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The pattern of the Rider-Waite Smith (RWS) Tarot deck is considered the "modern standard", and a lot of modern Tarot decks follow the same pattern as RWS. But older Tarot decks were more influenced by culture and [religio]political events at the time, and thus historical decks often had different patterns with different themes and imagery.

The Captain and Bacchus as a substitute for The Priestess and the Hierophant.

In the earlier days, The Priestess (2) and The Hierophant (5) were The Popess and The Pope; religiopolitical events made Catholic imagery less favorable and so, for a time, deck makers replaced The Popess and The Pope with something else.

While some deck makers chose the analogous Juno and Jupiter (pulled from classical Roman mythology), The Captain and Bacchus appear as their substitutes in Belgian Tarot. No one exactly knows why the Belgian Tarot pattern use these substitutes, but some people theorize it was to mock religious authority, such that their interpretation may possibly be drastically different.

The Captain is a stock character pulled from theatre (Commedia dell'Arte); he isn't really a captain, he's vaingloriously exaggerating or lying about his accomplishments, but he may have dreams and/or noble intentions. For me, I've assumed the interpretation to be fake-it-till-you-make-it and the reversal of this card to be a situation where the nobleness of intentions get lost. In my card design, MTE198x EX is sitting in a literal trash heap, but for all intents and purposes, he is king of that trash heap and proud of his #1 Best Friend trophy given by Alphys and the Human, while the wreath crown is up in the sky (his dreams and intentions, and a sly nudge of the symbol of the bad ending for that AU).

Bacchus is the god of wine, it's hard not to imagine "party animal" vibes, and for me, I assume the interpretation to be a reminder to work hard but party harder, the reversal being what happens when you party too hard. I couldn't help but also give MTE198x NEO more "Terminator" vibes here as a result - cool to have a friend, not as an enemy.

I prefer reading with these cards added to the original 78, but if using as a replacement for 2 and 5, it could potentially remove any spiritual influence of readings in favor of more hedonistic ones.

Eros as a substitute for The Lovers

This happens to be more straightforward. Many of the very early Tarot decks didn't call this card "The Lovers", but "Love" or "God of Love", with some cards focused on the figure bringing couples together or just an image of Cupid entirely (such as in some Minchiate Tarot decks designs).

So, obviously, it makes sense here to feature a singular Mettaton here that's a literal Cupid.

The Ship as a substitute for The Devil

The Ship appears in place of the Devil in the Sicilian Tarot deck. It's not sure why this substitution was made, but one theory suggest that, since it is a Sicilian deck, the ship might possibly be an invading warship and was seen just as scary for an island kingdom.

Traditional interpretations for The Devil are usually something like bondage to compulsions and desires. My thought is to take The Ship as bondage to something important (as in duty-bound).

Hence me picking Coreton for this card, bound to the power of the Core, incredibly terrifying to go up against.

The Lightning as a substitute for The Tower

The Tower of the RWS deck is based on towers from other historical Tarot decks, where lightning is destroying a tower - this image usually associated with the Bible story of God striking the Tower of Babel.

But some other historical Tarot decks (such as the Belgian Tarot mentioned earlier), use an imagery of lightning hitting a tree and shocking the poor fellow under it - this image was usually associated with the Bible story of the disaster faced by Job at the hands of God. The lightning-hitting-tree motif is often captioned with "The Lightning".

Regardless on whether or not it's lightning hitting a tower or tree, either was meant to be interpreted as "punishment from God".

The original card I had for The Tower was quite neutral (a foxy boxy Mettaton skyrocketing upwards and throwing down bombs) and meant to be more of the typical meaning of upheaval associated with The Tower. Opting to have Mettaton Neodymium for The Lightning is more of a callback of the "heaven's anger" theme.

The Devil's Tower as a substitute for The Tower

This one's interesting, there's a few decks where The Tower or The Lightning is a pair card with The Devil, such that their images were less about heaven's righteous lightning fury and more like... a literal portal to hell dragging in lost souls.

The name of this imagery isn't always quite consistent. There's "The Devil's House", "Hellmouth", "[The house of the] Damned" (although ironically the Tarot de Paris lists this as "The Lightning" when it looks nothing like lightning! D:). I went with the "The Devil's Tower" here.