Hi everyone, this is my first posting. I love browsing this forum and site, it's amazing!
Please forgive me if I'm being rude, but I just wanted to comment on the above statement about not feeling comfortable shuffling and cutting playing cards like with the tarot.
A friend of mine, who taught me how to read playing cards (I'm not an expert) and coffee cups, just shuffles (or has her clients shuffle and turn) the cards and then turns the pack over and over repeating her own name silently until it feels right. Sometimes she tells clients, after they've shuffled, to turn the pack only three times while repeating their birth names (for full readings) or current names (for smaller, present day questions/readings), nicknames their lovers gave them for relationship spreads, etc. Also works with questions instead of names. You can also say the name of someone else you'd like to have a reading on, and that person's story will come up.
Simple, but effective, I think - turning the pack and repeating something makes you focus your thoughts.
Then, depending on if she is using a poker pack, or a skat(32-card) pack, if it is a large layout, or a smaller 3 - 5 card layout, the cards are either fanned out and picked(by questioner), simply read from the top of the shuffled pack, read from the top after cutting once, or cut by client into four piles (golden dawn had same system) representing four elements. Depending on which pile the client then chooses, (though they aren't told which pile is which element), she can tell in which direction the thoughts of the client are directed, and probable direction of the reading. Since I learned from her, that's the way I keep it too, and it works for me. For larger layouts, I read from the top, for small ones I fan out, and then choose.
And something else, for what it's worth, she never bothered with the left hand or right hand issue, she always uses her right hand, when reading for herself too - but she flips the cards. She holds them face downward, and then flips them open immediately, without laying them first into a spread and then turning them over one by one. I hope you know what I mean...
Needless to say, this works for me too.
Her cards aren't really protected either, just kept together by a hair elastic sometimes. The reasoning, I think is, the cards have to be able to breathe and be 'street-smart' in a sense, to work. They have to go everywhere with you, 'see' the world and the everyday, and be used, really used, and touched by as many people as you can, the more vibes it gets, the more vocabulary it has to talk to you. If it is used it is liked/loved, and the deck becomes easier to use.
I know I learned the meanings a lot faster that way, because I constantly had them in front of me, and I had to think about and remember the meanings. This is what works for me...
Sorry about the long first post!