What got you started?

I was dusting and rearranging and playing with my collection today and I got to wondering how people got started on tarot. What was the first deck, and what has kept them going on it.

For me I started back in high school with a **cough** free *cough** copy of the Hanson Robert deck. I remember learning only the 22 majors because the rest of the deck was going to be just too much. I would sit on the steps leading up to our school gym with a few friends and people would come by and ask for a reading. It was a way to try and interact with people and I was never a popular kid back then. Apparently I read for ALLOT of people that I just don't remember. Today I still get friend requests on Facebook from someone that was in my class that I don't remember but they remember me giving them a reading. I had a few decks back then, all of which I still have, but it was about 10 years ago that I checked out tarot on line and found this explosion of people and decks. The friendships and the art have kept me here. When I explain to clients about why have so many decks I show them a few and explain the concepts of giving an artist an idea or concept and seeing how they will bring it to life each in their own way. What's your story? What was the deck that got you started and why did you stay?

Good old RWS

Ok what got me started....

I was a teenager and my close friends got into witchcraft and tarot. I tought it was the coolest thing ever so me and my cousin went to a paranormal fair in the Netherlands and I got my first ever deck the RWS the one with the checkered back lol.

I never got that good with them so I gave up but now 12 to 14 years later I have been living almost 8 years in the UK. I now have different decks that helped me to read better and I now love RWS as well and is one of my favourite decks to read with for others.

My friends may have moved away from it all but I stuck with it and have grown so much as a person....

Guess that is my story

Radiant Rider-Waite Tarot

I live in California and everywhere you go you’ll always find a psychic reader store. When Borders where still open that was when I first laid eyes on tarot cards the first two decks that I remember clearly where Tarot of the Sweet Twilight and the Halloween Tarot. I never got them but I would always stare at them. They captivated me and that was when I was in middle school. In my sophomore year was when I first got my tarot deck which was the Radiant Rider-Waite tarot. I was ready to go home and get in the car but I stopped and quickly dash to the store and bought it with permission from my dad of course. I was excited. I started learning but got bored with it quickly since I had no idea how to use it. There were so many books so many things to memorize that it was too much. I left it in my shelf for a couple of month. It wasn’t until I was in summer break and got into it again. It became a routine, a few months yes a few months no. It wasn’t until the end of my junior year that I started getting serious. I started doing readings online in a different site but cheated a couple of times. Got my “Learning the Tarot” by Joan Bunning to see what it mean. I got okay FB but I didn’t like the method I got. When I first did a reading for my dad it was good but he told me that I cheated since that deck was popular and can find it everywhere. I got irritated with him and told him fine I’ll get another deck.

A few month later I bought the *drum rolls* Halloween tarot. Got it very cheap too for Borders were closing. I was enchanted with the deck. It was my kind of style but for fear that I would have worn it down I never used it (It still in the poor box I only done a few readings with it but other than that it is still in my tarot chest). I stick with my first deck, upset and frustrated I couldn’t do any readings with my rider deck. It became too plain and too simple. It is as if the life of it has been sucked dry.

It wasn’t until I started browsing at Amazon that I found Tarot of the Sweet Twilight; The one that I remember when I was in Middle School. The tarot box that shows a girl looking at the side with her beautiful eyes. I bought it that instant. When it came to the mail it was love at first sight It was everything that I wanted in a deck. I took it everywhere with me, I put it under my pillows and etc. That was my turning point in tarot.

I found the perfect deck. I want to use these cards for doing readings for others and have used it only with close friends and family. Now looking back I still have these cards for they are memories of my frustration and my new love for tarot. I also no longer follow everything by the book or do huge spreads to look like a professional reader; ever since I join AT I learned a lot and I’m getting confident in myself. I don’t take the shortcuts anymore. I see fantastic readers out there who are practicing and putting efforts in their readings that it motivates me to be like them. It may take a long time but I know one day I’ll get there. It’s the reason why I stay.

I feel like I just gave my whole life story away.

When I got into witchcraft in the 1990's initially, I started to get interested into psychic fairs. I then got back into it, I bought the Tarot of the Old Path and the Goddess Tarot. My deck of the Old Path tarot has the old address.

Is there much difference between the older and newer printing of the ToOp? I am interested. Since October time I have gotten back into tarot again!

When I first started to work for the Met Service, my first posting was in Vancouver, on the west coast of Canada. A very long way from where I grew up in southern Ontario. I found the people in Vancouver to be very unfriendly and cliquey, something I have since heard from others. And having lived in several cities since then and readily found friends, I still think so. Reading a lot, I haunted bookstores and found my first deck (RWS) and book (Eden Gray). I did my best with it, but this was 1971 and the internet wasn't invented then.

A year or two later I was transferred to the Yukon (in the north of Canada) and billeted in what was termed the Singles' Barracks. WWII building full of tiny studio apartments. I still struggled with tarot, I remember doing readings on historical figures and the like. But there I met a woman who read with an oracle deck, a bit like Lenormand but with some differences. She taught me to be much more fluid with the cards, and we read for others in the building as a tag team. There was one huge party where the two of us read all evening and I had my first big success at reading things I couldn't have known but which were accurate. I was in my early 20's.

I moved to Halifax, another job transfer. Experimented with astrology and more or less kept trying tarot with mixed success. Then in 1981 a neighbour introduced me to the I Ching and it was love at first sight. At one point I copied out, by hand, the entire text of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation and by the end of that year I could see spirits. Didn't last, probably just as well. Because CG Jung wrote the Forward to that book, over time I acquired and read about 90% of everything publicly available that Jung wrote. Tarot was on the back burner.

By the late 90's my personal life crashed and burned, and I went back to tarot. Then I discovered the Robin Wood tarot, which, while I no longer use it, was a real gateway for me to come back. Then I discovered the internet, and Aeclectic and started to learn much more quickly. Mind you, ATF also caused me to acquire way more decks than makes any sense whatsoever.

starlightexp said:

I got to wondering how people got started on tarot. What was the first deck, and what has kept them going on it.

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I was raised by a psychic medium who also read cards. She read both tarot cards and playing cards, mostly playing cards. My aunt also was a playing card reader. I think my mothers tarot deck was the Rider Waite deck, but I really cannot recall anymore.

Pretty much all the women on my maternal side of the family were into some type of divining. Mom use to take us girls frequently to tarot card readers from the time we were about 13yrs. old to get readings. My family would never read for other family members, so we had to go elsewhere. I'm the first to break that rule.

When I began, I actually started reading with playing cards and had no desire to read tarot. I didn't start though till I was in my 30s. I was not really that interested in reading, only being read. However, when I was working and a new co-worker started there, who is a psychic, the day she met me and shook my hand she held onto my hand tightly and looked me in the eye and exclaimend, "OMG, do you have any idea how psychic you are?"

She & I became FAST friends from that day forward. She is the one who really got me turned on to developing my abilities and she also swayed me to buy tarot cards and put the playing cards up. Though my deceased relatives keep coming to me and tell me to put the tarot cards back on the shelves and pull those playing cards out again!

I must admit, I think I do like the tarot cards better. I have become more of an intuitive reader and read what I 'see' in the images of the tarot, so playing cards are not quite as fun to read for me anymore. At any rate, I can read either, but tend to stick to tarot. I believe my first deck was the Rider Waite deck. I cannot recall what my 2nd deck was, but quite honestly, I never really cared much for the RW deck, but what did I know about tarot back then? not much.

starlightexp said:

I was dusting and rearranging and playing with my collection today and I got to wondering how people got started on tarot. What was the first deck, and what has kept them going on it.

For me I started back in high school with a **cough** free *cough** copy of the Hanson Robert deck. I remember learning only the 22 majors because the rest of the deck was going to be just too much. I would sit on the steps leading up to our school gym with a few friends and people would come by and ask for a reading. It was a way to try and interact with people and I was never a popular kid back then. Apparently I read for ALLOT of people that I just don't remember. Today I still get friend requests on Facebook from someone that was in my class that I don't remember but they remember me giving them a reading. I had a few decks back then, all of which I still have, but it was about 10 years ago that I checked out tarot on line and found this explosion of people and decks. The friendships and the art have kept me here. When I explain to clients about why have so many decks I show them a few and explain the concepts of giving an artist an idea or concept and seeing how they will bring it to life each in their own way. What's your story? What was the deck that got you started and why did you stay?

Click to expand...

Exactly the same scene as you described it Except it was a Marseilles deck with no LWB. I just went with what I thought the pics meant. Now I have several decks, and have read professionally etc. Amazing what a pack of 78 cards can do to your life.

Not so exciting of a tale here! I have always been drawn to the cards but was too scared of them to try. About 16 years ago I left Christianity and at that point started exploring different paths. I picked up a book and some RW cards at B&N about 10 years ago.

My granny. She read everything. Tea leaves, palms, balls (no, get your minds out of the gutter - crystal balls), cards... I got my first deck in the early '70's & it was the only one available at the time here - Rider Waite. I don't remember her being into astrology though. She had a HUGE collection of round glass paperweights all over her house that I was enthralled with as a child so she may have used them also. To this day, I collect them. And have used them for divination. (I prefer my black mirror though for some reason.) I have a really cool one - a clear glass ball with real gold flakes in the bottom that you can read like tea leaves. Sometimes it helps if there are bubbles, etc. in them to discern patterns/images, although I DO love my quartz ball.

stevie said:

Not so exciting of a tale here! I have always been drawn to the cards but was too scared of them to try. About 16 years ago I left Christianity and at that point started exploring different paths. I picked up a book and some RW cards at B&N about 10 years ago.

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I am sooo not being judgemental about leaving Christianity but there are many many scriptures in the Bible that are pro-divination. There's not a line drawn there but most Western Christian churches choose to ignore that fact. I've got a LONG list of passages, some of which actually command us to divine. Uh, hello, urim & thummin? Waddya think that was??