What influenced you to delve into the tarot?

[Clow Reed]

I started reading tarot when I was 14. I had problems with my friends and I was really down about it. One day, in March 2007, I was watching tv and I took randomly a Cardcaptor Sakura mangas on my shelf. I opened it and I fell on the page when she was doing a reading regarding the Mirror card. Weirdly, I think I heard a voice, calling me to do readings. Then I took the cards they gave with the mangas and I started to do reading. I invented my own meanings and it was working SOOO well XD. Then, I printed all the cards (the real one) and I have done readings with them until 2008 (when my sis bought me the REAL cards on eBay).

Then, in December 2007, I was able to predict songs on the radio, shows on the TV, people calling etc. So, I talked about it with one of my friend's mother, and she said I had a gift. I was able to see the future, to feel ghost and to see people's aura. About 2 months later, and I don't know why, two blue crescent moons appeared in my eyes. I have green eyes, but we can see clearly the moons. That is why I subscribe to this forum. I wanted to know if someone could help me regarding those moons. I have no idea why it appeared like that... So if someone could help me, it'll be much appreciate

So. In short, I was influenced to tarot because of my problems with my friends. And honestly, I don't regret it at all! I'm 20 now and my gift increased drastically. And helping people at no charge is a real happiness for me

 

[Polydeuces]

I started getting interested in tarot two years ago... A girl I was intimately involved with exposed me to it (Thoth deck) and I began my own personal relationship with the tarot. Though I guess I had always been interested in aspects of the mysterious, but this interest was largely unfounded.

I've been investigating some other decks, but nothing has quite struck me as the Thoth did. I've explored the Revelations tarot, which has a story and artwork that I enjoy and the Voyager tarot, which seems to be more accessible to a wider range of people.

 

[Original Destiny]

Mmmm...it was 40 years ago, I saw the IJJ Swiss tarot in a shop window, I just had to buy it even though I couldnt really afford it. My family has a long history if psychics/mediums but I never really had an interest in the Tarot until that day.
When I was a small boy I had an aversion to organised religion. I refused to go to Sunday school, I created havoc in Religious Studies at school and hated all things Godly. I was born without the God gene and got on in life without any belief system, then came the 60's !!!
I was a paid up Hippy in no time at all and embraced the culture fully for a while...Tune in, turn on and drop out ! psychedelia !...well you get the idea. I suppose that put me on the path and once I saw the key in that shop window.................

 

[Richard]

I have been interested in metaphysics and esotericism as long as I can remember. Around fifty years ago, when I was living in Berkeley CA, there was a metaphysical bookstore on Telegraph Avenue, about three blocks from my apartment, where I would hang out now and then. One time I noticed that they had gotten in some Albano-Waite decks. On nothing more than a whim I bought a mini. It opened up a whole new world of ideas, which I have been exploring ever since.

 

[OlympusMons]

I'm not really sure where my interest came from. I think I've always been inquisitive about the tarot and then decided to get myself a deck. Since then I've been hooked.

 

[espearite]

I found tarot via the AOL horoscopes section. I was about 14 or 15 at the time. Somehow it lead to the cards (RW) whose images I was frightened by at first. I did a few readings for myself from time to time at facade.com. Then after a really bad experience in my life, I decided to explore the spiritual realm via the internet while other teenagers were out partying. I studied wicca, magick, tarot, runes, Kabbalah, etc. Finally at 17 I decided to buy my first deck which was the Rider Waite.

 

[MareSaturni]

I always had an interest in metaphysical subjects... specially Astrology, because my mother used to do natal charts when I was a child. My grandmother (mom's mother) is an Umbanda priestess( "mãe-de-santo"), so my mother also grew up in contact with mystical 'things', which may have influenced her a bit (although she never followed any specific path of spirituality).

My interest in tarot began when I was 13 years old, thanks to an English teacher I had. I loved her and her classes, and thanks to her that I fell in love with both the English language and the tarot. One day she showed me her very worn Rider Waite deck (some cards even has torn corners), and I decided to get my own deck.

Back then, we did not have so much imported stuff available as today (and the internet was still primitive, so no ebay, Amazon and Book Depository for Brazil), and the only deck I could find was Brazilian edition of the Enchanted Tarot. That became my first deck, and I still love it!

My second deck was the Brazilian edition of the Mythic Tarot. This was the deck that helped me to learn the Minor Arcana and that consolidated my interest in divination.

 

[moonbear]

When I was thirteen I bought a tarot deck. Can't remember which one, something Italian I think. There was no lwb just an A4 sheet of paper with the meanings. It might only have been Majors, hard to remember. Anyway, I was the only one in the family interested in this sort of thing apart from my mother who used to regularly visit the same palm reader/fortune teller.
I couldn't fathom the deck at all, tried runes, not much luck there, and then just got sidetracked with work and family.
Now I'm back on track It's the unknown that interests me, the magic of it all. Life's never mundane or boring when you have a tarot deck in your hand!

 

[alesia]

My parents both came from lines with the Sight, and my mom had had a few prophetic dreams. My father didn't have much talent in that arena (though his father did), which he attributed to his engineering training, but he was known to hire dowsers to find pipes that weren't buried where they were supposed to be, or when nobody knew where they were supposed to be, and he always swore by their effectiveness.

So when I got started with tarot in my teens, my mom jumped right in with me (she is a one-deck sort of gal and sleeps with her Herbal Tarot) and my father was always very supportive of both of us - liked to look through the decks, talk about the cards, get readings, that sort of thing.

There are decks I will not show my mother - I doubt she'd appreciate the Liber T - but out of consideration for her emotional well-being, not because she dislikes tarot.

 

[SilverSquirrel]

The fact that at the time when I was a teenager, it was in the occult section of the library along with stuff on Wicca and vampires and Elizabeth Bathory. lol. It was so much less mainstream just a decade or so ago.

My, how popular it's all become! It blows my mind.