Com'mon, you cannot stop by without telling your story!!!
What's your story, tarotbear?
(excerpted from the forward to my book: )
I love Tarot; I once purchased a large button at a psychic fair that read, “I like to read books, but I love to read Tarot cards!” My introduction into Tarot was backwards; I was using Tarot cards for other purposes before I started to learn to “read” them. I had bought Tarot Spells by Janina Rene, which featured a then-as-yet-unpublished deck designed by Robin Wood. It was a beautiful deck, to be sure, but I was interested in spell work and not divination at that time.
Eventually, I would hear the call of the cards, but the idea of studying such a large and esoteric subject interested and confused me at the same time. I started to buy other decks to check them out. I found that each deck came packaged with its own “little white booklet” of explanations for card interpretation. Some of the information was very sketchy and poor indeed; was I supposed to learn something from these little booklets? Many of them listed 10 or 12 single word explanations, but none of them helped me to see the whole. To try to learn them this way was very discouraging.
I started to buy books on Tarot, and ran into similar problems--lots of words, but little understanding. I found out the best way to learn Tarot was to go out and do it. I started keeping journals of what the readings said. I did this strictly for myself, since I could not pry myself away from the little white booklet for fear I would say something “wrong.”
One day I was a merchant at a small psychic fair (and not making a cent), but I saw that the readers were busy with people signed up hours ahead of time. A woman hung out at my booth and told me “how disappointed” she was in whatever reading she had just been given; it didn’t “work for her,” she said. I suggested she try something that might answer her question more directly, like Tarot. She disappeared for about an hour and came back and told me that the next psychic “didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know," as though she was expecting something “mystical” to happen. She asked about the Tarot deck I had for sale and could I do a reading for her–which, of course, I refused to do. First of all, I didn’t like the deck, which is why I was selling it; and second, I did not feel I had enough experience to do a public reading. As the fair ended and I started to pack my unsold merchandise, she appeared again. I decided to give it a try. I took the deck I didn’t like and we went out to the lobby of the hotel, and I did a reading for her. On the first card I said that her situation was work related; she said it wasn’t. I continued through the reading and discovered she was having an affair with a co-worker (the first card–right?). The cards indicated it was foolish and would end in disaster. She paid me and left. Suddenly, I was a reader!
"And the little Tarot card cried:'Whee Whee Whee!' all the way home!"
)