Your first deck

[Nemia]

My first deck was the Thoth. I bought it because I liked the way the box looked that was in the days before the Internet and I really had no idea. I realized when I opened it that it was exactly the deck I had been looking for (had had a reading more than ten years ago and never forgot the Lust card, and also Justice and the Empress - would give much to find the old diary again where I wrote down that reading afterwards!!)

The Thoth really started my tarot journey, and it's still the first deck I stretch my hand out to. I still have the pocket sized deck I bought then, many years ago, and also a larger greenie. Both are trimmed. I trimmed them so many years ago and was really surprised when I entered the magical purple world of AT and found there were more people who had had the same idea!


I'm curious about your First-Deck-Stories. How did you find your first deck, and what does it mean for you now?

[Flaxen]

I don’t count my very first deck - it was an RWS which was given to me. It was a horrible printing - all yellow and grey! I put it in a box and never used it.

I was intrigued by Tarot though and went to a local metaphysical shop where I bought 2 decks - The Ancestral Path and the Thoth. I read with only those 2 decks for over a decade. It was the art which grabbed me with both - I liked the way the Ancestral Path linked to different cultures and loved the 2 of Disks on the box of the Thoth. I remember looking through all the Thoth cards and having such a visceral reaction to them - especially the Princess of Disks. This was even more interesting when I delved into the deeper philosophy behind the cards. The Thoth is tarot to me - if someone asks me to picture a card, it is the Thoth images which are first in my mind.

[litefoot13]

I actually don't have my first deck anymore - I gave it to my sister.

I can't remember where we got it, but I want to say like Barnes and Noble or Scholastic book orders or something like that.
It's one of those really generic ones that you find in the clearance section of the Barnes and Noble, right? xD
It was too big for my hands (I have short fingers), and I really mostly just liked the artwork and the idea of having something forbidden.

For a long time that was the ONLY one I had. xD

The oldest one I currently have is...*looks at the list*
Huh, I think it's the Tiny Tarot. Wow, did I really not get another deck until that one?
Seems so.
It's part of my 'I have this because of something I collect and not to actually use it' decks. xD
I love minis.

[velvetina]

I still have my first-ever deck.



I still have it, still use it, still love love LOVE it!

I hadn't intended to buy a deck; it was summer 1981 and I'd been given some money to get my ears pierced. However I saw a single, solitary Tarot deck on the shelf of the local stationer's. I'd heard of tarot cards, I was intrigued and bought them immediately.

They are very much loved, although they have been 'through the wars' (including being dropped in the sea, stained by a leaky fountain pen, stuck with candle wax and nibbled by guinea pigs). I've said this before, they're the one possession I'd rescue if the house - god forbid - was burning down!

[mused]

My first deck was the Medieval Scapini Tarot which I bought nearly 30 years ago at Barnes and Noble. Scapini's unique art style and the nifty metallic gold color throughout the deck is what drew me to it initially. I still use the deck and each time I do I find things I hadn't seen before due to the amount of detail in each card.

[Pen]

I can't quite believe this, but - I don't remember...! I looked at my little book of tarot purchases and it seems that it might have been The Little Tarot (Nova, purple box), but since the entries are undated and classified only according to where I bought the decks, it's anyone's guess. I began buying tarots for research at first, then for the art, then for tarot history. it was only later that I sometimes bought one to read for myself, and that may have been the Little Tarot or The Spiral, which I used for years.

[Amoroso]

My first is the Mythic that my mom gave me. It has a good black book and a black cloth too for spreads. Heard it's a good thing if your first deck was gifted to you.

[BlueStar]

My first deck was the Thoth deck. I remember seeing it in a shop in Glastonbury, many years ago, and I was instantly drawn to it. For me also, it was pre-internet so I had limited access and knowledge regarding tarot back then. I lost them in a move a couple of years later and never got another deck till this year.

[RavenOfSummer]

A yellow box RWS, which I bought for myself from the local hippie shop in my hometown in Pennsylvania. I think I was 15 or 16 years old.

I really mostly just liked the artwork and the idea of having something forbidden.

I was kind of like this too, although having them was both exciting and scary because they were forbidden. I was terrified my mom would find them, in which case I knew I would be in trouble. And then there was still that voice somewhere in my head, "What if they're all right and I'm inviting evil in by having these tarot cards under my bed and I wake up with the devil having possessed me!" (This was a lifetime of my mom and Catholic school talking.)

But I had another voice, my own, that was gradually growing stronger at that time. That was the voice that knew a deck of cards couldn't be evil. And I really wanted to learn. There was something about the idea of tarot and the art and symbolism that drew me, although I couldn't have explained it at the time.

I had that deck for the rest of high school and brought it with me to college, but I never really read with it, just got it out and looked at it every once in a while. Occasionally I would try to do a reading- I would lay out the cards in the Celtic Cross pattern explained in the LWB that came with the deck, and then I would look up the meaning of each card and try to figure out what it all meant. Unsurprisingly, I never really got very far. I didn't understand anything about the art of learning to read tarot.

After college, before I moved abroad to London for a couple of years, I packed up a bunch of my stuff into boxes and stored it in my mom's house. The cards were in there, and I didn't think about them for years. It was only a few years after grad school, when I started a greater process of self-seeking, that I felt drawn to tarot again, even though I still didn't really understand it. I felt I had never really connected with that first deck, and decided to explore other options. I ended up getting a copy of the Archeon Tarot because I loved the art. That did NOT work out! It is not a beginner's deck, although the art is beautiful. Even with my greater efforts to actually learn how to read with getting some books out of the library, I couldn't make heads or tails of that deck.

A few months later I somehow came across Kris Waldherr's Goddess Tarot online. There was something different about that deck. I could feel it from the moment I saw the images. I got my deck, and THAT deck is how I was able to start finally reading tarot. The images spoke to me, they were beautiful, I needed the feminine energy it brought. So in a way, that deck was my first deck. The first one I fell in love with, worked with, learned with.

After I really delved into my reading journey I remembered that old RWS, and while visiting my mom managed to find it and dig it out of storage. A couple of cards were missing, but overall it wasn't in bad shape. I got replacement cards from US Games and now keep that deck in my altar drawer, although I still don't read with it. I treasure it as something that reminds me of a time I saw glimpses of my own path and was brave enough to try to follow it, even if I didn't get very far at that time. It's part of the thread of the deeper calling that runs through my life, and gradually I was able to follow that calling more and more.

[Anesidora]

The first deck I bought was the Thoth with the 3 Magus cards when I was ~13 years old. I honestly think the deck chose me in a way, although I was really drawn to the imagery. The shop owner must have known how much I had in my pocket because the price was exactly what I had left of spending money! I had started using it right away and never stopped. I now have 2 backups as well.

From there, I delved into the darker deck realm of tarot. My second deck was the Deviant Moon and the third was the Ceccoli tarot...Now I have a giant collection. I eventually branched more into the RWS despite initially hating the imagery (Although tbh I do not own a "traditional" RWS deck, but I do own a few clones). From there we went into the TdM realm and have now dipped our toes into the Etteilla tarot.

Ironically enough, my first deck was purchased in Mystic, CT lol

[Hedera]

My first deck was the Thoth as well!
I was 14 years old, and I don't think they had other decks in the store I went to - although it would be odd if they didn't have the RWS, at least.
Perhaps I simply didn't notice any other decks.

Anyway, this was looooong before the internet (early '80s), and the LWB was not much help (if you're 14 and English isn't your first language, that sort of writing isn't the easiest to grasp).
I remember laying out the cards and waiting for Something to happen, and being disappointed when it didn't.
I kept the deck around, but I mostly forgot about it.

Fast forward to around 2003; the internet was a thing now, and it opened up SO many worlds...
Including that of tarot.
I am not sure which deck I bought first in that time; the Universal Waite, the Alchemical (1st edition) and the Spiral were some of the first, I think.
I signed up at Aeclectic tarot and bought and played with dozens of decks.

I focused on RWS-style decks for a long time, but veeeery slowly, the Thoth has become more understandable to me, and much loved; I have a handful of different editions now (that first one lives in a drawer in my bedside table), including the softly coloured German one in the gold box, which I have edged in gold myself. That one is my favorite.

If I had to choose only one deck now it would probably be that Golden Thoth - although RWS works better in readings for others (I have a very 'interactive' reading style, where I ask people to describe what *they* see in the image, what *they* think that scene means, etc).