"Bad" deck?

Jenny_writer said:

When that happens, you have to try to figure out what the cards are trying to tell you even if you don't want to hear it. Try assuming that there IS a message in those cards and find it rather than disregarding them because they are not the cards you want or expect.

When all else fails, forget what you think the cards are supposed to mean and just look at and describe the actual picture you are looking at. Sometimes the meaning is not a traditional one, but will be found in the actual picture. Look at and describe the picture as if you are describing it to someone who can't see it.

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Yes! If you read tarot, or ask the cards for pointers in the right direction, it is more useful to look at what the cards are trying to tell you... really look... rather than dismissing their message...

linnie said:

Yes! If you read tarot, or ask the cards for pointers in the right direction, it is more useful to look at what the cards are trying to tell you... really look... rather than dismissing their message...

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I will give you an example of how it happened to me. I had lost my car keys and I was desperate to find them. I asked the cards where they were. Every time I drew three cards they did not make any sense and I kept repeatedly drawing the page of wands.

In this deck, the page of wands was a young girl in the dark with a candle. That card came up every time and that was four times I drew it and one time it just fell out of the deck.

That is when I KNEW it was the card that held the answer. So I studied the card. The first thing I saw was how dark it was. It was very dark with only a candle lighting the image. That told me my car keys were in a dark place.

Big deal, I thought. That's pretty obvious if they are lost.

The second thing I noticed that stood out was the candle. This was very obvious. So I asked myself, "Where do I keep my candles?"

Then I remembered that I kept some candles in a drawer by my desk because the lights were always going out in the spring during rain storms. I looked in that drawer, and there is where I found my car keys.

Coincidence? I think not. Not when that card came up five times in a row.

..and the message was in the picture, not the tradition card meaning.

juliasv said:

Recently, it seems like I've been getting a lot of really weird readings for my daily...if I went with what the cards are saying, my life is completely falling apart or is glorious with riches, love and wisdom raining down on me. Major arcana dominate the throws, etc.

When I would journal the throws, then go back and read/relate them to daily events, it was so far off that I could have been randomly pulling pieces of paper out of hat for all the accuracy they showed.

A few friends of mine have been reading the cards for years, two of them told me to put that deck away and get a new one. One said the deck was "messing with me"; the other told me that deck wasn't "speaking" to me. (I asked if maybe it was angry for some reason and I needed to apologize, lol!) As both of these particular friends consider the cards to be almost a living entity in some ways, I had expected them to give a more dramatic answer. Others have told me simply to give that deck a "rest"...clear it, put it away and forget about it for a while.

Has anyone else ever had a deck that suddenly just quit working for them? It seems to be this specific deck, the Thoth I purchased a few days ago seems to being doing well; much more insight.

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I agree with the assessment that the deck is no "speaking to you". Although that is just an expression and not to be taken literally, and no the cards are not alive. "Not speaking to you" is a phrase meaning it is not giving you the answers you are asking for and is just giving random cards. It's just another way of saying that.

I don't know that I have ever had a deck stop talking to me, but I certainly have had a few which would not start. I have had at least 10 decks that I could not read with. I gave most away, but felt impelled to keep 3. A few years later, then they started "talking. sopontaneiously.

I think there are (for me anyway) two ways of seeing it, depending on your belief system. Either that each deck has it's own personality (or more accurately that the imagery takes on some of the personality of the deck's creator and artist. Sometimes the way a deck thinks does not mesh well with our own way of thinking, making it harde to read. OR if you believe that the cards are just tools through which the Divine communicates with us (which is my personal belief) then sometimes the Divine prefers not to talk to us through certain decks as the deck cannot give the message as intended.

Babs

This is why I quit doing daily readings.

Cards.. erm... tarot, oracles, whatever... they have a certain dramatic quality about them. It's just the way they are, you see, they have to convey all possibilities of existence in only 78, sometimes 50, sometimes 36 or even 32 cards! Or 24 runes. And they have to do it more or less clearly. A change becomes "DEATH!", an unexpected even becomes "TOWER", lack of money becomes "FIVE OF COINS!" and so on...

Now, the thing is that our lives tend to be filled with a lot of everyday-nothing that can be interesting or boring but doesn't really affect us so strongly. So imagine trying to show boredom with tarot cards... difficult! Because even the most boring tarot card is much more interesting than my boring day. Even the 4 of Cups is dramatically boring!

To interpret tarot cards in daily reading you have tone them waaaay down.

And that's not all - personally, I don't have a question everyday. I really don't. And I found out that oracles work much better when you have something in mind other than "my day, plz?". It seems they are charged when reading with a purpose... and weakened when pulled out just for the sake of routine.


What do I mean with all of this? Is that your deck isn't being bad, but maybe daily readings just lost their purpose to you. They are fun when you are starting, important so you can get to know the cards, but after a certain level of expertise they aren't so helpful anymore. All your accumulated knowledge gets in the way, it's asking to be used for something more complex.

So don't blame your deck. Instead, find new ways to interact with your cards and quit the daily readings, even if just for a while.

For what it's worth, I'm with Marina here on the daily draw thing. I never felt any need for daily drawings. Never did them. I just ask the cards when I have a question I wnat the answer to. I tried the daily drawing thing for a week and it got stale for me and i never went back to it. I found there was more joy and magic in seeing the questions you do need answered answered beautifully than trying to force answers to come when you don't feel the need for them. Maybe just me...Tarot for me is pure joy and is meant to be. The daily drawing thing drained the spontaneity and joy from it for me.

Marina said:

This is why I quit doing daily readings.

Cards.. erm... tarot, oracles, whatever... they have a certain dramatic quality about them. It's just the way they are, you see, they have to convey all possibilities of existence in only 78, sometimes 50, sometimes 36 or even 32 cards! Or 24 runes. And they have to do it more or less clearly. A change becomes "DEATH!", an unexpected even becomes "TOWER", lack of money becomes "FIVE OF COINS!" and so on...

Now, the thing is that our lives tend to be filled with a lot of everyday-nothing that can be interesting or boring but doesn't really affect us so strongly. So imagine trying to show boredom with tarot cards... difficult! Because even the most boring tarot card is much more interesting than my boring day. Even the 4 of Cups is dramatically boring!

To interpret tarot cards in daily reading you have tone them waaaay down.

And that's not all - personally, I don't have a question everyday. I really don't. And I found out that oracles work much better when you have something in mind other than "my day, plz?". It seems they are charged when reading with a purpose... and weakened when pulled out just for the sake of routine.


What do I mean with all of this? Is that your deck isn't being bad, but maybe daily readings just lost their purpose to you. They are fun when you are starting, important so you can get to know the cards, but after a certain level of expertise they aren't so helpful anymore. All your accumulated knowledge gets in the way, it's asking to be used for something more complex.

So don't blame your deck. Instead, find new ways to interact with your cards and quit the daily readings, even if just for a while.

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I have been doing daily readings most days for a few months now. I find that they work quite well for me and give me something to think or meditate upon before I go to sleep. I use oracles for this and not tarot, I don't think that tarot seems to suit the daily draws - I only use tarot for actual readings and questions etc and I don't do those for myself very often at all.

SunChariot said:

I agree with the assessment that the deck is no "speaking to you". Although that is just an expression and not to be taken literally, and no the cards are not alive. "Not speaking to you" is a phrase meaning it is not giving you the answers you are asking for and is just giving random cards. It's just another way of saying that.

I don't know that I have ever had a deck stop talking to me, but I certainly have had a few which would not start. I have had at least 10 decks that I could not read with. I gave most away, but felt impelled to keep 3. A few years later, then they started "talking. sopontaneiously.

I think there are (for me anyway) two ways of seeing it, depending on your belief system. Either that each deck has it's own personality (or more accurately that the imagery takes on some of the personality of the deck's creator and artist. Sometimes the way a deck thinks does not mesh well with our own way of thinking, making it harde to read. OR if you believe that the cards are just tools through which the Divine communicates with us (which is my personal belief) then sometimes the Divine prefers not to talk to us through certain decks as the deck cannot give the message as intended.

Click to expand...

I agree with you here SunChariot - I have never had a deck that has stopped 'speaking' to me but I have had a few decks where it is hard to connect to them - like the Legend deck and sometimes the Robin Wood too - I have kept both those decks but when I read with them I often can't relate to the reading - or with the Legend I have to put heaps of thought into it and think on it for ages and then the message becomes clearer over time.

I think too that when you over use a deck or use it too much and keep asking it too many questions or the same questions over and over then the cards that come up can be like gibberish.

Absolutely. That happens all the time, where if you ask the sane question too many times in a row , the cards start talking gibberish.

Babs

Actually, an old friends mother who has read tarot forever (she swears her first deck was carved in rock, lol!) told me when I first started to do daily draws as a kind of "getting to know" the deck...at first, I didn't even read them when I drew them, just did the spread, journal it, then walk away. If I do any other readings during the day, will shuffle them back in. At the end of the day, if they've been shuffled in, I pulled them out, lay them back out and then read them. After the reading, I journaled my interpretations, and how the draw did or didn't apply to things during the day. She told me that was a good way to realize that sometimes the reading *doesn't* mean something major and was a good way of making me use my own associations with the cards. (IE, I will forever probably associate the Hierophant with one certain friend, as contact with him invariably occurred on a day when the Hiero appeared. It's also a fantastic fit between this guy and the card's interpretation...)

After a few months of doing the dailies and walking off, she had me do the reading immediately after drawing the cards, journal it, then just kind of forget about it. At the end of the day, I was to take my journal and compare it to happenings during the day. Few months of that, I was to journal the readings and keep it with me during the day for reference. If/when an event occurred that corresponded, I was to keep in mind the advice of the cards in dealing with it. Then after THAT, just flip around on which of the three I did, one day interpret, one day don't...go with what I felt was right.

All kind of a learning/growing experience with the cards....

Sounds kind of strange when I actually explain it, but this lady has known me for years and understands how my brain functions (or rather doesn't function, lol!). It worked fantastic until a few weeks ago, when everything just stopped. Every draw was full of Major Arcana, none of which made sense....I put that deck away and purchased another; she sent me the "starter deck". Just a new deck seemed to make a huge difference. Things started to fall back into place.

Maybe just a psychological thing for me, not sure, since both the old and the new are both RW. The only difference seems to be a slight variation in color vibrancy.

Oh, well, as my grandfather would have said, "whatever works!"!!!