New Tarot Cards
While I seldom “read” tarot cards, for the entirety of this career, I’ve carried one or another tarot deck, as a totemic element, as a touch with a world that is older, and as symbolism of intentions, more than any other reason. Just what I do, for whatever reason.
Last time at the shop in Austin, after some shuffling of gear, I found myself without a set of cards. Not like I would let that go, but I did.
One of the people who works there offered me hers, just to use for the day. I pulled them out, poked at them, and I marveled at what an intricate set of art it was, but no, the cards didn’t speak to me. Hers didn’t talk to me, not like that, and I would spend too much time looking at the pictures — not enough time with the symbols and patterns.
I looked through the open boxes in the back, never found one I was comfortable with, or even remotely familiar, and eventually I just grabbed a new box off the shelf.
No “friends and family” discount for me. I slit open the cellophane wrappers, and went to work. $27 cuts into a day’s profit, know what I mean?
When I got home, I looked, and I have one deck that has crisscrossed the states, repeatedly, and it worn, having been shuffled a lot in the last years. I looked at its box, and in faint printing still visible, it’s a blue box (Swiss/German printing), with my name and the old Austin number sans area code just visible. Put those cards at thirty years old, maybe a little older — now retired.
New Tarot Cards
One of the early teachers would grab the little booklet that came with a deck of tarot cards and ceremonially burn the book of instructions as both a teaching moment and a symbolic launch. I used to like these booklets, but there was a lot of misinformation contained therein, hence the ceremonial torching.
An odd anecdote, I recall watching as a very new “reader” was busy looking up the definition of each card that was laid out in a spread, trying to discern the divinatory meanings.
I’m proud because it’s been many long years since I’ve left home without all the gear I want or need for work. I’ve trimmed my destinations, and methodology in such way as to make this as easy as possible for me.
Leaving out a set of cards was a subliminal sign to myself, I guess, and the new cards are crips, clean, with the colors rendered fresh, seems brighter. No scuff marks from repeated shuffling.
There were cards for sale at the shop. This one version, I own in a variety sizes, has always proven most useful with its iconic imagery and arcane astrological references plus sordid other details.
