The Chinese alphabet is a shortened form of another alphabet that is more like pictures, and it, in turn, is a shortened form of an ancient alphabet that was pictures.

The Egyptian alphabet is the same situation: Its original alphabet was pictures, which has been shortened over its history. It was heavily used in divination, and children of nobility had to learn it. The children were taught in temples by priests who were magicians.

The Hebrew alphabet is the same situation: When Hebrew was first written, each letter represented both a sound and a picture. Information on this is easily searched on the internet.

All these alphabets were used in divination.

Tarot too is a picture language. My introduction to Tarot was through lectures on consistent violators of the laws of random distribution (statistics). Rider Waite Tarot was one of only five known violators. The professor had done a twenty-year study about random distribution of Tarot when members of the class who had never heard of Tarot thought of its history, proving a clear deviation from randomness.

After buying a dozen books on Tarot meanings, and watching three different good professional readers in action, I was not satisfied: I wanted to know Tarot’s meanings for Tarot: no interface, no spirits. I wanted a logical system. I knew Tarot violated the laws of random distribution, so I knew it had power behind it.
I wanted to know Tarot’s meanings for Tarot: I found it too. The principle you find in algebra of “You can’t solve an unknown with an unknown; there must be only one unknown quantity in your equation.” was my inspiration. It told me I had to learn the meanings that were unknown through something that was known. The known had to be the question itself, I deduced. That would be the way to make the Tarot Dictionary.

So I asked, since 1980, questions I knew the answers to. I wrote the meanings I discovered that way on index cards and filed them so I could look them up later. Those index cards are now an archive you can access, it’s monumental and still expanding. I was a court reporter then, so I read what Tarot said as words and phrases, which makes Tarot talk directly to you the way you speak.

The system that developed tends to report verbatim what someone (including the Querant) says, since it is language-based. The system is: YOU READ THE PICTURES. You have the question, and you apply that to the illustrations on Rider Waite Tarot. And Tarot talks to you.

A group of cards talk word for word through how their pictures relate to one another. Your subconscious minds the pictures; your conscious applies the language. The subconscious is the root of psychic insight, so you gain psychic insight as you use the Tarot this way. You build up a bridge between your daily awareness and your subconscious, the two get together so that you make connections in your daily life you never saw before, never suspected. (You are wise.)

Reading the pictures eliminates at least one-third of the work of reading. There’s no other factor to consider: It’s just the pictures and what they say. No astrology or numerology or Kabbalah, etc. Your mind is already programmed with language since you were two years old. The pictures are in front of you. Reading the pictures is logical, mechanical, and language-based. And it can be demonstrated: I demonstrate it every day.

So simple. So flexible. It delivers nuance and detail that the more complex systems cannot.

A disadvantage of reading by the pictures is … you get used to relying upon the question. The question selects what the topic of the spread is. Tarot done in a verbatim way delivers a precise and detailed answer to a question so automatically. When you get used to this, operating without a question is awkward. But it can still be done.