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.