I finally snagged the Wild Unknown deck a few years back. Everyone raved about the incredible, almost primal artwork. It was beautiful, but let me tell you, when I first tried to actually read with it, my standard understanding of Tarot got completely wrecked. It wasn’t just a different flavor; it was a whole new language I didn’t speak yet.
I had years of notes on the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) system, all cross-referenced and organized. I thought I could just slap those meanings onto the beautiful, fierce animals in the Wild Unknown deck. I was wrong. Dead wrong.
The whole reason I even started compiling this quick guide was because I made a mess of a reading for a friend. This friend, Jenny, was having a truly awful time—moving houses, fighting with her landlord, general life chaos. She was already skeptical about Tarot, but she let me try. I pulled the Nine of Swords. You know, the classic RWS card of anxiety, nightmares, waking up in a cold sweat. I started reciting the standard stuff.
She stopped me right there. She pointed at the card. In the WU deck, the Nine of Swords is a massive black bird surrounded by nine floating swords, looking completely trapped in the pattern. She looked at me and said, “It doesn’t look like a nightmare, it looks like this bird is deliberately holding itself captive. It’s choosing to stay stuck inside those swords.”
A punch to the gut. She saw the truth of the image, and my learned, textbook meaning had blinded me to it. My explanation fell flat on its face. That failure, honestly, was the kick I needed. I realized I couldn’t just overlay meanings; I had to learn what the animals and the geometry were actually trying to tell me. It forced me to stop relying on memory and start actually seeing.
Logging the Process: From Failure to Function
The next day, I grabbed an old, half-used notebook—the kind with the stained cover—and decided I was going to document every single card from the perspective of the animal and the energy alone, pretending I knew nothing about RWS. I had to force myself to get messy and ignore the rules for a bit.
I physically went through the deck, card by card, handling each one, sometimes just staring at it for five or ten minutes straight. I was actively trying to figure out what the animal was doing and what that implied about human behavior. I had to ditch the “suit element” stuff for a while and just focus on the verb. What is the snake doing? What is the fox doing? What is the bird flying toward?
My documentation process was brutal and disorganized, but it eventually formed the structure of this quick guide I use now:
- First Pass: Action Verb and Animal ID. I wrote down the animal (or symbol) and the one strongest action verb associated with it. For the King of Pentacles (a huge stag), the verb was “Standing Strong” or “Guarding.”
- Second Pass: Geometry and Color. I noted the dominant colors (is the background bright and chaotic, or dark and solid?) and the structure. Is the pattern cyclical, static, or linear? This was key for the Major Arcana. The Wheel of Fortune, for example, is intensely cyclical and colorful, shouting constant motion.
- Third Pass: The Wild Unknown Twist. Only then did I compare it to the standard meaning and note the specific difference. For the Death card (which is a massive skull in a void), the standard meaning is transformation. The WU twist is that it’s less about active change and more about the final, stark stillness that allows rebirth.
It took me maybe two weeks of just chipping away at this, usually late at night when the house was quiet. I’d pull three or four cards, look at my scribbles, and then try to read a mini-spread just using my new observations. It was slow going, but suddenly, the readings started making actual sense. They stopped being academic and started being brutally honest—like the deck itself.
The Major Arcana Breakthrough
The Major Arcana was where I hit the biggest wall, mostly because they are not animals, but giant symbolic structures. When I finally cracked the Majors, the rest of the deck fell into place. I realized that the WU Majors aren’t focused on external events, like RWS often is; they are focused almost entirely on the internal state and the journey of the soul.
Take The Hermit. It’s not an old man with a lantern; it’s a glowing, solid structure sitting alone in the dark forest. It told me that isolation isn’t about finding something out there; it’s about building a solid, internal structure so bright that nothing external can shake it. That realization changed how I explained the entire card.
Why is this messy, hand-written guide better? Because it keeps the rawness of the deck intact. It stops me from defaulting to memorized textbook phrases that sound nice but don’t actually resonate with the powerful, sharp visuals of the Wild Unknown deck. My notes are full of blunt, simple phrases like “Stop Running,” “Just Be Still,” and “Focus the Fire.” That directness is what this deck demands.
I still use these handwritten notes every time I read with the deck. It keeps me honest. It keeps me seeing the card, not just remembering what the card is supposed to mean. It was a tedious process, but now, I can finally speak the wild, whispering language of this gorgeous deck, and my readings are infinitely better for the hard work I put in after that disastrous reading with Jenny.
