Just a trim, please

An excellent video tutorial by Donnaleigh on removing those distracting borders from your Tarot/Lenormand/etc decks.
Cutting Corners (and Borders!) - Crafty Tarot | Donnaleigh's Blog
Off to get me a corner punch!

(I did it!)

Was your first deck a gift?

I remember coming up against the "your first deck must/should be gifted to you" concept when I first became interested in Tarot cards. What I can't remember after all these long years is whether I went ahead and bought one anyway (a Rider-Waite-Smith mini, as it happens) or whether I was given my well-used Aquarian Tarot first.

Seriously - how did this deck get so worn out in the seven years or less between it being published and coming to me? That's some heavy-duty tarot reading! I didn't contribute much to the wear-and-tear - I never really took to the deck. That's perhaps the best reason for buying your own deck.

The guys at Psychic Bazaar have been wondering about this "tradition" and tried an interesting little experiment - The Gift of Giving | Psychic Bazaar Blog.

Burning My Tarot Bra

Over in the Aeclectic Tarot forum a fellow cartomant was bemoaning the shift towards counselling and near psychoanalysis that Tarot card reading was taking. They signed off with - "Has anybody else reached this same conclusion?"

As it happens, I had an Ah Ha! moment about this very thing only a couple of days ago, so I was moved to reply (especially as no one else had since it was posted almost a month ago)...

Yes - yes I have.

I've been studying/using Tarot cards for over 30 years. I'm sure I started out in the hope of being able to "tell the future" with them. As time went by and I read more and more on the subject I began to see their deeper psychological, I prefer to say spiritual, connection.

Fast forward to the past 5-10 years and now, well, anyone starting out with Tarot would think their only intended use is for Psychic Soul Transformation or Guided Karmic Purging or suchlike. ;-) What ever happened to fortune telling?!

I "discovered" Lenormand earlier this year, while I was coming to grips with an old fortune telling deck of my grandmother's (and consequently searching online for information; deadly that, LOL). The more I worked with these cards, and a few others, the more I realised why my use of Tarot cards had stalled. The new Tarot Zeitgeist left me feeling that I wasn't really serious/worthy enough to be dabbling in such esoteric things.

Well, pfft! I've decided to reclaim Tarot for myself. I'm going to go back to basics and tell fortunes, with whatever cards take my fancy, including the Sacred Seventy-Eight. ;-)

There, I've said it.

There are, and always will be, times when Tarot cards are the most appropriate choice, based on the nature of the enquiry or the needs of the client, but I refuse to become so awestruck or precious about them that I can no longer use them.

More Kipperkarten Meanings

Like it says up there - another good list of Kipperkarten meanings, this time from Fennario. With a few combining examples and some timings, too. Nice!

Lateral Thinking

Note: All my Kipper sources are listed in this post.

I've been doing a lot of looking things up on the internet lately. As I've found useful information I've bookmarked it, saved it as a PDF, perhaps printed it out. Bits of info all over the place.

It occurred to me that this blog would be a good place to "store" this kind of thing. Give it a sensible label and I should be able to find it again reasonably easily - plus - my visitors will have instant access to the interesting stuff I've found while ferreting around the 'net.

So -

I've discovered an excellent list of  Kipperkarten meanings at xxxxxxxxxx (sorry, the owner and I have had a falling out). Not just the obvious ones - like #24 Diebstahl/Theft = theft, loss - but more nuanced ideas as well: to remove something or leave something, to be missing someone or something, being irresponsible, deficiency or shortcoming.

This list came in very handy with a 3x3 reading I was doing. The bottom row was Short Illness - Court Person - Theft, and the right-hand column was A Journey - Prison - Theft.

At face value it was a bit baffling. But if a "court (legal) person" can be any kind of advisor, such as a doctor, "prison" can be anywhere one is confined, like a hospital and "theft" can mean removal...











... I see someone who has an illness taking a trip to the hospital to have a surgeon remove something.

In a similar vein, Mama Whodun at Kipper Karten Garden suggests "Backtracking". Card pairs or combinations can have a number of meanings depending on the context of the reading. For practice, reverse the process - think of an every day situation and then pick out two cards that would describe that situation. Good training, and it seems to me it would be great fun, too!

Welcome to my Special Interest blog

If you've found your way here from my main blog - So Far, So Good - thanks for coming. Do come in! I hope my interest in "fortune telling" doesn't put you off. Although if you've seen any of SFSG apart from the crochet stuff you'll already be aware of my penchant for weird.

And if you've just stumbled across this blog - Welcome! Nice to meet you.

I've been tinkering with Tarot since my early teens. Only after I confessed to my mother (with some trepidation) my interest, did she roll her eyes heavenward, sigh "Not you, too", and reveal that my grandmother read cards and coffee grounds.

We lived in Canada at the time and Oma was in Germany. In those days, international phone calls were rare/expensive and visits even more so. Sadly, as a result, I hardly knew my grandmother. But when she heard of my interest she sent me a Skat deck (32 cards - 7 to 10, J, Q, K, A) with her meanings written on the cards. In German.

Some years ago I had a go at translating the notes, but with only a German/English dictionary and her old-fashioned handwriting to contend with I wasn't terribly successful. Now, with excellent online translators, I've been able to type in her notes and get reasonably sensible results out.

This then whet my appetite for playing card reading as opposed to Tarot. Plus I had also inherited her Swedenborg cards, a Lenormand-like deck (Oma passed away in 1998). I'm translating that now, too. One thing lead to another and before I knew it I had acquired (my husband would say "Paid good money for!") another seven fortune telling decks of various types (and I'm not done yet; don't tell him).
Edit 27Apr16: Seven decks? Hahahahahaaaa, this post is SO old!

So the time has come to take the little Tarot section from my original blog and give it its own space to grow. I can't promise there will be much in the way of actual blogging here, certainly not on a regular basis. But this is where I'll be housing my growing list of cartomancy links and snippets of useful info. Perhaps you'll find something here of interest to you, too.

~~ Judy