Tarot study room · Marseille tarot
Marseille tarot series
A deck two hundred years older than Rider-Waite. The pip cards usually have no Rider-Waite style scenes, just the suit symbols, their number and decoration. Five lessons, from getting to know it to saying a sentence with it.
- Lesson 1What kind of deck it isWoodblock prints, four or five colours, French card names.
- Lesson 2How it differs from Rider-WaiteNumbering, card names, how the minor cards are drawn.
- Lesson 3The 22 French card namesA comparison table, and a few small clues beyond pronunciation.
- Lesson 4Minor cards without scenesNumber, suit and arrangement.
- Lesson 5Making a sentenceFollow the gaze, and read three cards as one sentence.
Lesson 1
What kind of deck it is
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French card makers printed the outlines from woodblocks and then brushed on colour through stencils. Red, blue, yellow and green, plus a flesh tone: flat blocks of colour with no shading.
Later, people came to call this kind of card design "Marseille tarot". In fact it doesn't only come from Marseille. It's a whole family, and each card maker's version differs in the details.
It's about two hundred years older than Rider-Waite. Many of the Rider-Waite Major Arcana designs were adapted from here.
You can practise like this: without scenes, all you can look at is number, suit and arrangement. It trains you to notice image details you usually overlook.
Lesson 2
How it differs from Rider-Waite
| Marseille | Rider-Waite | |
|---|---|---|
| Minor cards | Only the suit symbols in number, no figures or scenes | Every card has a scene |
| Cards 8 and 11 | 8 Justice, 11 Strength | 8 Strength, 11 Justice |
| Card 13 | Usually no name on the card | Says Death |
| Numerals | Additive forms like IIII, VIIII, XIIII | IV、IX、XIV |
| Court cards | Valet、Cavalier、Reine、Roi | Page, Knight, Queen, King |
| Suit | Bâtons、Coupes、Épées、Deniers | Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles |
| Reversed | Many readers don't use them, and read from neighbouring cards | Commonly used |
| Colour | Red, blue, yellow, green and flesh, in flat blocks | Many colours, with shading |
The easiest to mix up are 8 and 11. Waite swapped Strength and Justice to fit his occult system's correspondences. If you use both decks, check which one you're holding when you see card 8.
Lesson 3
The 22 French card names
The card name is your first clue to reading it. Some French names mean something quite different, literally, from the names English readers are used to.
| Number | On the card | Common English name | Clue |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | Le Bateleur | The Magician | Literally a street performer |
| II | La Papesse | The High Priestess | Literally the female pope |
| III | L'Impératrice | The Empress | |
| IIII | L'Empereur | The Emperor | 4 is written IIII |
| V | Le Pape | The Hierophant | |
| VI | L'Amoureux | The Lovers | Singular: one person in love, or choosing |
| VII | Le Chariot | The Chariot | |
| VIII | La Justice | Justice | Rider-Waite puts it at 11 |
| VIIII | L'Hermite | The Hermit | 9 is written VIIII |
| X | La Roue de Fortune | Wheel of Fortune | |
| XI | La Force | Strength | Rider-Waite puts it at 8 |
| XII | Le Pendu | The Hanged Man | |
| XIII | (usually no name) | Death | Often called the nameless card |
| XIIII | Tempérance | Temperance | 14 is written XIIII |
| XV | Le Diable | The Devil | |
| XVI | La Maison Dieu | The Tower | Literally close to "the house of God" |
| XVII | L'Étoile | The Star | |
| XVIII | La Lune | The Moon | |
| XVIIII | Le Soleil | The Sun | 19 is written XVIIII |
| XX | Le Jugement | Judgement | |
| XXI | Le Monde | The World | |
| (no number) | Le Mat | The Fool | Unnumbered; literally close to "the madman" |
Lesson 4
Minor cards without scenes
The pip cards just show the suit symbols in number. To read them, look at three things: number, suit and arrangement.
- Number First pick one set of correspondences to practise with, such as 1 for beginnings and 5 for change. Traditions differ, so treat them as a practice set rather than fixed rules. Review the numbers.
- Suit Batons are action, cups are feeling, swords are judgement, coins are tangible things.
- Arrangement Neat or crowded? Is there a space in the middle? Are flowers and leaves growing? On the Two of Coins, the curving ribbon in the middle is like two matters pulling on each other. The swords form a ring of curved arcs, and on odd numbers there's an extra straight sword in the middle, like a decision about to break through the circle.
At first every card looks much the same. Look a few more times and you'll start to notice which are "full", which are "empty", and which are "growing".
Lesson 5
Make a sentence
Marseille readers often don't use reversals, and don't interpret the cards one at a time either. They lay three in a row and read them as a sentence.
The first card is like the subject, the second like the verb, and the third is the result.
For example: the Emperor, the Hanged Man, the Three of Coins. Someone who wants to control the situation (the Emperor) is forced to stop and see things from another angle (the Hanged Man), and the result is a practical outcome that grows slowly (the Three of Coins).
Follow the gaze
Many Marseille figures are shown in profile. You can treat the card a figure faces as a possibly related clue. The Emperor looks to the right in profile, so try reading the card on his right together with him. When figures on two cards are back to back, the two matters often don't meet.
Practice
Draw three cards from any deck and, without looking up the meanings, say one sentence using only "who / did what / with what result". Then look at where each figure is looking and see whether the sentence needs changing.