for psychic protection, intuitive insights and mitigating bias from your lower self.

Note: meanings for all 78 cards were finished in December 2025.

Original RWS Meanings

Pictoral Key To The Tarot (1911) by A.E Waite (from sacred-texts.com)

Spiritual Key To The Tarot (2025) by Marcus Katz & Tali Goodwin

Modern Divinatory Meanings

This is a broad set of personal influences which includes:

Popular tarot card meanings resources from the internet: The Tarot Guide, Labyrinthos, Truly Teach Me Tarot.

DuQuette’s Tarot of Ceremonial Magick (book and deck). I do not use the deck anymore. But it was once in regular use to the point of being bought twice within two years.

Josephine McCarthy’s Tarot Skills for the 21st century (2020). This book was influential to my personal practice. Whilst I am not a Quareia initiate, I am a particular fan of various spreads which she released in that book (and of her approach to esotericism in general).

In 2020, when I was first learning, I did also use various YouTube tarotscope creators. The channel names I do not recall.

Further Sources: Full Bibliography

Tarot: Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism & Neo-Platonism (3rd ed., by Robert M. Place.

LLewellyn’s Complete Guide To the Rider Waite Smith Tarot by Sasha Graham.

Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen.