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Tarot Cards: Using Them For Divination, Gaming, Etc.

Thanks for sharing that Inked. I just ordered it for my sister for her birthday. It's just too funny, it even comes with recipes.
 
i'm wrapping up an article on tarot and was trying to find famous people in history who have used tarot. i was thinking a president used tarot to make important decisions. probably not true, but can anybody point me in the direction of anyone else?
 
That is a really good question. When I think of historical figures, and how things were done in the "olden days," most of them would have gone to a reader, and not pulled cards for themselves. They also most likely wouldn't have advertised it. I would be really interested if anyone has a good anecdote to share in response to this one.
 
I thought of William Mackenzie King (Canadian PM of the WWII era) but all I could find was material about his interest in spiritualism, without tarot actually being mentioned.
 
instead of just adding to a deck collection
or gou=ing to a reader
why not read all about the multiple possible meanings and associations
and design your own deck?

it's a wonderful exercise in shadow work
 
I have recently been experimenting with Christopher S Hyatt's 'Undoing Yourself' techniques. One of the practices is to take at random (after a brief mediation to centre etc etc) a Major Arcana card and keep it with you at all times. Don't use any other cards or spreads for the week, just focus only on the chosen card.

At the end of the week, the practice is then to take on the attributes of the card to your personality. This is a good practice if you picked the Fool or Hierophant for example - I picked the Hanged Man. So being a Crowley deck devotee I had to act like a dying god all week.

I found this a good excerise - I've been using the cards for 3 years or
so and never been so intimate with one before :likee:
 
inkedmagiclady said:
As long as we are sharing sites...

Housewives Tarot
Inked, this deck is wonderful. It's both a campy joke and a deadly serious deck. The pictures are so funny yet evocative and you can do really great readings with it. My sister loves it. Thanks again for sharing it.
 
This is my first posting so be nice!!

Anyway this all started in 1994 when my then boyfriend bought me a pack of Alistar Crowley tarot cards. (Alistar Crowley was an occultist and he designed the cards although someone else actually did the art work) They were beautiful but a bit impractical as they were the large size. I wouldn't use them anyway as I really think that you should know what you are doing before delving into such realms. I just kept them in my bedside drawer and looked at them now and then.

Four years on and I am 21, with a different boyfriend and a baby. I had moved from my parents before the birth of my little boy but had left some belongings at my parents house including the bedroom furniture(ie. the bedside table with the Crowley pack in the drawer. Anyway my mum wanted the furniture out of the house and dropped it off one evening. Alot of it stayed in the hallway for a week as I had had no time to unpack it all. During that week I had a particularly hard time getting my little boy to sleep who was normally a good sleeper. All week he was wingey at bed time and I had been strung out and in a strange mood all week.I just put it down to teething or something.

Anyway one evening after a particularly hard bedtime I was walking down the stairs when I suddenly remembered the Crowley deck in the drawers. All of the sudden I just thought 'its the cards! I've got to get them out!' I know it sounds like I am over reacting but I really felt the need to get them out of my house. I found them in the drawer and took them into the kitchen where I found my brother cooking. (I must explain that my brother shared the house with us.) So I told him how I felt about the cards and that I thought they were causing a problem. I think he thought I was being a bit strange!!! My brother is pretty cool and calm about these kind of things. Anyway he watched as I threw them into the outside bin and as I did it I just shouted 'F**k OFF'
Later that evening my brothers girl freind came round and they went off to bed.
The next evening my brother and girlfriend got back after work and she wandered off upstairs. He came into the kitchen and started speaking to me all quiet and nervous. Apparently his girlfriend had had the most horrendous nightmare about mutilated chopped up babies in the bin! She was crying and freaked out, so much so my brother didn't even mention the cards for fear of scaring her even more.
Now I must explain that my brothers girlfreind was not very worldly wide about these things and wouldn't have even known who Alistar Crowley was.
Well I went outside and dragged the bin out of my yard and really far away from the house and I couldn't have looked in it.
One thing I found odd was that their bedroom window was directly above where we kept the bin.
I also felt it odd just how addament I was to get those cards out.

I know my brother wasn't playing a joke because he wouldn't have let me take the bin out of the yard(they were always getting pinched round where we lived and it takes ages to get a replacment!) and I could also tell that he was actually really shook up about the incident. :?
 
Do you think this was down to the evil influence of Crowley from beyond the grave or the evil influence of tarot?
 
Dem ol' cards

Hi Dawntime!

Very interesting story.

I have to say, I'm not surprised - Tarot can sometimes make you feel that way. I've had a couple of packs in my time: Swiss Tarot which has Rennaissance style artwork, and Witches Tarot, which is the same pack used by Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die.

Although neither of my packs really freaked me out, or caused any bad vibes that I can think of' there definitely came a time when I thought: "Yep, it's time for these to go.'

Alistair Crowley's pack - although I'm not familiar with the style, it probably isn't a very easy one to live with - simply because of the associations. However, Crowley himself, when you look at an overview of his life and what he actually achieved, comes across as a bit pathetic really, and he died a wasted, drunken drug addict.

So bear this cheering thought in mind: he couldn't do right by himself when he was alive, and he certainly can't do wrong by you now.

Besides, when you consider how many of the packs are printed and sold worldwide, you don't hear of thousands of printers or stationers being aflicted with strange visitations. :D

Keep smiling, be positive, you'll be ok!

The Knight in Pearls
 
Not sure if it was the evil influence of anything.....just plain wierd.
 
For my money, it's as likely to be one of your parapersonalities - subconscious, naturally- projecting your own heightened emotional anxiety into the sleeping mind of your bro's GF. The Crowley cards would be a perfect psionic amplifier in this instance. Just one guy's opinion, obviously
 
I have a tarot pack which I've dabbled with, with no ramifications. Although now that I think about it, there are times when I've thought about using them but discarded the thought as I haven't felt strong enough. I guess I only use them when I'm feeling emotionally robust. My gut feeling is that they're not something to be messed with. Perhaps something about the cards just clashed with whatever you were feeling at the time. I don't think there is anything intrinsically wrong with tarot.
 
I recall reading on some occult forum that someone has discovered that the Thoth deck (Crowley's Tarot) was actually not what it appeared to be and that it was jealous - if you ever used it and neglected it or switched to another then it would wreak some sort of revenge etc.
Personally I stick this in the same category as the 'I've captured all the goetic demons so no one else can summon them', 'there's a great war in heaven no one knows about and the souls of man are the battlefield' and 'I've solved the mystery of the Book of Lies and am Crowley's natural heir' type of stuff that occult types so often come out with. I.E. utter tosh. But possibly worth noting in this instance.

I have used tarot extensively and used to use the Thoth deck but swapped quite a while ago for the Rider-Waite as the more traditional sequence of the majors and symbolism of the minors fitted in better with what I was doing at the time but I still have both and have never experienced any problems whatsoever with them. I'm actually very fond of the design of the Thoth deck although I dislike the framing of the images (in the Rider-Waite deck all the lettering and numbering is hand drawn as part of the image but in the Thoth deck all that stuff is just printed with the image stuck in the middle and it looks a bit naff imo).

There is nothing to be afraid of in a pack of tarot cards, they are just paper and ink. The only thing that might freak you out is the way your mind interacts with them.

I'm not dismissing your experience though - tarot can be a little spooky at times, Crowley has a pretty sinister rep and some of the imagery of the Thoth deck is a bit disturbing.

Did your baby noticeably sleep much better immediately following the removal of the cards?
Perhaps you were subliminally aware of then being back in the house, heavy as they were with the connection to 'the wickedest man in the world' and the ghost of a previous relationship, and were on edge without realising or knowing why, thus upseting your child and the high emotions of the catharsis of removing them were somehow picked up by your brother's girlfriend etc?
 
Well I've got a Crowley deck and another one, can't remember what its called. The poor Crowley deck never gets used, it sits there nice and neat [for at least 12 years now] just to be shown to people for its beauty.
The other one gets used regularily. So my Crowley deck doesn't seem to be jealous, how can it. Its just print on paper.
I recon it is the people who "blame" the poor cards for stuff because they might be the only "occult" item they have in the home.
I'm not saying that you can't get a feel from the cards, because you can. I have it before each reading and I always know if the reading will be successful or rubbish [as in not-connected].
I have also ignored them once for a year because they "felt" mischievous. They were still out and I still looked at them but the readings were becoming increasingly silly. So after the year I decided to "reset" them by putting them all in order [hahaha, they didn't like it :twisted: ] left them like that for a while and then started again [before they had never been put in order since I'd bought them in 1986, so that showed them].
After that they were back to normal again and I didn't think they were mischievous anymore.
However I would never have got rid of them. Do you get rid of unruly children?
They are almost like something alive but I am absolutely sure that they can't influence your life. The worst they can come up with is rubbish readings and a "cheeky/peed off/mischievous etc-feeling" from them.

Show your cards who is boss. Like with ouiji boards, people who have no experience should read up on it first, get a lot of varying , not because of the harm the netherworlds could do to them but of what their mind will do to them.
 
I have a deck of Tarot cards, too...I forget what "kind" at the moment. I rarely use them but for some reason, they do seem to be able to produce very accurate readings.

I was trying to sell my Toyota 4 Runner this past winter. I wasn't having much luck and was becoming frustrated because I wanted to buy a car once the Toyota was sold.

One day I decided to whip the Tarot cards out and see what the future held as far as vehicle sales were concerned. The reading told me that two young men would be coming to buy it.

A couple of days later two young fellows showed up at my door----in the dark, mind you. (Who buys a car/truck in the dark?!). They glanced at the truck briefly and handed over the cash. :D

Sure it could have been a coincidence, but about 6 years ago I had a Tarot reading done by a very trustworthy and accuarate "psychic". She could not have predicted my life from that point up until the present day more precisely( and my past, too for that matter). She was unbelievable.

So, while I don't know if the discarded pack of Tarot cards had anything to do with what happened to you, Dawntime, I think it's safe to say that most of their "power" comes from whoever is using the cards.
 
I used to be a professional Tarot reader for a while and loved it. The cards were like an extension of myself.

But in the last couple years (I have a "normal" job now and only use them once in a while), I started feeling more and more uncomfortable with using them. I don't know, it just felt "wrong."

I haven't quite gotten to the point where I would completely get rid of them, but I don't do any readings anymore. Recently, the women of my spiritual circle persuaded me to whip them out and play around with them for a bit. They asked me to interpret the card they had drawn, but it was like there was a block of some sort preventing me from doing it. Most strange.

In January, I talked to one of my more metaphysical friends, and we both -- independently from each other -- came up with the same thought: That we are not co-creators anymore but Creators (with a capital C), and that we're creating our own reality through the power of our mind even more than that was the case before. Therefore, if I tell someone their future, I am CREATING their future FOR them. I.e., if I tell someone they will meet someone who will cause them harm, and if they believe me, they will manifest exactly that situation. A self-fulfilling prophecy at its best. And I feel that's just wrong.
 
I've bought a mini Rider-Waite deck, just to see a set in real life and because I like the pretty pictures (and no, I won't be predicting any futures...)

Anyway, my question is can you still play card games using the Rider-Waite deck, or is it in some way 'disabled' and only for use in divination?
 
If you're not going to use it for divination, you might as well use it for playing a game, especially if you can find rules for the original tarot games. After all, it was a game deck first! It's possible that using them to play with could disrupt their divinitory abilities (different people have different experiences for this), but I don't see how the reverse could be true.
 
Thanks - just wasn't sure whether they followed the same pattern as the game cards.

I suspect if I did want to do divining with them, apart from having to believe in it, I'd want to use some nice hand made reproduction/antique ones :)

I'm sure it also varies from person to person, but I can't help feeling that using something mass-produced by a machine would hinder psychic energies (or whatever).
 
If you want to play standard card games, take out the trumps/major arcana and play with swords = spades, wands = clubs, cups = hearts, and pentacles = diamonds.

The major arcana are also called trumps because that was their original function - they trumped anything from the minor arcana when they turned up in a hand. I don't have a copy myself, but if you want to play the original games, look for books by Michael Dummett published in the early 80s: The Game of Tarot, Twelve Tarot Games, etc. I understand that these have rules for games that include the trumps.

As for whether mass produced things mess up your psychic abilities, many people have used mass-produced decks with complete customer satisfaction. The individual attitude of the practitioner probably matters more than any other factor.
 
ttaarraass said:
Anyway, my question is can you still play card games using the Rider-Waite deck, or is it in some way 'disabled' and only for use in divination?

Yep, absolutely you can. as well as removing the major arcana - already mentioned, you also need to discard the page or knight of each suit, to fit 'normal' card games and get the right number of cards. I get rid of the page, but only because i find the pictures of the knights in the AEW pack more interesting to look at, i cant see it making any kind of difference in the long run.

My thoughts on the dual-use of tarot cards is that its fine to play normal card games, as long as you try not to physically dink or damage the cards. not because of any perceived "disrespect" to the tarot deck, but quite often when a card edge is damaged the pack wont sit flat, and so you know where the 4 of wands, or whatever, is and so disrupts the subconcious mind ooooh woooh woooh mystique when youre divining with them...
 
Ooo I was thinking more of playing the tarot/tarock games they were originally intended for. Will keep a lookout for the Dummett book, the cheapest I can find is too expensive at the moment but I'm sure it'll turn up cheaper - they always do :)
 
Hi all,

I am new to this board. I have been spending time working on my psyche and working through blockages. It's been very rewarding and honestly... much better than I thought it would be. I decided to go to my tarot cards. I'm quite new to this and have been using the Rider-Waite deck. I came to my cards to inquire about a possible reconciliation after a sudden break up (the catalyst for my inward work - feeling quite grateful for this time). The deck feels very strong but after days reflecting on it, I am still confused. Could anyone help? I used the bridge spread - (1) Situation - (2) Challenge - (3) Advice - (4) Likely Outcome. I asked 2 clarifying questions on the last card (mainly because I didn't like it, after seeing all the strongly positive cards in the spread). The first question was about "how to improve the situation" and "is this person worth investing my energy and resources?"

The spread reads:
1) The Magician (Situation)
2) Reverse six of wands (Challenge)
3) Strength VIII (Advice)
4) Reversed Knight of Swords (likely Outcome)

2 Clarifying cards:
1) Sun XIX ("how to improve the situation?")
2) Reverse five of cups ("is this person worth investing my energy and resources?")
 
Hi all,

I am new to this board. I have been spending time working on my psyche and working through blockages. It's been very rewarding and honestly... much better than I thought it would be. I decided to go to my tarot cards. I'm quite new to this and have been using the Rider-Waite deck. I came to my cards to inquire about a possible reconciliation after a sudden break up (the catalyst for my inward work - feeling quite grateful for this time). The deck feels very strong but after days reflecting on it, I am still confused. Could anyone help? I used the bridge spread - (1) Situation - (2) Challenge - (3) Advice - (4) Likely Outcome. I asked 2 clarifying questions on the last card (mainly because I didn't like it, after seeing all the strongly positive cards in the spread). The first question was about "how to improve the situation" and "is this person worth investing my energy and resources?"

The spread reads:
1) The Magician (Situation)
2) Reverse six of wands (Challenge)
3) Strength VIII (Advice)
4) Reversed Knight of Swords (likely Outcome)

2 Clarifying cards:
1) Sun XIX ("how to improve the situation?")
2) Reverse five of cups ("is this person worth investing my energy and resources?")

Hi nearbyfaraway -

What you have here is one of those situations that isn't bad, but on the heels of a break-up feels less than stellar.
Essentially, the situation with your ex isn't going to change or reconcile, but you yourself will move on. The cards are suggesting that you have the strength and will to do so, even if you don't feel like it just at this moment.

If your ex behaves destructively, you will just have to leave them to it and look after yourself instead. Resist any urge toward power struggles, use your strength to move forward instead.
 
Oh and welcome to the bored, nearbyfaraway. Are you any relation to our regular contributors ~ folkofthefarawaytree?

We've a theme tune for this very thread.
 
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