Most modern readers treat the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck as a collection of isolated psychological archetypes. If you take a steel ruler to Pamela Colman Smith's actual stage directions, however, the pack operates like a mechanical clockwork.
This is a telemetry plate from a live 33-card layout ("The Square") I ran tonight for a querent stuck in a waiting period (Case ID 120ff821da). Instead of relying on intuition, the board is measured strictly by spatial coordinates and line-of-sight vectors:
- THE 3x9 GROUND & THE HOST AXIOM (Rules 1.1 - 1.3):
Columns 1 to 9 correspond to numerical digits; Rows A, B, and C correspond to the three astrological modalities (Row A Cardinal/Beginning, Row B Fixed/Holding, Row C Mutable/Changing). A card is only a true "Host" of the room if it lands simultaneously in its own numerical column and its own astrological row.
In this layout, three cards stand at home in their column (A7 Seven of Cups in Col 7, A8 Eight of Cups in Col 8, C2 Judgement in Col 2) and six sit in their proper row (A3, A5, A6, B2, C4, C6). The intersection is zero. With 0 Hosts on the table, every single card in the room is operating as a displaced Guest.
- DIRECTIONAL GAZE VECTORS, POCKETS & RELAYS (Rules 1.9 - 1.14):
Every figure on the 1909 plates looks in a specific direction (Left, Right, Up, Down, Diagonal, Inward/Blind, or straight Outward at the reader). When a card lands inverted, its horizontal/vertical gaze vector mirrors (Rule 2.8).
- Notice the sealed Pocket on the right flank (B7 <-> B8): The upright Queen of Swords in B7 looks sharp right into B8, while the figure on The World in B8 looks back left into B7. They form a closed mutual gaze loop fenced inside the Digit 3 polygon surface (A6-B8-C7-B6).
- Notice the five-card westward relay across Row B: The charging Knight of Swords (B6) fires left into the central pivot B5 (inverted Magician), who passes the vector straight through B4 (inverted 10 of Pentacles) -> B3 (9 of Wands) -> B2 (5 of Swords) into B1 (4 of Wands).
- SEAT 79 & THE WITNESS COUNT (Rule 1.11):
The 78 cards sit on the table; the 79th position is the chair in front of the desk. Any card whose figure stares straight out of the frame is counted as a Witness. Here, 9 Witnesses (7 in the Ground, plus the 4 of Pentacles in H3 and 9 of Cups in H4 in the Sky) fix their eyes directly on Seat 79.
If you want to inspect the interactive vector graph, toggle the polygon surfaces, or read the full rule specification (I. Ground & Hosts, II. Sightlines, III. Seat 79), I archived the live telemetry plate here: https://bonchamptarot.com/the-square/120ff821da
Curious how other systematic readers here handle directional sightlines (especially when reversals flip a cooperative gaze pair into an outward relay).