Good morning, my Friends! I hope that your day is starting off wonderful and with a lovely cup of tea or coffee– which ever your preference (:

Yesterday, I received a stunning tarot deck in the mail. It’s called “Tarot of the Witch’s Garden” by Sasha Graham. I have been shuffling this deck all night and anointing it with my favorite oil. It’s part of my bonding process with the cards because yes, there is a process with them! I am prepping it to read for clients come Monday so it’s part of my ritual of breaking it in and cleansing it. Perhaps, I will do a post about that process in the next few days so if you’re interested in learning more about that, keep a look out! (:

But anyway, it had me thinking. I lost track of all the decks that I have accumulated since I started collecting them from when I was a teenager. At this point, I probably have well over 80+ decks (tarot/oracle). What draws me to them is the art work. I am a sucker for a beautifully illustrated deck– if it speaks to me, I get it. I also loooooove to shuffle cards! If the cards are made with a great card stock, have beautiful art work and shuffle like a dream, I am sold!

When I was 18 years old, I had to have two hand surgeries (nothing too serious), and part of my therapy, believe it or not, was shuffling cards… well, I used my tarot cards (despite the size) but for me, those are precious to me and it made me, despite all of the pain that I was in, want to shuffle those cards. I would shuffle through the pain and discomfort because I had something that I loved in my hands– something familiar and something that was important to me. It made it worth while to be able to play with my cards. Ha- I have fond memories of working in Salem and when it was a slow moment in the shoppe, I would buy a tarot deck (or decks because that’s where a significant chunk of my collection came from) and would shuffle cards. Plus, for tourists to come into a witch shoppe, it did look wicked to be greeted by a witch, playing with tarot cards and dancing/singing around the shoppe. Nothing out of the norm, right?

I have gotten to a point in my practice where I have my established cards that I use: I have a deck that I use solely on myself. I have a deck that I use on clients. I have a deck that if friends or family would like a reading, I will take it out and use it on them. I have an oracle deck or two that I will use in between readings. In theory, I do not need all of these cards– yet– I still have ’em!

I have been contemplating going through my collection and perhaps purging some of my decks, especially ones that haven’t been used in close to 5+ years. It is time that they find a home and get used/loved/played with. If you are in a similar boat, something that you could do, and I was inspired by this at the Witch City Tarot Gathering, was that they have something called a Tarot Swap, which I will definitely be participating in next year. If you have a few friends, a coven or a community, I am sure you could do this too! Essentially, you bring all of your unused/unwanted decks and gather them all on a table– set them out and practitioners go through them and pick the ones that they wish to “adopt.” I think it’s great because the cards are getting re-homed!

I do like to collect Halloween themed tarot/oracle decks though… but that’s different story, I am keeping those babies.

What about you? Are you similar? Feel free to leave a comment!
Until then, speak soon!

F.