Your Most Readable Deck

Nica

For me it is an ardent battle between the Bohemian Gothic 3rd Edition and the Joie de Vivre by Paulina Cassidy.

The BG makes a lot of sense. I lay it out and find that it tells me exactly what I need to know. No fuss, no decoration, no sensationalizing. It's all there!

With Joie de Vivre, my head fills with music and voices of the characters in the card. The cards connect and interact like impish beings whispering their knowledge, and also feel like a world of magic and whimsy. It reads incredibly well for me.
 

MissChiff

It would be the Thoth for me I think because it was my first❤️
 

Calcifer

RWS all the way. I was raised with it and it is wired right into me. Now, the Wild Unknown is opening up new doors for me in terms of readings - I've never been an intuitive reader, but this deck hits me on a different level and speaks very loudly (a whole new world for me).

Michael
 

Marcus R

Lately,for me, Kat Blacks Golden. This deck has wanted to tell me stories from the beginning. The Golden carries me along, feels like it's teaching me as I read.
 

lark

What makes a deck readable?
It isn't one thing it is a combination of things that all come together to make a deck readable.
For me it is card stock...size...colors and image simplicity.
The last two being the most important.
I feel that I intuitively know the first time I handle a deck if I will find it tactile.
And that is not to say that I find only one style comfortable.
Illuminated, Wild Unknown, Alchemy Oracle, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Old US Games cardstock all have different feels, but I knew instantly they would be good shufflers and would be nice to work with.
Stiff card stock with a lot of gilding on the sides is a no go for me.
Also sticky, blocky decks that come out of the box in a clump and seem to be very affected by any humidity.
If you have an aversion to even picking up a deck because it is uncomfortable in your hand what's the point??

Size plays into this too....not to big and not to small...a nice happy medium.
If I can put a deck in my hand and comfortable close my hand around it that's a good size.
I am especially happy with bridge or poker size decks.
I find short wide decks especially hard to work with.
And those ginormous decks like Light and Shadow ...I feel like I'm lost right away...it doesn't feel intimate to me.

Color so super important to me!!!
I like a nice clear saturated color...perfect examples would be Robin Wood , Morgan Greer, Guilded, Halloween, Universal Waite, Hoi Polloi.
I love watercolor decks, but I find it hard to connect to the more washed out subtle colors....still love them though... sigh...
An exception to this is Tarot of Transformation which I think is water color... I love the imagery so much and when I have time to really sit over a reading I like to use it.
Decks done in prisma color pencils I am very attracted to...I think it is because I am so familiar with the colors as I use them myself. Greenwood, Journey Home, Universal Waite, Hanson Roberts, Robin Wood...in love with all of them.
I have a first edition Anna K and even though the colors are bright, the dark background totally sinks me.
So a lighter back ground is important to me...exception being the Guilded, for some reason it doesn't bother me at all with this deck, maybe because the color tones are so jewel-like, they are like little lights on bright.

And finally simplicity of the picture.
If there is to much going on like the Pearls of Wisdom, the Paulina, I don't get that instant mind jump from the cards...that moment where the cards make sense as a whole.
I have to work to hard to stop and examine the nuance of the pictures.
That might be nice in some way if you are just doing a leisurely reading for yourself and have all the time in the world...but when reading for clients I need that jump...and a lot of imagery all watercolory, swimmy, and drugged up feeling is not going to work for me.
Wild Unknown works very well for me because the images are so simple and they have a pop of color to add emphasis.

I love Rider Waite for imagery and I could probably write a whole post on the different versions and how their different colors work or don't work for me.

A word of advise...the deck you find you can read best with might not be the deck you see yourself with.
I see lots of people come and go on AT and some see themselves as these dark mysterious entities and they buy the Hidden Realm or a vampire type deck...or some sexy deck with a lot of half dress maidens draped over rocks with muscle bound Celtic tattoo men standing seductively over them.
They never learn to read tarot.
Because they are trying to pretend a life through their card choice...and aren't choosing the cards for the right reason.
What truly connects to them and their journey in life up to that point.
And they might find they read best with the Hanson Roberts, Rider Waite or "gasp" a Doreen Virtue deck.
But they don't feel that projects who they want to be seen as..so they struggle along with a deck they don't truly connect with.
And then drop away, or keep buying the same type of deck in hopes one will be "the one."

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 of my fluffy, bunny lollypop, deck...I can read great with it and that's all that matters to me.

So when you find your deck...the deck you can read with ease...embrace it, defend it and most of all use the heck out of it.
Enjoy the journey!
 

Thoughtful

My most readable Tarot is the Roots of Asia. l love the muted colours, pale blues and greens with highlights of soft yellow here and there. The card stock is bliss, a slight sheen, and the shuffling is silky. It has a voice that draws me in intensely, its like looking into a deep well where slowly but surely all knowledge comes up to the surface and surrounds me.
This is the one deck that has never let me down, l trust it implicitly to tell the truth gently and with firmness if need be. l have never bonded with a deck as much as this one.
l do like my other decks but with the Roots of Asia l feel l am holding something very special, something very spiritual, its like l can hear and feel what its saying to me. Very hard to put into words as its more than intuition and more than generally reading the cards.

This is where l wish l had Le Fanu's command of eloquent wording :laugh:
 

G6

Hmmm, they mostly all work for me. I judge more the ones I can't read with those really stand out for me and it's not that I can't read the cards themselves it's just the deck doesn't bring forth cards that make sense. If that makes sense?

Ones that I have used as my most readable deck until they fell apart and I got a different deck to replace them:

Golden replaced with:
Celtic replaced with:
Secret replaced with:
Radiant Rider Waite

These are just my everyday personal decks. The ones I use for myself. My other current decks are all wonderful too!
 

Ace

What makes a deck readable?
You say it very well. I do think the deck picks you to some extent. Not that you get it handed to you or giving as a gift, but that you find the one where you understand the pictures immediately and agree with the philosophy of that deck.

For me for a long time that was "merely" the RWS. People would talk to me, "Oh, you read tarot too? I use the Esoteric Tarot of the Cat people from Australia 1949, which deck do you use?" and I would mumble about just using RWS. "Oh," they would sign, "oh, well, isn't Tarot fun?" I was almost relieved do find the Robin Wood deck. At last a deck I could understand and read with that WASN'T RWS! I now use another deck (the WorldTree) but I still say, find a deck which you can understand the pictures of, and the rest will work itself out. (and I cannot read Marseilles style decks at all!)

A word of advise...the deck you find you can read best with might not be the deck you see yourself with.
I see lots of people come and go on AT and some see themselves as these dark mysterious entities and they buy the Hidden Realm or a vampire type deck...or some sexy deck with a lot of half dress maidens draped over rocks with muscle bound Celtic tattoo men standing seductively over them.
They never learn to read tarot.
Because they are trying to pretend a life through their card choice...and aren't choosing the cards for the right reason.
What truly connects to them and their journey in life up to that point.
And they might find they read best with the Hanson Roberts, Rider Waite or "gasp" a Doreen Virtue deck.
But they don't feel that projects who they want to be seen as..so they struggle along with a deck they don't truly connect with.
And then drop away, or keep buying they same type of deck in hopes one will be "the one."

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 of my fluffy, bunny lollypop, deck...I can read great with it and that's all that matters to me.

So when you find your deck...the deck you can read with ease...embrace it, defend it and most of all use the heck out of it.
Enjoy the journey!

I agree! Some people read well with the Thoth deck but to me, it says something about the person reading with it. Nothing bad, but if someone actually reads with it and is comfortable with it, they are different than me. (I knew someone on the Psychic Fair circuit who read with it. She was a very nice person really. But I found her prickly and difficult to be close to. She and I were never close, but I liked her and respected her.) I have met people who love the Herbal tarot, they were into herbs too. But one young man used the Dragon tarot and was trying to ask me what THEME my decks use? It was very sweet but he really wasn't a Reader.

As I said, something the deck DOES pick you or you are truly attracted to a deck that I would find difficult to deal with. As Lark here says, be wary of picking a deck to fit an image you are trying to achieve, it won't work.

I finally learned not to apologize for liking RWS or any other deck. It works for ME, so it is a readable deck....for me.

barb
 

lark

sorry double post
 

lark

Ace one of my favorites is the Robin Wood too... thanks for your thoughts on my post. :)