Tarot and I

Merry Meet and Welcome to you magickal souls!!!!!

I wanted to explore my relationship with Tarot. Now, don't get me wrong as this particular divination method is steeped in history and tradition but I will happily admit to not being very traditional so I don't have many traditional Tarot decks in my personal collection. By traditional, I mean the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) kinds of decks.

The 19 decks I have in my collection have their own themes and version of the same cards that are within the more traditional decks. But how did I know/recognise this? Well, it's because I saw the images from the RWS styles of decks and didn't feel called to acquire a deck for myself. So I went and found decks that I like and look forward to using. Decks whose stories I could connect with without needing a guidebook or to learn meanings by heart.

There are many myths about how to acquire your first deck, or even any deck at all. One of these is that the first should be a gift from someone else. This is great if you know at least one reader who has a large collection and wants you to have one but if you're like me and don't know or have anyone to do this, then the only option is to buy either brand-new or second-hand.

Because I am very independent, I am more than happy to buy more own decks but I also don't believe that they absolutely must be gifted. I have received decks as gifts but they weren't my first deck that got me to fall in love with the story within tarot.

I also don't believe that you first need to learn the meanings of the cards by rote before you can start to read the cards. This may be due to having non-traditional decks but I do believe in using your intuition first before reaching for a guidebook. I read the image of the card, noticing particular details that my eyes are drawn to and then applying those details and what I believe they mean to reading I am doing.

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The very first Tarot deck I got was the Forest of Enchantment deck by Lunaea Weatherstone. It uses characters and scenes from fairytales to depict the same energies and messages as what is usually within the RWS decks. I saw it on a blog somewhere that I have since forgotten the details of and knew I had to have it as my first Tarot deck. I still love to use it, although I don't think I use it as often as I want.

Some of my other themed decks are are Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Hocus Pocus, Alice in Wonderland, and Disney Villains. I love each individually for different reasons:

I love the Game of Thrones deck because I loved the show and the characters with their own stories that are hinted at in the cards. Like Sansa Stark putting the candle in the tower at Winterfell for The Star card because she's holding on to her hope of being rescued.

The Lord of the Rings is my most recent tarot acquisition because I loved those films when I was a kid and I know the story so well. I can understand why Éowyn is shown as The Sun because she wants abundance for everyone else and she touches all their hearts, and also because she is a shield-maiden so she's got that protective energy which the Sun also has against negativity. But also because The Fool is shown as Frodo Baggins, the Hobbit who volunteers to destroy the One Ring and doesn't really know what he's doing or where he's going yet still, he trusts the path before him (and those he travels with).

Hocus Pocus was another deck I knew I had to have because I truly love those films. This tarot deck is only based on the first film, but it's still iconic to me. I think it may have been one of those films that helped me to fall in love with magick, long before I started living as a modern Witch.

I like the Alice in Wonderland tarot deck because the story has helped me to understand myself better. The one drawback to this deck is that the pip or numbered cards of each suit don't really give much indication of what those cards traditionally mean. They are still really good to use though as I have my own way of interpreting them.

The Disney Villains deck was a gift but I still love it because I think there's more to the villains than just their villain-arc. I also love how it includes some villains from films that I know from my childhood, like Madam Medusa, Madam Mim and the poacher, Percival C. McLeach. There's a reason behind these characters each being a villain and I like to use these cards to explore the not-so-villainous side of them, like the stepmother from Cinderella being strict, exacting and controlling and how she used those ideas to protect her daughters.

Fairy Tarot by Radleigh Valentine is another deck I love because I have always been fascinated by the Fae, going all the way back to the Flower Fairies Treasury by Cicely Mary Barker which I had when I was a kid. This deck splits the Minor Arcana suits into seasons and still has the Major Arcana archetypes as separate fairies to the seasonal ones.

I quite like the Good Tarot deck by Colette Baron-Reid as I think it simplifies each card's energies. This deck also does something similar to the Fairy Tarot deck as it uses the four main elements for the suits. So I like that this deck can help me to deepen my connection to the elements.

The Movie Tarot is interesting as it uses multiple films and characters to embody the archetypes of the court cards (pages, knights, queens and kings) and the Major Arcana. Like The Fool is shown as Forrest Gump as all he seems to do is trust blindly that he'll go where he needs to go. And The World is shown as Leeloo from the Fifth Element, the one who connects everything together.

I bought some decks second-hand online and these were: Witches Tarot, and Light Seer's Tarot. I like using both as one seems to be more symbolic and full of colour, the Light Seer's, and the other is slightly darker, maybe slightly more gothic, the Witches Tarot. These are definitely fun and interesting to use.

The Wild Unknown Pocket Tarot deck comes in a little tin box and is very interesting to use. It is alternative and has things like having a lamb sitting under four swords for the Four of Swords. The court cards are slightly renamed from the page, knight, queen and king to the son, daughter, mother and father. But this deck makes me think differently so I actually like using it.

The Celtic Dragon Tarot deck by D J Conway is another favourite because it gives an alternative perspective to some of the cards. Most notably, for me anyway, is the Seven of Swords, which shows someone who appears to be in the process of hiding important things but it also shows a light approaching one end of the corridor so I associate this card with hiding true intentions/purposes for a time to protect them from thieves and people who would use those ideas for their own improvement.

Another slightly alternative tarot deck I have is the Magical Nordic Tarot deck. This addsin an extra card in the Major Arcana to represent Charity alongside the 78 standard cards. This deck ties every card to Norse mythology. It does also have a key-word or -phrase at the bottom of each card which helps to get to know it but it also helps with interpreting the pip cards as they are similar to the Alice in Wonderland deck.

There's also the Tarot de Marseilles deck, which was gifted to me by someone in my local community. It's based on the deck that was popular in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. So it's very traditional, perhaps more traditional than the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which was first released in 1909. But the images are based on wood-cut prints, which is what makes this deck less traditional to me.

I also have a Flower Tarot deck that acts as a colouring book as each card has no colour at all but is blank so I can add whatever colour I want to add. Each card has a flower on it that is associated with the meaning of the card. While I haven't used it in a reading yet, I have been working on colouring the cards in. I'm hoping this deck will also help me to deepen my relationship with the world of plants and flowers as I am not a naturally gifted green witch.

Two of my favourite decks are the Zodiac tarot and the Triple Goddess tarot decks. The first connects various aspects of astrology with the cards, like The Star being associated with the sign of Aquarius, and the Wheel of Fortune being associated with Jupiter. (These are two of my favourite cards in this deck as well.) The Triple Goddess deck is different because it almost exclusively depicts women in every card, with only a couple of exceptions. Death is shown as an aspect of the Lady of the Dead, as an example. The Emperor is one of the exceptions but it also shows an absence of anyone else, so it's just a man sitting on a throne who appears to be in the middle of shouting orders at someone unseen.

The final deck in my collection is not one that I use but I include it because I still have it. This deck is the Magic of Tarot, and it's very similar to the Alice in Wonderland deck as the pip cards are just groups of wands/swords/pentacles/coins but they aren't arranged in a way that could be interpreted without a guidebook telling you that, as an example, the Three of Swords is associated with heartbreak and emotional anguish.

As evidenced by my collection of decks, I tend to look towards less traditional decks. I like seeing the story within the story of tarot, and that's how I connect with them.

This is all to show that you don't need to just use a Rider-Waite-Smith deck if it's not what you are called to use. Traditional decks work for some, but, speaking from my own personal experience, they aren't for everyone. So it's okay to find something different, something that you like, and connect with tarot through it.

I hope this has inspired you to think about how you can get into tarot using alternative decks to the Rider-Waite-Smith one.

Peace and love to all!!!!