Your Most Readable Deck

So many, could mention like 20.
But I somehow do very well with my Flornoys Dodal.

I would say that currently my most readable deck is the Green Witch Tarot but previously it was the Arthurian Tarot by the Matthews. It's such a non-traditional deck but it's easy for me to get sucked into the landscapes of the minors and imagine myself doing things in them.

I only have two decks (since I'm still quite a newbie), but I would say my Mystic Faerie deck is my easiest one to read. I really have no idea why, but I would say it's because of my astrological chart. Fairies are earthly beings and my chart is mostly earth earth earth xD
It really gets my intuition going quickly, even though I've been focusing on my other deck so I can also understand it the same way.

Tarot of the Master, Minchiate and Wraithe's Sigillum Tarot.

I do love all the Rider Waite variations. But the older decks with pips work best for me. The new Sigillum deck is sometimes so right, it is eerie.

My most readable tarot deck is the Legacy of the Divine. It is based on the RWS tradition, though a lot of the imagery departs from the RWS. There's just something about the composition of colors and images on the cards that speaks to me, in an immediate and deep way.

I can also pick up the RWS or an RWS clone (Universal Waite, for instance) and read with it easily. Early on, I spent a lot of time with an old RWS deck and various beginner books, and I became comfortable using it as a reading deck.

lark said:

[...] The deck you find you can read best with might not be the deck you see yourself with [...] they are trying to pretend a life through their card choice...and aren't choosing the cards for the right reason [...] We are a product of our life journey, and I think embracing that makes us more mature and that maturity dissolves the single mindedness of only seeing ourselves in one way.
And that in turn opens our mind to try new decks, and when we find the ones we can truly connect with we also have the maturity to say I don't care what you think [...]

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This, so much. Because of my preferences in art, books, movies and music I always figured in decks I would like the dark stuff too. I had a hard time connecting with the decks I liked aesthetically. I wasn't trying to look cool to anyone else, but I have been fooling myself for a long time. When I allowed myself to open up to the sweet cute fluffy stuff I could suddenly read so much better.

My deck that reads best is the Happy tarot. It doesn't wander off too far from RWS and the colors are perfectly balanced. Also it is the deck that 'softened' me up, somehow that personal meaning seems to add to its readability.

Rhinemaiden said:

It's meanings carry over to other decks I use, including playing cards. If I draw a 2 of diamonds in a playing card deck, I think: 2 of coins, balance.

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Yes I do this too! Maybe even too much so, when I find a deck hard to read I think of what the card looks like in RWS. For this reason I mostly read with RWS style decks. It doesn't make sense to me to use a whole different deck if all you do is translate back anyway

Rhinemaiden said:

Another thought to explore: what is your criteria for buying a new-to-you deck? [...] 2. Is it RWS based/inspired? Do the suit names make sense?

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To me this is even more important than aesthetics. If I like a deck and intend to buy it, I also check the correspondences. If the deck uses different correspondences in color, seasons, elements etc. than what I'm used to work with, I don't buy it (unless it's really really pretty). I know myself, I am not going to learn a new system or a new way of looking at things. The natural flow of a reading will be gone when I have to look up everything in a book.

zhadee, what a wonderful imaginative description! I chuckled when I read it. Though I doubt that I'll ever get that deck, I see your idea about the atmosphere of a deck. I like the Robin Wood as much for the warm colours she uses as anything about the art. But use Secret Tarot, cool colours, calm soothing images, when I am in Hermit mode and sick of all the emotion around me. Lately I have been using the TM Arcus Colores a lot but have not yet worked out in my mind why it reads so well for me. Usually esoteric decks just confuse me.

For me colour and atmosphere help me read because they draw me into a deck, much as the Pirate Tarot does for zhadee. But then, I am not always receptive to any given deck. Place's Alchemical works for me in the same kind of mental state as when I use the Secret, but the Fey works while feeling outgoing.

My first deck was a Hanson-Roberts, and for a long time it was my most readable, but now my Visconti (!!!) is edging it out. I think it's because the Visconti is so different from everything else I use, that it's much MUCH easier to really let the cards "speak" to me...since I have no preconceptions about what the images "must" mean.

Black Cats Tarot