Tag: tarot

I found a beautiful copy of the Faeries’ Oracle in a secondhand bookshop for $15 a couple of weeks ago. An impulse purchase, but one I felt very strongly was the right decision… and, having just done my first tentative reading with it, I am all the more sure. It’s such a WARM, friendly deck, and Froud’s art is absolutely stunning. And, just to prove my decks are in cahoots, the reading is, I need to be sensible, wise and creative. I need to open myself to creativity, and focus on the dance and flow of it, not get caught up in trying to be perfect.

After a few weeks of getting readings about how rotten the last couple of years had been, now I keep getting cards telling me that good things are coming, that I need to chill out and focus on my health, and that all the fear I have is just my anxiety telling me the sky is (still) falling.

So, I’ve been waiting so eagerly for my Wild Unknown Tarot to arrive. At first glance, it looked utterly perfect. Then, after I’d removed the plastic wrap and slipcase, it was clear something was wrong. It’s obviously been crunched in the postal system. I’m eligible for a free refund or exchange, so, that’s what I’m doing, but it means that I will more than likely have to wait another month for my deck. It’s such a shame – the cards themselves are fine, but the box is such an integral part of this set. I just don’t think I could repair it, and I shouldn’t have to, since this is a brand new purchase, not second hand.

So, I’m sitting here trying not to cry, because it’s exactly what Ive been waiting for – so gorgeous – but too broken to just overlook the damage. Crying is such a silly reaction, but it’s genuinely how I feel right now, especially since I put the package aside this morning to open in the evening when I’d have time to savour the unboxing. Just… a really shattering result.

Tarot for Sad People

alethiomancer:

I get sad. There are other more clinical and specific names for how sad I get, but ultimately, I feel sad. Tarot is such an important part of my life that just like a best friend, I turn to it when I am sad.

This is the story of how I reach for tarot in my sadness. My hope is that it will illustrate the usefulness of tarot as a tool. Not just a tool, a friend.

I am offering Tarot for Sad People in my Etsy shop for $3. Despite the low price, I’m also giving it away for free. Right here.

Tarot for Sad People

I value the work I do – and writing something while sad is definitely work – and I want to make sure that everyone who might need this gets to see it. So please download this PDF. And if you’re able and feeling it, then you can buy it as well on Etsy, maybe even give it as a gift.

Much love,
xoxoxoxox
Alie

Tarot for Sad People

After I bought my two big decks, I saw this listing on eBay. And I figured, what the heck? It’s about three bucks. It’s called either Destiny Tarot or Secret of Destiny Tarot, depending on which part of the box you read.

If the whole deck had been like the minor arcarna, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. They’re essentially pip cards. the pictures don’t mean anything. The whole suit of swords have swords, and the Ace, King, Queen, Knight and Page of Cups have cups, but none of the Wands or Pentacles have symbology. They’re just anime girls, not posed to be anything other than pictures of girls.

Why I bought this deck? The major arcana. The listing didn’t even have pictures of the whole deck, but those major cards I could see and identify? I loved. See The Hanged Man? How she’s hanging, but in a delicate cradle of roots or branches. And the Sun, Moon, and Star? The Star is my card. And I looked at that eBay listing with a picture of that tiny, spiral galaxy in a bottle… I bought the deck on the strength of that card alone.

As you can see, especially from my first post, it’s tiny! The cards are literally half the size of my Celtic Dragon Tarot. They’re significantly smaller than playing cards. The card stock is thin, but it feels nice and the printing is lovely quality. As you can see from the closeups, there’s a super subtle patterning of almost black on black like wallpaper behind all the images. And ignore the listing, this is a FULL 78 CARD DECK. Actually, it’s 80, because there are two cards with information on them of some kind, and a paper information booklet. No idea what they say, because they’re in Chinese, but comparing the page headers with the symbols on the cards made me able to sort out the major arcana, which, unlike the minor, didn’t have any English at all. The 22 cards, as far as I can tell are a standard Rider/Waite/Smith order, and range from fairly conventional depictions (Wheel of Fortune) to unconventional (Strength – Thor’s Hammer, The Chariot – a lightning charged snapping turtle with a clubbed tail).

Was it worth it? Absolutely. It was cheap. It’s portable. It’s got some lovely unconventional cards and it’s going to help me to learn how to identify my minor arcana just based on the suit and number rather than the pictures, and therefore interpret without that prompting. And as a bonus, they got to me about a month sooner than eBay thought they might. 🙂

So, replacing my teenage deck feels like coming home.

I just love watercolour art – I grew up reading the Alan Lee illustrated Lord of the Rings – and I also love decks that aren’t as focussed on people, because as a queer person, most decks I saw as a young person were incredibly heteronormative. I didn’t get that vibe from the Celtic Dragon Tarot. The fantasy art, the grounded earthiness of the pictures, felt a lot more like something that spoke to me than the traditional Rider/Waite/Smith decks or Angel cards that were pretty much all I could find otherwise in my town’s New Age shops in the ‘90s.

The minor arcana are just as lovely as the major, and the four suits have subtle elemental imagery woven in – wands/air, swords/fire, cups/water, and pentacles/earth. It feels like a really calming deck to me, and I have to admit that I like that the light colours will balance out against the two other decks, both of which are fairly dark.

I’m just so happy to have my deck back.

New decks! YAAAS

So, I ordered some decks.

The Celtic Dragon Tarot was my first deck. I was a teenager. I’ve forgotten whether it was a gift or I bought it myself. But I loved it, and it was one of the many things I lost that I thought was stored safely at my mother’s house. (It wasn’t.) So, I decided I needed to replace it. It’s anchored to a very specific time of my life.

The Wild Unknown Tarot spoke to my self as I am now. I clicked with it immediately. I knew I’d work well with it, even with it coming from the other side of the world, just having seen pictures.

And then there was the tiny deck I impulse-bought from eBay for like, $3. 🙂

So far, just the tiny deck and the Celtic Dragon Tarot have arrived. So here are some pics! (I hit Tumblr’s image limit trying to post the detailed deck pics, so I’m going to post those separately.)

Excite

So two of the three decks I ordered arrived this morning! The Celtic Dragon Tarot (replacement for the first deck I had when I was a teenager that got destroyed) and a super cheap tiny deck from China bought on eBay called Destiny Tarot/Secret of Destiny Tarot. They’re both lovely, and I’ve taken a bunch of pictures that I’ll post later. So happy! Now I’m just waiting on the one that is brand new to me and speaks to my adult soul, The Wild Unknown Tarot.