Learning to See Again with the Tarot de Marseille

I haven’t received my Camoin Tarot de Marseille deck yet.

That might seem like an odd place to begin a series devoted to the Tarot de Marseille — but in many ways, it feels exactly right. This 5/Hierophant personal year isn’t about collecting decks or racing towards ambitious goals. It’s about slowing down, unlearning, and returning to something older, leaner, and more demanding of presence. Besides, I already have two other Marseille-style decks I can work with while my studies begin.

Before I share card meanings, deck comparisons, or reading techniques, I want to start with the why. Why step away — at least for a while — from the system that has shaped my Tarot practice for decades? Why choose the Tarot de Marseille as a focal point for study, contemplation, and (eventually) client work?

Here are five reasons.

1. History calls me — and the older, the better

I’ve always been drawn to origins. Not in a nostalgic sense, but in the hope that if we trace a thing back far enough, it might tell us what it was originally for.

The Tarot de Marseille stands closer to the historical roots of Tarot than the modern esoteric systems most of us were trained in. Working with it feels like stepping into a conversation already in progress — one shaped by late medieval Christianity, folk symbolism, printing houses, and oral transmission rather than by tightly codified occult theory.

Part of my interest here is historical; part of it is devotional; and part of it is frankly heretical in the best possible way. I’m curious about the possible links between early Tarot imagery and the Cathar milieu, and about how the cards may encode traces of a Magdalene–Johannine stream that never quite disappeared, despite official efforts to erase it.

Two books are shaping this line of inquiry for me:

• The Tree of Life of Mary Magdalene: Sephardic Kabbalah in the Tarot of Marseille by Michél Pérez Rizzi, which explores the Tarot de Marseille through a distinctly Sephardic Kabbalistic and Magdalene lens.
• The Spiritual Roots of the Tarot: The Cathar Code Hidden in the Cards by Russell A. Sturgess, a book I read some time ago that planted seeds I’m only now ready to revisit.

Whether or not one accepts every historical claim made in these works is almost beside the point. What matters is that the Marseille Tarot invites this kind of questioning — it refuses to be reduced to a single authorised story.

2. I want to learn how to see again

Over the years, my mind has become very good at dot-connecting and correspondences.

Astrology, numerology, Kabbalah, angelic hierarchies, elemental dignities — they form an intricate, responsive web that I still value deeply. But there’s a downside to fluency: at a certain point, pattern recognition can start doing the work for you.

Sometimes, instead of seeing the card, you see the dots connected by the system.

One of the great invitations of the Tarot de Marseille is that it strips so much of that away. Especially in the non-scenic pip cards, you are asked to look first at direction, number, repetition, imbalance, flow, tension and rhythm, before reaching for an interpretive framework.

Camelia Elias’s Marseille Tarot: Towards the Art of Reading has been a source of inspiration here. Her work has been helping me retrain my attention: fewer mental shortcuts, more visual honesty. Less explaining, more noticing.

This feels less like learning something new and more like recovering a capacity that’s been quietly sidelined.

3. I want a client-friendly, trauma-aware practice

This is one of the more practical — and ethically important — reasons behind my pull towards the Tarot de Marseille.

As my work increasingly centres emotional sovereignty and nervous-system awareness, I’ve become more attentive to how Tarot imagery lands in the body, not just how it functions symbolically.

When scenic pip cards can become overwhelming

Many of the scenic pip cards found in Golden Dawn–influenced decks contain imagery that can be confronting, even when it isn’t intended to be. Scenes of collapse, conflict, exclusion, poverty, violence, or despair may be symbolically rich, but they can also be unexpectedly triggering for clients who are already navigating trauma, grief, or heightened sensitivity.

When an image strongly depicts what is happening, it doesn’t always leave room for the client to regulate their response. The nervous system reacts before reflection has a chance to enter the conversation.

How the Marseille pip cards create more spacious readings

The Marseille pip cards work differently. Because they are non-scenic, they don’t impose a narrative or emotional tone in advance. There’s no illustrated disaster to recoil from, no implied moral judgement, and no fixed storyline that the client must emotionally confront before meaning can unfold.

Instead, the reading develops through number, repetition, balance, tension, and flow — and through dialogue between reader and querent.

Honouring the Golden Dawn while choosing a different direction

I still have deep respect for the Golden Dawn system, and it has shaped my Tarot language in lasting ways. But at this stage of my practice, I need a method that allows more spaciousness — and more agency — in how experience is interpreted.

Over time, this will hopefully support a way of reading that is simpler on the surface, but more responsive and humane in practice. I’m not offering client readings this way yet. This year is about learning — refining how I see, how I listen, and how I hold space — before I ask others to step into that space with me.

4. I want to learn a new language — literally and symbolically

Learning the Tarot de Marseille feels a bit like learning a new spoken language.

You can’t just translate word-for-word. You have to absorb a different rhythm, a different logic, a different sense of what matters. And in doing so, your original language becomes more flexible too.

This has sparked a parallel desire to brush up on my French — and possibly to begin studying Spanish — so I can engage more directly with Marseille Tarot material written by French and Spanish authors, without everything being filtered through an English-language lens.

Every language opens a cultural doorway. The Marseille Tarot comes from a world that thinks differently about symbolism, religion, art, and authority. I want to meet it on its own terms as much as I can.

5. Personal gnosis — and a clearer channel

This final reason is the hardest to justify and the easiest to recognise.

On a personal, experiential level, the Tarot de Marseille feels like a clearer channel for divine communication. Less interpretive noise. Less mediation. Fewer layers between the image and the encounter.

I don’t mean that it’s purer, better, or more spiritual than other Tarot traditions. I mean that for me, at this point in my life and practice, it feels more transparent — as though something can move through it without having to negotiate quite so many symbolic toll booths on the way.

That’s not something I can prove. It’s something I can only test through practice.

How I’ll be studying — and how you’re invited to join

This post will serve as a hub for my ongoing exploration of the Tarot de Marseille.

Over time, I’ll be adding links here to topics such as:

• Reflections on different Marseille decks as I work with them
• Notes from my reading and study
• Experiments with Major Arcana–only readings
• Observations on reading without scenic imagery
• Historical, theological, and symbolic threads that emerge along the way, etc.

Alongside this, I’m using the Substack chat to share a weekly three-card, Majors-only Marseille reading. These are not predictive readings, but shared acts of seeing. Readers of any level are welcome to jump in, describe what they notice in the cards, and explore how meaning arises through collective attention rather than authority.

If this path resonates with you — whether as a reader, a scholar, a sceptic, or a fellow lover of old things — you’re very welcome to walk alongside me for a while.

This article will be updated as my Tarot de Marseille studies continue.