Okay, so folks have been asking me about this different tarot deck I’ve been messing with, the one with the extra suit. It wasn’t something I just picked up off a shelf.
It all started ’cause I got kinda bored, honestly. Everywhere you look, it’s Rider-Waite-Smith. Good deck, yeah, Pamela Colman Smith’s art is iconic, sure. But after years, you feel like you’re seeing the same movie over and over. I’d seen Marseille decks too, with those plain pip cards, very old school. But I was itching for something… else. Something that pushed me a bit.
So, I started tinkering. At first, I literally just took an old deck, one I didn’t mind sacrificing, and tried adding cards. Drew some myself, real basic stuff. Called the fifth suit ‘Ether’ or ‘Spirit’ initially, you know, the usual suspects. It felt clunky. The readings were a mess. It just didn’t flow.
Figuring it Out the Hard Way
I almost gave up. Thought maybe there’s a reason decks stick to four suits. But then I stumbled across some notes, really obscure stuff, talking about different structures. Not a real deck, just ideas someone had jotted down. It mentioned a fifth element, not as a separate thing, but as a connector, a bridge between the other four.
That clicked. I stopped trying to make it a whole new category of stuff like Wands or Cups. I started thinking of it as representing… well, potential? The space between? The querent’s own inner voice maybe? It felt a bit like that Hierophant card energy – not just the rules or tradition, but that deeper knowing, the stuff you gotta access yourself, maybe even teach yourself.
So, I got another deck. This time I didn’t draw on the cards much. I just designated some specific cards from a different deck – ones with abstract art – to represent this fifth ‘Bridge’ suit. I didn’t give them fixed meanings like ’10 of Swords means ruin’. It was more contextual.
- I’d pull a ‘Bridge’ card.
- Look at the cards around it.
- Ask myself: what connection does this card show here? What’s being overlooked? What potential path isn’t obvious from the other suits?
It was slow going. Lots of readings felt like pulling teeth. Sometimes the ‘Bridge’ card just confused things more. I kept a journal, writing down every reading, what I thought the fifth suit meant each time. Slowly, patterns emerged, my patterns, my language with these cards.
Making it Work for Me
Now, I use this modified setup quite a bit. It’s not for every reading. If someone wants a quick, standard answer, I’ll probably grab my trusty old RWS. But for deeper dives, or when a situation feels really stuck, bringing in that fifth element often shakes things loose.
It forces me, and the person I’m reading for, to look beyond the established archetypes. It’s less about “This card means X” and more about “How does this concept feel in relation to your question right now?” It made my readings less predictable, more intuitive, I guess.
It’s not some magic system. It’s just a tool I shaped for myself because I needed a different perspective. Took time, took some dead ends, but now it’s part of my personal toolkit. It reminds me that understanding isn’t just about learning existing systems, but about building your own bridges too.
