I'm just gonna copypasta from my
blog cause that's easiest!
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When I was very young, I had a recurring dream. It was me, but a past life. A young girl from a well-off family. I had a nurse who took care of me, and taught me things. My favorite lessons were in the middle of the night, when she taught me magic in secret. I was given a tarot deck - one with large green borders and an image on the top half and an empty square in the bottom half. When I used these cards to read, the images would move and flow and words would appear in the bottom box, telling me what I needed to know. It was a learners deck, and I was told that when I got older, I wouldn’t need the words. The cards would speak to me. Eventually in the dream, my family was going to move across the ocean. My nurse told me my cards were tied to the magic of my home, so I couldn’t take them. I hid them in a hole in the barn and left for the boat. I believe it sank before arriving, as my dream never finished.
My first in-person experience with tarot was at a girls night with too much tequila. A friend brought out a RWS deck and told me my boyfriend was an asshole (true) and there was a tall dark stranger in the distance (turns out that was literal - he lived across the country) I laughed it off and didn’t think about tarot much for a few years.
Wolfboy was my next divination experience and the big one - I don’t even remember why, but he brought out a copy of Froud’s Faeries’ Oracle. He let me hold them and I got a paper cut! I don’t know why I didn’t expect faeries to bite, but there it is…. Regardless, I was enchanted. Within a week, I found a copy of The Heart of Faerie on clearance and bought it. My very first deck
. I honestly feel like starting with an Oracle deck shaped my entire path as a Reader. I’ve anyways felt that the imagery and how the cards “speak” to me (my dream was right about that!) trumps what the card is “supposed” to mean.
My first actual tarot deck was Shadowscapes, and the beautiful, intricate imagery of that deck allowed me to continue my intuitive path, while introducing me to the traditional RWS structure at a subconscious level. I also used that deck in story telling and poetry, as it moved me to. Down the line, I picked Fairy Lights tarot, and the paired-art imagery of that deck helped to build my ability to connect cards to each other in a spread. As well, the fairy tale nature of the artwork was so easy to create worlds around - it taught me to enter my cards, to explore them from within to reach greater depths.
Other decks had come in the meantime with their lessons, of course, but the next Big One was being gifted Archeon Tarot. A little bit darker, Archeon had QUITE the voice. He was the first to demand one-on-one study and his own journal. He arrived just when I started shadow work and has been my strongest ally in that journey to this day. Then came Mary-El with her intricate and depthy imagery, hitting me right into every crevice of my Soul. I’ve had her something like 6 months and have maaaaybe worked with as many cards. The impact that deck has had on my spirituality is indescribable.
Most recently, my tarot journey has taken a turn towards the traditional, finally! I have a copy of the Universal Waite tarot that has been mostly neglected finally getting it’s time to shine. I’ve started a study journal where I document my intuitive read of the individual cards, along with their traditional meanings from as many sources as I can get my hands on, and explorations of the various connections I can find - myths, astrology, symbolism, numerology, etc. I think I’ll always be an intuitive reader at heart, but the study of tarot had been so interesting!
And that’s it. The highlights of my tarot life.