Symbolism as a skill

A symbol should not automatically equal one fixed definition. The same symbol can say something different depending on the card, the surrounding imagery, the question, the spread, the reader, and the intuitive response.

I will not give you a rigid dictionary where every object has one universal meaning. That would make you faster and worse.

Ask instead: what is this symbol doing here? What is happening around it? How does it interact with the rest of the card? What does it make you feel? Does it appear elsewhere in the spread? Does its meaning change depending on the context?

Someone put that cup there, that sword, that coin, that staff, that rose, that mountain. In the Rider Waite Smith plates you are studying, those choices are consistent enough to learn, and specific enough that this rose is not every rose.

A rose on the Magician's table is not the same rose as a rose on a death's banner, if your deck has one. Ask what this object is doing in this station of the deck.

On the Three of Swords the rain is doing something very particular. It is not generic weather. It is falling on a pierced heart. That is a different rain from a light shower over a harbour, or a storm behind a figure who is walking away.

If you decide rain equals sadness every time, you will miss the times it is relief, cleansing, coldness, or just climate. Look at what the rain is doing in this picture, on this known card, in this question.