Figures, Actions, Gaze, and Colour

Image literacy begins with description before interpretation. Name the figures, what their bodies are doing, what they hold, where they look, and what is absent. A raised cup can be an offering, a warning, a toast, or a prop; its meaning becomes clearer only in relation to the spread and question. This small pause prevents a guidebook keyword from overwriting what the deck actually shows.

Direction is especially useful. Are figures approaching, leaving, facing each other, looking down, or looking beyond the frame? Does a seated figure hold ground while another crosses a threshold? On a multi-card table, visual lines can create conversation. A gaze that seems to meet another card is an observation worth testing, not proof of another person's inner state.

Colour is a similarly conditional language. Gold may suggest value, sunlight, divinity, or simply the printer's palette; blue may feel quiet, cold, spiritual, or distant depending on the deck. Historic packs have been recoloured, restored, and reproduced many times. Describe the local effect first: where does the colour recur, what does it contrast with, and does it intensify a gesture or setting?

The aim is not to discover a universal code. It is to build an accountable interpretation: "I am reading this as withdrawal because the figure turns away, the path narrows, and the surrounding cards repeat departure," rather than "this colour always means X."

Learning to see before learning to name

Most tarot mistakes begin too quickly. The reader recognises a card, remembers a phrase, and replaces the image with the phrase before the eye has had time to work. "The card means grief." "Blue means intuition." "The figure is looking away, so they are avoiding me." These sentences may occasionally become useful interpretations. They are not observations.

Image literacy begins by slowing the sentence down. A figure has their head lowered. A blue garment occupies a large area of the picture. A road bends behind a group. One person faces left while another faces the viewer. A cup is offered but not taken. These are descriptions. They can be shared, challenged, and compared across readers. Interpretation begins when we ask what the description might matter for in this particular question. Projection begins when we announce that the image has established something about a real person without evidence.

The distinctions are simple but transformative. They make a reading more generous toward the image, and more careful toward the person who asked the question. They also make disagreement possible without making it hostile. Two readers can agree that a figure turns away and disagree about whether the turn is retreat, privacy, grief, strategic attention, or relief. The disagreement then has something to work with.

Figures are not merely characters

When a human figure appears in a tarot card, readers often rush to assign an identity: this is the querent, this is a partner, this is a parent, this is an enemy. Sometimes a spread position genuinely supports a person-reading. But figures can do other work. They can stage a role, an action, a social condition, a remembered scene, an internal conflict, or a relation between forces.

Ask a figure four questions before deciding who they are.

What are they doing? Sitting, walking, kneeling, carrying, offering, hiding, watching, leaving, building, fighting, resting, praying, dancing. Verbs matter more than labels because they describe what the card puts in motion.

What are they able to do? A person carrying too much may still be moving. A person seated on a throne may appear powerful but constrained. A person in a boat may be travelling but not steering. Agency is rarely all-or-nothing.

What are they related to? Look for objects, animals, terrain, weather, other bodies, borders, architecture, and empty space. A figure becomes legible through relationship, not isolation.

What is outside the frame? The picture may imply a destination, an unseen listener, a prior event, or a consequence. The frame limits knowledge. That limit is ethically useful: it reminds the reader that a card cannot show everything.

These questions work across deck families, though the answers differ. An RWS scene may foreground narrative action. A Marseille trump may foreground stance, emblem, costume, and allegorical role. A Thoth card may make a human body secondary to colour, geometry, or elemental movement. Image literacy is not a method for imposing RWS storytelling everywhere; it is a method for seeing what each deck makes available.

The grammar of a gaze

Direction is one of tarot's quietest narrative tools. A gaze can meet another figure, avoid the viewer, look at an object, move beyond a border, descend toward the ground, or rise to something not yet visible. Hands and feet often continue the sentence. A body may face forward while the head turns back; a hand may offer while the eyes withdraw; a mounted figure may move in one direction while the weapon points in another.

In a single card, this gives the reader a question. In a spread, it gives the reader a possible syntax. If two neighbouring figures face toward each other, the table may suggest encounter, negotiation, mutual attention, or confrontation. If both turn away from the central card, the reader might ask what is being avoided or left behind. But the word might matters. Layout, card orientation, and deck design can create visual relationships that were never intended as a fixed code. Use direction as a prompt for inquiry, not as a hidden surveillance system.

The same care applies to an image that appears to "look at" another card. A reader can say: "Placed this way, the figure's gaze leads my attention toward the card in the advice position." That is a transparent description of a reading choice. It is different from saying: "This proves the other person is watching you." The first uses composition to organise reflection. The second makes a claim about someone absent.

Looking away is not always avoidance

One of the commonest interpretive shortcuts is equating a turned figure with rejection. Yet bodies turn for many reasons: to leave danger, to seek privacy, to grieve, to see a horizon, to protect someone behind them, to attend to work, to rest from attention, or simply because the artist needed the composition to breathe. The card's suit, number, position, and surrounding imagery may make one possibility stronger, but no single posture settles the matter.

This is especially important in relationship readings. Tarot images can make a reader feel they have seen a private scene between two people. The responsible move is to return to what is knowable: what communication is missing, what feeling is being named by the querent, what boundary or question could bring clarity. A gaze is not testimony.

Colour is a relation, not a dictionary

Colour invites keyword lists because colour feels immediate. Red becomes passion, blue becomes spirituality, black becomes danger, white becomes purity, green becomes growth. Such associations may have histories in particular art traditions or occult systems. They are not universal, and they are rarely sufficient by themselves.

Begin with distribution. Where does a colour appear? Is it isolated or repeated? Does it belong to a person, a background, a boundary, a weapon, a garment, the sky, or an object being exchanged? What does it contrast with? A small red detail in an otherwise pale card can pull attention differently from a red field surrounding a small figure. A blue cloak may cool a scene, but the same blue in water, night, or a distant mountain does different visual work.

Then consider material history. In historical decks, colour can be altered by fading, restoration, printing, reproduction, and digital screens. A scan may make a muted pigment look vivid; a modern recolouring may turn a historical palette into a contemporary mood board. Before building a major interpretation on a hue, ask which edition you are actually seeing.

Finally, consider cultural context. White, black, red, gold, and other colours carry different associations across religious, regional, political, and personal histories. A reader may use a colour symbolically, but should avoid assuming their association is self-evident to every person or deck.

Weather, scale, and the pressure of space

Images also speak through atmosphere. A storm, clear sky, dawn, night, barren ground, cultivated garden, enclosed room, open water, cliff, bridge, or horizon alters the emotional physics of a card. Yet atmosphere should be read with the same restraint as colour. A dark sky may signal uncertainty, drama, shelter, grief, sublime force, or simply an artist's contrast. A garden may signal nourishment, labour, enclosure, wealth, cultivation, or a controlled version of nature.

Scale is equally revealing. Is a person dwarfed by architecture or landscape? Is a large object carried lightly? Are figures crowded at the edge of the image? Is there empty sky? Scale can suggest power, vulnerability, aspiration, alienation, or attention, but it first tells us how the artist has arranged the viewer's eye.

The practical habit is to name the visual pressure before assigning an emotion. "The figure is small under a large tower" is observable. "The figure is doomed" is an interpretation that may be neither necessary nor helpful.

Three exercises for the eye

The silent inventory. Choose a card and set a timer for three minutes. Write only nouns, verbs, spatial relations, colours, and quantities. No abstract words such as "love," "fear," "success," or "spirituality." Then notice how much of the card you had skipped when you began with a keyword.

The changed question. Take the same card and ask it three different questions: a work question, a relationship question, and a self-study question. Keep the visual description fixed. Write how the interpretation changes without changing the image. This demonstrates that context, not a magic dictionary, creates relevance.

The adjacent-card conversation. Place two cards side by side. Describe only their directions, heights, colours, and actions. Then write two possible conversations between them. The goal is not to find the one true dialogue; it is to develop evidence-based alternatives.

When the image cannot carry the claim

There are questions no picture can responsibly answer. A card cannot diagnose illness, determine legal guilt, make an investment decision, establish whether someone has consented, or reveal an absent person's private motives. It can help the reader recognise a fear, a need for evidence, an unspoken question, or a practical next step. The boundary becomes easier to maintain when readers have learned the difference between an observed image and a claimed fact.

This is why image literacy is not merely an aesthetic skill. It is an ethical one. It makes readings more precise, more imaginative, and less likely to turn metaphor into accusation.

Sources and points of debate: what an image can support

The Metropolitan Museum's World in Play materials and its accompanying catalogue are crucial reminders that tarot images belong to specific material, courtly, and print histories. The Waite-Smith Tarot Museum and Research Library supports edition-level comparison, particularly for readers who assume every online RWS image is identical. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot gives one influential early-twentieth-century commentary language, not a universal visual dictionary.

Contemporary resources such as Labyrinthos, Biddy Tarot, Tarot.com, and Learn Tarot can be useful prompts for practice. Their meanings should be compared with the card in front of you and with the deck tradition being studied. Wikipedia's Tarot entry remains a useful orientation and bibliography trail, while museum and primary sources should support claims about historical imagery.

Sources and points of debate