on the bottom shelf i noticed... merged with How did you get started?

Everything started with my mother reading with playing cards. I was around 7 and I found that fascinating. She also had a Petit LeNormand but didn't connect with it so she buried it somewhere. I wanted to do the same as my mother and read with playing cards too, I'd read her book but I was really bad at it.

When I was around 11, my father got a tarot deck on his side (my parents were separated), a Tarot de Marseille. I found the deck so shockingly horrible, atrocious and ugly in every angle, that it deeply marked me and convinced to never ever get a tarot deck ever. It made me avoid for years anything related to tarot in any way.

At around 18-19 I went shopping to a bookstore with a friend and there I saw the box of a tarot deck and fell in love with it, it was the Enchanted Tarot. Alas for me the deck was too expensive (50$CAD) and I couldn't buy it, I was heartbroken about it. I kept thinking about the deck all the time. A few months later I was going somewhere, I stopped to a bookstore where I was often going, and in the window guess which deck I saw? The Enchanted. I had the money that day to buy it so I ran in the bookstore to buy it and came back home with it really happy.

After that I ran into some problems. Quebec is entirely different from the rest of Canada, a different country altogether, and it's 99.99$ french. Not that there is anything wrong with it, it's wonderful and there are plenty of advantages and stuff that can only be found here but cannot be found in the rest of Canada and USA. It's just that when you only speak French and your English is so so, and you see books on tarot, all are about one and only one type of tarot, Tarot de Marseille. I wanted to read books on tarot to help me out with the Enchanted Tarot and I realized that none of the books I found, all on Tarot de Marseille of course, was fitting with my deck in any way. There is no book translated in French about the RWS or the Thoth, same with Paganism, which I found out later once I dabbled with Paganism too. Nothing! If you don't speak English you're screwed and well my English was so so then. But the French are the ones to blame since they're the ones who refuse to translate the books in question and publish them.

So I badly used my deck because I had no resource whatsoever to help me with it. Once I got the internet and my English got better, and found Aeclectic of course, my skills got a lot better. It didn't take long of course that I wanted to add a deck to my collection, then a third, a fourth, and now I'm up to 58 decks and 41 oracles, doubles not counted. I still have the Enchanted Tarot but I do not use it much anymore.

It's here as well I heard about the Petit LeNormand, and my mother finally gave to me her Petit Lenormand after I made her dig for it out of curiosity, she didn't even know what she had herself. The advantages of living here is that I can find books on Petit LeNormand in French easily.

gregory said:

York in Toronto - a part of the city. But there are stores in here that are JUST as bad for your health....

Click to expand...

An occult shop on York, eh? Interesting, very interesting. I may just have to figure out the TCC and go have a peek around...

Then again, on my student budget, maybe its best I stay away.

109 Vaughan Road.

Tel 416 656 6564

It's just N of St Clair W, as I recall; a block and a half west of St Clair West subway station. Never let it be said I am unhelpful.

As you walk up the street you will be thinking THIS IS WRONG, there are no stores up here. Keep the faith. There is one !

I'd been into playing cards since I was a child of seven, when my young brother and I were given a canasta pack for Christmas.

In 1986 I already becoming a bridge addict, so had been handling playing cards frequently at the time when I was recovering from surgery in bed at home, watching TV.

I saw an episode of an Australian police drama where one of the characters read Tarot cards for another character.

This scene had an intense effect on me - suddenly the Tarot seemed to be calling to me personally.

It wasn't long before I found our local new age shop, and was rather confused by the array of decks, but bought the RWS.

One day I saw the cards of the Morgan-Greer deck for the first time, in a dusty old shop window, and that was so spooky, just like coming home.

*Z*

gregory said:

109 Vaughan Road.

Tel 416 656 6564

It's just N of St Clair W, as I recall; a block and a half west of St Clair West subway station. Never let it be said I am unhelpful.

As you walk up the street you will be thinking THIS IS WRONG, there are no stores up here. Keep the faith. There is one !

Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks! And my last post should say TTC, not TCC.

Ah ! Strangely enough I also came across my first deck in Tokyo ! I was in my early 20's then and 'found' it (RWS) in a box in the stock cupboard in school . I remember that the box was on the highest shelf , and that I had no need to look inside , but did so anyway ! It was wrapped in green tissue paper and had a telephone number written on the outside . I even dialled the number ( no idea what I was expecting to happen !) but got the incorrect number spiel from NTT. I still have this deck , although I rarely use it . Probably because I feel it belongs to my time in Japan ?

Anyway , thanks Zan-Chan for the thread ....this has taken me back ! ( And glad to hear that Tokyu hands is still going strong ! )

I was about 16 when I became interested in Witchcraft, magick and Paganism. I purchased many books on the history of Witches and magick. I purchased my first few decks.

There was an awesome little shop in the East Village in Manhattan that I frequented. They had Shelves of Decks! This was about 1986.

I had my books on the shelf in my room, and thats how they were lost in the Great Purge - where my mom let me know I was dabbling in Dark and Evil things.

Happily all my cards were in my dresser. Started out with a yellow box Rider Waite and a mini version, Cagliostro, Londa, Merlin - with book! Think there may have been one or two more. (A Libra. When I can't choose, I get the lot!)

Time passed and I lost interest for awhile. I did bring the Rider-Waite to college where I did read for friends and was quite good.

Time passed again. Signed out of school and started working in a used bookstore in NYC. BIG BIG Bookstore. And they had cards!

I got Karma Cards - they had little sentences at the top and bottom. the cards were to be read in a sentence on whichever aspect you were questioning: Emotional, Mental, Spiritual, Physical.

They were fun.

I got 2 copies of Osho Zen Tarot.

I got I ching card. They were blue and there were about a million cards to them. Had a reading cloth as well. I lost them when I moved, just 5 years ago.

More time passed. I got online in '98 - I think thats when I found the purple pages - pre-forum. I know I came here for years to ogle decks, before I knew there was a board.

I felt, about a year ago, that I missed my spiritual self and I wanted to get back to knowing my cards again. Found a tarot card group on live journal, which led me here.

My collection blossomed from the about 12 decks I had collected over the last 20-some years to over 80 tarot and oracle decks. There have been many sales and trades along the way. I'm afraid I don't know how many decks in total have shared my home, but its a fun ride and I'm enjoying every moment of the journey.

It wasn't the legendary Magickal Childe was it ??? I had a further attack of the melted credit card in there....

I shopped at Enchantments. Worked at the Strand. Also found my way to Esoterica, a time or two.

Great thread, Zan!

I have no idea where I acquired my first tarot deck but I still have it - a 1JJ from the early 70's with the book and the fold-out sheet to show you how to lay out a Celtic Cross. But although I could relate to the major arcana because of the stories in the pictures, I could never make sense of the pip cards and so the deck lay on the shelf for - oh, 25 years or so.

In the meantime I had a long hiatus from studying anything related to the metaphysical world, then a few life-changing events brought me back on the path. I bought a Rider-Waite and a few other decks at Barnes and Noble in the RWS style - and then I found AT. It was one factor that really expanded my Tarot universe.

What also rocked my Tarot world was the chance purchase of a Gilded and the advent of a local Tarot class at a New Age shop here in Florida at about the same time. Long story short, I connected with Ciro, the very artist of the Gilded himself, since he lives near here (he was nice enough to visit our class one day when we contacted him online and told him we were using his deck for our class). He told me about Readers Studio, and through going there and joining the NING for RS I met a ton of other Tarotists - and now my 3 decks have multiplied to 3 dozen and counting. Not a day goes by without Tarot in some form for me.