Laura Borealis
Not at all, and if you are, you'll fit right in here.
How I got into tarot... my first deck was a Rider-Waite and it was given to me by a boyfriend, along with one of Eden Gray's books. I think they had been his sister's.
Maybe I lived under a rock as a child, but I didn't know anything at all about tarot at that point. Had never even heard of it. I'm sure I knew of the stereotypes of gypsies telling fortunes with cards, but I must have assumed it was all playing cards. So tarot was this entirely new thing to me.
Unfortunately I showed them to my mom, because she's an artist and I thought she would enjoy the vintage illustration style. She was shocked - shocked! and she said "Not under my roof," and made me give them back. I remember being really surprised at her reasons, because the cards sure looked Christian to me. I mean there were angels, and the Last Judgement, and the Ace that has the Holy Spirit flying down with a communion wafer, and all that.
But I gave them back, as required. I kept the book though! Letter of the law, not the spirit, heh. I remember I hid it on my bookshelf by stacking it with same-size science fiction paperbacks, with the spine turned to the back. I thought I was very clever, camouflaging my tarot book like that.
So tarot was just shelved in my mind, until I picked up a paperback fantasy called Little, Big by John Crowley. A tarot deck is an important element in the story, though the trumps aren't the same as the tarot we know. That book got me interested in tarot again. Later I read another of John Crowley's novels, Aegypt (later re-titled), and that got me into the Art of Memory, and Giordano Bruno, and eventually Dame Frances Yates and hermeticism. So really I came to tarot sideways via fiction, and from behind via history. (I should say, I am merely a dabbler in that stuff, I know very little. Also, Aegypt hasn't much to do with tarot per se, but a lot to do with hermeticism.)
My second deck was a Thoth, which used to puzzle me no end. At that point I was in college and had roommates, friends, and lovers who read the cards, so I had some support. One roommate and I used to do readings together, her with her Cat People deck and me with my Thoth; we freaked ourselves out with readings on the Persian Gulf war that featured the Tower and the Devil and lots of Swords! I remember another roommate drawing out the Tree of Life for me on a sheet of posterboard, on our kitchen table. One boyfriend used to read me Aleister Crowley's poetry and wrote "Do What Thou Wilt!" on the mix tapes he made for me. I tried to read The Book of Thoth but the first chapter defeated me.
At the time, though, I was much more into nature-based Paganism than Ceremonial Magic, Qabalah or Thelema. So I got a Robin Wood deck, and that was close enough to my old Eden Gray book that I was able to get along with it and actually start to learn to read.
When the internet happened, I joined ISCABBS and read the tarot forum there. I didn't know about the Usenet groups or I would have been there, too. Eventually I found the AT forums. And here I am.
