Tarot — what’s the deal with so many decks?

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

When I first started out in tarot and ventured onto a few tarot discussion boards, one of the things that struck me above all else was how many tarot decks there are out there. People were waxing lyrical about their favourite decks, the different ones they used for their professional and personal readings, their burgeoning collections, and which ones they were planning to buy or bid on when they became available.

My mind boggled. For someone who was using exclusively the deck that was given to her when she first started working with tarot, I had stepped into another world. It’s a world with which I’m only just starting to get personally acquainted.

You see, I’ve realised that I’m a bit of a serial monogamist when it comes to tarot. I prefer to work with one deck deeply, so that I start to bond with the cards in a way that I wouldn’t be able to if I only turned to it now and then. Once I’ve done that, I’ll consider taking another deck and working with it the same way, returning to the first deck when I feel called to it.

Getting to know several decks at once when we’re only on first-name terms? Forget it! Some people are adept at that, and I see that as a particular strength, in the same way that I have my own strengths. Many also have more years of practice under their belts, and so more decks have come into their sphere of experience.

Currently, I own six-and-a-half tarot decks (the “half” refers to a set of major arcana without their minor counterparts), only three of which would I say that I use regularly, two of those being my professional reading cards. A very modest collection. However, having worked with tarot professionally for some years now, I have a better understanding, and a deeper experience of, why there is a use for so many tarot decks out there than I did as a newly fledged cartomancer.

In one of my first articles here on Planet Waves, I talked about tarot cards as the route to a single, unchanging destination: consciousness, integration, wholeness, God/dess — whatever you choose to call it. At its deepest level, tarot and that destination are one and the same thing: they are in alignment. When you pick up a tarot deck and you are called to work with it, you are receiving the call to travel to that unchanging point on the map.

But which is the best route to take to that point? Many will say the one that is most direct. After all, it’s tried, it’s tested, and we know that we stand the best chance of getting there without any unexpected diversions or hold-ups. More often than not, it is an old route that has stood the test of time… think of Roman roads in England: straight stretches that cut through the countryside from one town to another, many of which are the basis for the country’s major highways today.

When we talk about the tried and tested routes in terms of tarot, then we’re talking decks such as the Tarot de Marseilles or the Rider-Waite Smith tarot, especially the first of these. They have a rich history behind them, they are familiar to many tarot readers, and they are widely used. They are chock-full of tarot heritage. To pick them up and work with them is to share in the experience of myriad others who have done the same over the years. I would go so far as to say that there is an instinctual familiarity with them that is perhaps not even conscious. In other words, if you’re not sure where you are going, they will have more chance than most of getting you to that destination with more certainty.

But what if you want a change of scenery? What if you’re not a ‘motorway person’? What if well-trodden routes bore or frustrate you? What if you’d prefer a different flavour to your journey? What if you want to experience your journey from another perspective? Then the choice becomes almost limitless. There are as many routes as there are decks of cards. Each deck takes on the unique viewpoint of its creator, and you experience that journey through the lens of their creativity.

When you open yourself up to working with other tarot decks, then you open yourself up to the possibility of adventure. You might see something on the way that you had never noticed before, and a rich avenue of self-discovery might open up in front of you. Sometimes a change of tarot cards can help you discover something in the shadows that you would otherwise have overlooked working with your old faithful deck. Familiarity, as safe as it is, creates grooves in your thoughts, feelings and perceptions — and the deeper the groove you’re in, the harder it is to take a good look at what’s around you.

The destination might be unchanging but how you experience yourself on the way is an adventure in and of itself. Using cards that are unfamiliar might feel strange; it might also put you in a position of greater receptivity to other aspects of yourself (or your client) that would otherwise have been kept out of sight.

Having said that, there is ‘useful unfamiliar’ and there is ‘not-so-useful unfamiliar’, and not all card decks will be equal for you: some will resonate, and some will not, and only you can know which is which. There is a difference between communing with the heretofore unknown by taking deliberate steps on a new path, and scratching around in the undergrowth thinking, “Are we there yet?”

Some tarot decks engage me as soon as I’ve clapped eyes and hands on them — they promise something as yet indefinable and compelling. Some remind me of a few of the options that the figure has to choose from in the Seven of Cups: exciting at first glance, but ultimately a bit of a personal dead-end. Others don’t fall on my wavelength at all. But the thing is that the ones I discard as being “not for me” will send someone else into raptures of possibility. And that is the gift of having so much choice. Yes, the destination remains, unwavering. But just imagine the richness and depth of all the journeys to get there.

Note: All four cards that I’ve included with this article are different representations of the 21st card of the major arcana, most commonly referred to as The World. The top two cards come from decks that are generally referred to as ‘classics’: the Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley and artist Lady Frieda Harris on the left, and the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot by A. E. Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith on the right. The cards further into the article are examples from lesser-known decks: the Xultun Tarot — a Mayan-based tarot deck by New Zealand artist Peter Balin on the left, and the Voyager Tarot by James Wanless and artist Ken Knutson on the right. All of them draw on the archetype of that card — some in more familiar ways than others. This is an example of four different roads to the same destination.