Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Tarot Tuesday - An old (but new) deck

The first Tarot deck I ever owned was "The Tarot of the Cat People," gifted to me by my first boyfriend on my 18th birthday. I've always been a cat person, and the illustrations on this deck are beautiful. At the time, I was very much into Vampire the Masquerade Live Action RolePlay, or LARP. This involved getting together with a bunch of friends and pretending to be our characters for a few hours each weekend. My character was a gypsy-raised vampire who told fortunes with her Tarot deck.

I loved that character; I had some evenings I will never forget playing her. And the Tarot - I told some amazing fortunes. I told one of the Storytellers all about the character he was playing, to the extent he pulled me aside and demanded to know who'd let me look at his notes. I played this character, and used those cards for game, for several years. And the cards took an imprint. Whenever I attempted to do a spread for me or a friend, inevitably the response would be "well, that's a perfect spread for my character, but completely wrong for me!"

So, sadly, I set that deck aside. I went through a few other decks. The Dragon Tarot that a friend had in high school, though it had cool illustrations, just never clicked with me. I couldn't read it. The Celtic Dragon Tarot is GORGEOUS, and I use it with my spellwork, but it never worked well for spreads. The Housewives Tarot is brutally honest and blunt, but still hard for me to read. I just never found a deck that was as intuitive as the Tarot of the Cat People was.

So about a month ago, at The Crystal Fox here in Maryland, I happened across the Tarot of the Cat People. A new deck. Same illustrations, just - not the deck that I'd used in game. So I bought it. It's like finding an old friend who you'd lost touch with. It's so familiar, but I still find myself relearning the details.

Do you use the Tarot? What deck do you use? Did you have to go through many decks to find the right one?

2 comments:

  1. Oh, I have the Tarot of the cat people too. It's beautiful! The pictures are so... dreamy =)

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    1. I love them so much! Every illustration just - reaches out to me with meaning. There are decks that have more symbolism and more going on in the illustrations but they just don't speak to me like the Cat People do. I'm so glad to have my old friend back. :)

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