Leah@WSP

I know next to nothing about tarot, but I’ve been interested in it for a while now. I have a few ebooks (that I haven’t read), I’m subscribed to a few blogs and I follow some pretty cool folks on Instagram. I like the practical approach that most of these tarot readers and practitioners take and I also like the whole creative aspect of it all. I mean, have you seen the art on some of these tarot and oracle decks? So beautiful they make me truly pause in awe.

So, I’m very interested in tarot, but I haven’t really taken the time to learn more about it – which isn’t a surprise because I haven’t been taking the time to do anything about my interests these days (yeah, that’s another story). I mean, I bought a deck once, the classic Rider-Waite Smith because I heard every newbie should know it and I tried to study the cards but just couldn’t connect with it. I stopped trying and left that deck alone. I wasn’t sure when I was going to pick it up again and actually try to learn tarot.

Then one of my favorite sources of anything tarot-related, Practical Magic, came out with her collage starter deck. I’m kind of a big fan and tend to *heart* all her IG posts (stalker alert), so I really considered purchasing the deck. I took a long time deciding though because at first I wasn’t really called by it, which is funny cos I’ve always considered myself a “collage girl” (translation: I can’t draw or sketch to save my life so collages were the closest I came to creating ahhhrt). Anyway, so I finally decided, what the heck Imma get this deck. And, you know what? I’m so glad I did because so far it’s been surprising me a lot in a really cool way.

I ordered the deck about two weeks ago, on a Tuesday, and it arrived the next day. I guess it helped that we live in the same city. Hah. Anyway, it came nicely packaged in a brown envelope tied with string. It also came with a cute canvas pouch, which I want to replicate for my other deck one of these days (but probably won’t cos I’m lazy), a postcard with a lovely message and a mini zine (a mini guide of sorts).

I didn’t play with it that day because I had stuff to do, but the next day I decided to give it a quick look-see and try my hand at a mini reading for myself. Well, I wanted to do a card for the day sort of thing. I took out the deck and looked at each card briefly. Each card is unique and colorful, contains interesting modern imagery, and is pretty cool in that collage-y way, which I like. As I mentioned at the start, I don’t know much about tarot, so I couldn’t tell you how the images relate to the traditional meanings, but they supposedly do. Each card also includes catchphrases, which are pretty helpful for clueless noobs like me.

After I went through all the cards, I shuffled them carefully – they are easy to shuffle, by the way, because they have a nice glossy feel and are adequately sized – and I made my very first pull from my new PM deck.

Holy magical powers, Batman.

My very first pull? Incidentally the very first serious one I’ve ever done in my life, and by serious I mean heart-into-it, focused-my-mind serious. It was really on point. The card I pulled was the 8 of Pentacles, which had the tagline “Learn More. Practice More.”

I thought it was on point because, for this pull, I was thinking about writing and how I haven’t been writing for myself for a long time and I was thinking about what I should do to get back into it. I was also thinking about my many obsessions (like tarot) and that I haven’t really been doing much to learn more about them. This card pretty much just told me what I already know deep down. That I need to work on these things. Learn more, practice more. You can’t get any clearer than that, right? I love that this was the card that turned up for me because it was just the simple truth that I needed to acknowledge at that time.

A few days later I decided to do another pull and the card that turned up was also something I could relate to what I was thinking about at that moment. The whole thing was just really really cool. I think the straightforward mini guide and the taglines on each card helped a lot and made it easy for me to “interpret” the card for myself.

After these initial experiences with the PM deck, I’m feeling pretty good about things. About just giving in to letting the simple magic of recognizing the simple truth help me. Does that make sense? I don’t know if I’ll be able to explore and use this deck as often as I want to, but, hey, it got me writing on this blog again, so who knows? Maybe it’s just what I need to help me get out of my writing and reading rut. Maybe I’ll start learning more about tarot or maybe I won’t. I really don’t know, but I’m glad I bought this deck.

Interested in the Practical Magic starter deck? Order it here.