New to Tarot!
Coming to the Tarot for the first time can be daunting to those who see the pack as another set of cards, the similarities mask the complexity that hides within this wonderful tool, both for magickal divination and psychological examination.
When I first found the tarot I was a child who shared dinner and snacks at my friends homes, my best friend as I grew up in post war London was an Italian boy called Ricardo and his mother would often spread the strange, exotic Modiano 40 card deck to read for friends and family.
These cards were my first gimpse of cartomancy, as she would weave meaning into the pattern of the cards for her avid audience who held to every word in hope as I would peer across the top of the table trying to take in what it all meant then later we would play card games with the same colorful deck with clubs and coins, swords and chalices. Many years later I would come across the Thoth tarot and get a similar feeling from the cards of wonder and excitment. The colors and strange shapes would excite something deep within that made me realize that something was lacking that needed to be fulfilled.
I came late to true tarot, being in my 30's, but I read the cards letting them tell their story to me with their perfect geometric shapes and colliding colors, soon I would be asked to read for friends at parties and once my readings started to become more intense and their truth unfold I found myself becoming increasing worried--was I causing these things to happen?
I decided to stop reading and for a few years my cards never saw the light of day as they languished in the dark of a closed draw, yet I could never find it in myself to discard them and eventually I would once again let them see the light, later I decided to look more closely into the history and meanings of the cards as an intellectual exercise.
I was to be surprised at the short amount of time the tarot we know today had been in existence and it's roots having such a close association to my very own family history having come into true fruition in the late 1800's and early 1900's of London woven into the fabric of London society at the fringe of Bohemian culture that I was intrinsically linked through my great aunt.
Looking at the cards history I was to discover that my Thoth deck was a later arrival with the Rider Waite Smith Deck having established itself as the most popular deck in use and having spawn more clones than Dolly the sheep could dream of. I soon found myself using the RWS deck to look more closely at the cards meanings and unraveled each cards individual meaning, imagine my surprise to discover the association the cards had to the qabalah and seeing the tree of life took me on a journey that continues to this day.
The deeper one looks into the cards the more one discovers there is to learn, finding the work of Dion Fortune and how it linked to the Psychologists of her time suddenly became clear through the letters my aunt had left with friends of the age, meanings that had been obscure sudden made perfect sense.
How the cards become symbols of the hebrew alphabet and those selfsame letters became numbers and sounds that made ritual magick work suddenly bought together the greater meanings I had been seeking and now saw that I had always held the knowledge but had never been able to express it into words, all the dreamwalking, speaking with those who were my own higher self now had a vehicle that would allow me to express those discussions to others without them sounding like rambling nonsense.
My journey with the tarot is still in its infancy yet I continue with the steps.
