Today for my favorite thing, I choose tarot cards. I can’t remember the first time I started reading them. I was extremely young and started with a standard poker deck then moved on in my teens to the typical Universal deck or Rider-Waite deck that I bought in a bookstore. Over the years, I’ve owned and collected many more. Too many to begin to catalogue all of them. Some I bought for collector reasons, they were unusual or they wanted to go home with me, others were gifts from friends, but most were bought for reading, either for myself or for others (I started reading professionally in college).

Because one of my “gifts” or curses is psychometry, I’m well aware of how much of ourselves we leave impressed on the objects we value, even after the object is cleansed. How much of us remains forever a part of our “tools.” As such, I’ve never allowed other people to touch the decks I actually read. Most tarot readers will have the querent shuffle and split the deck. I will only allow one to split it, and only the cards to the decks I reserve for reading for others. My private decks forever remain private. To give you an idea of how private, I own over 70 decks and up until recently, my own children didn’t know I owned any at all. Yeah, I know. I’m nuts.

Picking out a deck to read is a very personal choice and what I’ve told students in the past, is to look at as many cards as you can before you buy them (something much easier to do today). I have read a standard poker deck as well as a Tarot deck, and can get just as accurate a reading from it. So there is no wrong, or right deck. It’s whatever speaks to you. I always tell students to buy the deck brand new and untouched. You don’t want the impression of anyone else on your cards, and to handle and study them for about a month before you actually try to read them. One caveat, I’ve had decks “call out” to me in the past and then once I got home with it, realized the symbolism is too dark an energy for me. If you have a deck that makes you uncomfortable, for any reason, cleanse it, bind it and store it. I don’t believe in recycling decks or destroying them, not even by fire. But I have very personal reasons why I feel this way.

And I definitely don’t believe in the old adage that your first deck should be stolen. That brings its own weight of bad juju with it. Don’t. Not the way to get off to a positive start with anything. Remember: Do no harm. Theft is hurtful, even to a big corporation that will raise the price of items for everyone to compensate for the theft. So it hurts us all in the end and harm has been done. And no one wants to know the bad juju that comes from stealing a deck from a New Age store where they actually know how to protect their merch. I definitely wouldn’t want that deck in my house.

I tend to rotate through my personal decks. I read the one that is best suited for my mood at the time of the reading. When reading for others, I usually have three on hand, and again, choose the one that calls out to me when they come with their questions.

This is and has always been one of my favorite “public” decks. It’s the Mythic Tarot by Juliet Sharman Burke and Liz Greene, and illustrated by Tricia Newell. http://www.tarot-decks.com/mythic-tarot.html

And a new discovery which has me fascinated is the 3D Grand Trumps Tarot Deck. It’s not a full deck, but is only the major arcana. They are lenticular cards and very interesting…
http://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738736938

Happy readings!