cSpaceDiva
I don't remember when I first heard of tarot...
I remember in grade school a Halloween carnival where I went into a tent and a gypsy fortune teller used her crystal ball to tell my future. She scared me, I think it was effect for Halloween.
I remember in junior high seeing a soap opera with a tarot reading by some crazy old lady predicting someone's death.
Then in high school a friend of mine went to Italy and came back with a deck of playing cards. Not tarot, it was a 40 card deck, pips 1-7, no queens and no majors. We used them to tell fortunes for each other with made up meanings. Also in high school another friend had gotten a tarot reading from a friend's aunt and wanted to buy a deck. She called around to different bookstores and was told they carried one tarot deck, no tarot decks, 4 different decks, and finally a store that had around 100 decks. She asked me to ride the bus with her to that store. They had display decks out-the whole deck punched with a ring through it so you could look at every card. We spent a long time and she finally picked her deck. I really wanted to get one too, but I felt that it was her thing and I was there to support her, not get a deck of my own. Some time later she gave me a reading. I was unimpressed with the reading--it didn't tell me the lies I wanted to hear. But I was still fascinated with the cards.
In college, the first friend (who was now one of my roommates) went to Italy again and brought me back my own copy of the 40 card playing deck. It stirred that tarot desire in me, and I went back to the theosophical bookstore where I bought my own deck, Tarot of the Spirit. I thought, this will be a good one to learn with since it has the meanings right on the card, plus the book was really thick so it must go into detail. I didn't buy the second deck (Connolly) until a year or two later, but the next few came fairly quickly after that. Once I had about half a dozen decks, I decided to make my own collage deck. I honestly thought I was the first person to ever come up with that idea.
Soon after that I found Amazon and eBay, Michele's Tarot Page, and then Aeclectic and the forum (before it was purple!)
I remember in grade school a Halloween carnival where I went into a tent and a gypsy fortune teller used her crystal ball to tell my future. She scared me, I think it was effect for Halloween.
I remember in junior high seeing a soap opera with a tarot reading by some crazy old lady predicting someone's death.
Then in high school a friend of mine went to Italy and came back with a deck of playing cards. Not tarot, it was a 40 card deck, pips 1-7, no queens and no majors. We used them to tell fortunes for each other with made up meanings. Also in high school another friend had gotten a tarot reading from a friend's aunt and wanted to buy a deck. She called around to different bookstores and was told they carried one tarot deck, no tarot decks, 4 different decks, and finally a store that had around 100 decks. She asked me to ride the bus with her to that store. They had display decks out-the whole deck punched with a ring through it so you could look at every card. We spent a long time and she finally picked her deck. I really wanted to get one too, but I felt that it was her thing and I was there to support her, not get a deck of my own. Some time later she gave me a reading. I was unimpressed with the reading--it didn't tell me the lies I wanted to hear. But I was still fascinated with the cards.
In college, the first friend (who was now one of my roommates) went to Italy again and brought me back my own copy of the 40 card playing deck. It stirred that tarot desire in me, and I went back to the theosophical bookstore where I bought my own deck, Tarot of the Spirit. I thought, this will be a good one to learn with since it has the meanings right on the card, plus the book was really thick so it must go into detail. I didn't buy the second deck (Connolly) until a year or two later, but the next few came fairly quickly after that. Once I had about half a dozen decks, I decided to make my own collage deck. I honestly thought I was the first person to ever come up with that idea.
Soon after that I found Amazon and eBay, Michele's Tarot Page, and then Aeclectic and the forum (before it was purple!)