Your First Deck

For me it was the RWS -- over 30 years ago my mother bought it for me after a visit to an occult bookstore for a Tarot reading. I slept with it under my pillow to "attune" the deck to me, as the reader instructed.

I have many more decks now, but that RWS will always have meaning to me, especially now that my mom has gone on to Summerland.

Hanson-Roberts when it came out about 1984, and yes, I still have it. I made a nice little handmade bag for it and everything, which it is still in--I just got the mini version to use with others, since I want to keep that deck for my own purposes and not for reading for others.

My first deck was the Haindl. I was probably sixteen. My family used to stay in this port town up by the Olympic peninsula when I was a kid and there was a new age store that is still probably the best I've ever been in. They had a million decks, I must have been a very serious teenager to pick that one out, made by a world war 2 work camp survivor, geez.. After a while I lost the fool card, I was convinced it was never there to begin with so I went back to the store to try to exchange it. The lady was really brusque with me because of course its nearly impossible for a new, sealed deck to be missing a single card. So I cut the fool off the from of the box and shuffled it in, that's still how it is and I used it like that for years. Memorized all the meanings from Rachel Pollack's companion books. That's the only deck I used for probably 15 years, and then I took a class where the teacher suggested we learn from a deck with illustrated pips, I found out then that the Haindl uses the Thoth ordering and card meanings and she was teaching from the RWS tradition. So I went deck shopping again and started to branch out. I almost never pull out the Haindl now but it is treasured, stored wrapped up in the same reading cloth, tucked carefully away.

My first deck was the 1JJSwiss. That was in the early 1970s. I played with it from time to time.

The next deck I bought was the Artist's Inner Vision tarot. And then I discovered AT, and I was off and running.

My first deck was Druidcraft. I was looking into Wicca and Druidism, looking for a little meaning in life. An amazon search threw up Druidcraft and I was hooked. Never looked at tarot, never had a reading, but I had to have those cards. Tend to read with Gilded or Illuminati now, but pull a card from my Druidcraft everyday for guidance.

My first deck was the good old RWS, which my dad inexplicably got me for Xmas, he not having much idea what it was. It was somewhere around 1981 or 2, so I was about 15. Riffled the bejesus out of it through college. Still have it, even though I only recently started using the cards again after a quarter century...dad's been gone almost that long: I kept the cards in an old English Learher gift box.

Oh, and speaking of gift boxes, the deck was original packed with two Eden Gray books and a third book, a The Sexual Key to the Tarot, a jaw-dropping book which could have been named, "penis scavenger hunt."

I chose the Spiral as my first Tarot deck because I've never liked Pixie's artwork but wanted to learn from a RWS clone. I have a better appreciation of the RW deck now but still don't like the artwork. The upside of that is that I turned to the Marseilles deck early on. When I read professionally it was with the Spiral, Cosmic, Marseilles or Visconti. I had a good grounding for reading and I won't part with the Spiral.

My first deck was the Fournier Tarot de Marseille and of course I still have it, pristine looking, in it's box with that little folded leaflet even.
I used it for a while, then got a mini RWS that I later gave away to a friend and then I bought Herbal + Hanson Roberts. Those were the only decks I had for a few years.

I bought my TdM first cause that was the only one they had at the bookstore. But now I come to really appreciate TdM decks. (got a new TdM today even)

It was during a holyday in Italy when I happened to read an article on Tarot in a popular science magazine. First thing I did when I was back home was to rush to a local book store and buy a Thoth deck. As it was these cards among several featured in that magazine that attracted me most. RWS was suggested to me by a woman standing in front of the esoteric shelf in that store as the deck most suitable for beginners but I knew exactly what I wanted. Afterwards, I sat in my favourite restaurant with a glass of Kir Royal and started my Tarot journey. That article also mentioned Sallie Nichols' "Jung and Tarot", so this was among the first books I read on the topic, with greatest interest. I got a number of other decks suggested by my growing literature thereafter. However, I still study Thoth more than any other deck and use no other for my readings. And yes, I still have my first deck.

My first tarot was chosen whilst scanning all the decks on Amazon, l did not know about the AT forum then. l settled for the Golden Tarot by Kat Black. It served me well for learning back then, but l have since moved on from it. Then l was gifted the 1JJ which has remained my go to deck among others. l found this forum and never looked back finding many other wonderful tarot decks.