Your very first type of deck?

[Aliki]

Which one was your very first type of deck you used tarot, oracle, cartomancy, lenormand etc?

For me the very very first type of readings and deck i used was when i was still underaged i think i was somewhere between 15-17 i was doing a type of cartomancy with a literally handmade poker deck i made which later i replaced with a nice one i found with a nice black detail and backing it was a popular type of readings we were doing in Greece there was a standard one which was the most popular cause it had its very theirs meanings to each card and way of reading and i think it was also an addition to some ppl who where also doing coffee cup readings here a celtic cross and a time-day-week-month fortune telling reading from what i recall it was pretty interesting since i didn't had access to tarot back then i think this also kinda triggered my interest to tarot and divination tools probably so then later on 2020 i got my first rws tarot and an angel oracle deck

[Raggydoll]

I used regular playing cards at first because it was difficult for me to get hold of tarot cards back then. My first tarot deck was a majors only deck, RWS style. Before all that came the runes, but they aren’t cards so I guess they don’t count 😊

[Guest]

Mine's the Tarot set my mom gave me as a gift. 

[Nemia]

The Thoth. I wanted to buy cards, went into a book store (it was the Age before Internet for me) and looked at the deck they had, i.e. at the boxes. The Thoth box looked best 😄 and I bought it. When I opened it at home, I was excited to see that I had picked exactly the same deck that a friend of mine had used ten years before to give me a life-changing reading! 

[Aliki]

9 hours ago, Nemia said:

The Thoth. I wanted to buy cards, went into a book store (it was the Age before Internet for me) and looked at the deck they had, i.e. at the boxes. The Thoth box looked best 😄 and I bought it. When I opened it at home, I was excited to see that I had picked exactly the same deck that a friend of mine had used ten years before to give me a life-changing reading! 

I love to go at a physical shop if i have the time 😅 rarely but especially at ms shops cause i love the energy it's like you're at a sacred space but i also love bookstores cause besides decks i have a love for books as well 

[DanielJUK]

I got my first deck at around 13, I actually bought a "fortune telling kit", it was so cute and nicely packaged! The box slid out of a book type cover and it had a little book which was a general guide to fortune-telling and had many systems inside. Like divining using various methods and in the kit were some dice I think for random chance, loads of red sticks for I-Ching and some coins and a small tarot card set. The book also had meanings for the cards.

 

I realise now that the set was great and had many cute starters to divination but it had the worst tarot deck ever for beginners! It was a black and white, quite generic TdM deck! So the minors were tough to read and not even in colour. That was my first enabling but then I bought my first RWS deck some months after which is still a special deck for me 🙂 .

[Aliki]

5 minutes ago, DanielJUK said:

I got my first deck at around 13, I actually bought a "fortune telling kit", it was so cute and nicely packaged! The box slid out of a book type cover and it had a little book which was a general guide to fortune-telling and had many systems inside. Like divining using various methods and in the kit were some dice I think for random chance, loads of red sticks for I-Ching and some coins and a small tarot card set. The book also had meanings for the cards.

 

I realise now that the set was great and had many cute starters to divination but it had the worst tarot deck ever for beginners! It was a black and white, quite generic TdM deck! So the minors were tough to read and not even in colour. That was my first enabling but then I bought my first RWS deck some months after which is still a special deck for me 🙂 .

I was secretly wishing to find kits like this as a kid 😅 it sounds lovely to my opinion you'll always bond more with your first deck it's kinda like a friend to me now i learned and did my first tarot readings with it you know it's like my baby the only one I'll always keep in a special box

[RunningWild]

My very first deck was a standard Rider Waite.  The cards seems too large at the time but that didn't really matter as I was in college and working at least one job if not a couple and didn't have time to learn the system.  So, I gave it to a friend who was into that.  That was maybe 1982.  I didn't get another tarot deck until I was in my mid-40s and to me it was the homeliest thing I'd ever laid eyes on but it didn't cost an arm and a leg either.  I searched for something better and ended up with the Quest Tarot and the original Mythic Tarot.  Much better.  It's all been downhill since then.

[Misterei]

14 hours ago, Akhilleus said:

Mine's the Tarot set my mom gave me as a gift. 

My dad gave me my first tarot cards when I was 14-15. Somehow he knew it would be a lifelong thing for me. It was that plaid-back RWS that was the ONLY deck in the bad old days before the digital revolution };>

Edited December 16, 2022 by Misterei

[Flaxen]

My first deck was an RWS which was bought for me as a gift when I was 15. I didn’t like the images at all but was intrigued enough by tarot to go out and buy my own.

There was a shop close by which sold a selection of decks and I picked the Ancestral Path and Thoth. These were the only 2 decks I used for many years until I discovered a tarot forum and ‘collecting’. 

 

 

[Raggydoll]

@Flaxen This brings back fun memories. After I had been gifted the RWS-inspired majors only deck for Christmas, I was pretty disappointed to not have an entire deck. (I really should have been more specific when asking for a deck because my family members had no idea how many cards a deck was supposed to have. And my grandmother had to ask my uncle who lived in Stockholm to get it for me, because she had no idea how to find one herself). 
 

My goal then became to save money and buy a deck on my own. It took me several years before I found a place that sold decks. I had befriended a new girl who owned a tarot deck, and she told me about a tiny witchy shop that was located in the city where she lived. The fun thing is that the deck she had gotten was a Thoth, and she specifically warned me to not buy that deck. “Its impossible to work with, very difficult to understand the pictures and the keywords” so I nodded and told her I’d make sure to get something else 😄. Which I did, and the only thing other than RWS and Thoth that was available in the little shop was the Gendron tarot. I wasn’t able to look at the cards before making a purchase, but I remember I thought the at least the box was pretty 😆 

 

I bought that deck plus the Solitary guide to Wicca, and that used up all my pocket money. In the bus on my way home I opened the deck and flipped through it. I remember that even back then, the digital art looked very poorly made. But since I had no more money, I used that as my only reading deck for many years. At least it read really well, but I never liked it. 
 

Some years later I found a person that sold second hand decks very cheaply and so I bought myself another deck. A Thoth 😊

 

Edited December 16, 2022 by Raggydoll

[DanielJUK]

9 hours ago, Aliki said:

I was secretly wishing to find kits like this as a kid 😅 it sounds lovely to my opinion you'll always bond more with your first deck it's kinda like a friend to me now i learned and did my first tarot readings with it you know it's like my baby the only one I'll always keep in a special box

 

My first RWS is special and I can always rely on it. It's a bit bent and creased and imperfect these days but that adds to it 🙂

 

BTW related fact, when I bought my fortune-telling set, the bookshop (a UK chain) wouldn't sell it to me! I was browsing the occult section, which was weirdly in the basement of the shop. My Parents had to buy it for me as they didn't sell "occult things" to under 16 years old! This is not law, it was their own made up moral policy! 🙃. My Parents were happy to do that, maybe they thought it would give me a hobby or something 🙂 .

[Flaxen]

2 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

My goal then became to save money and buy a deck on my own. It took me several years before I found a place that sold decks. I had befriended a new girl who owned a tarot deck, and she told me about a tiny witchy shop that was located in the city where she lived. The fun thing is that the deck she had gotten was a Thoth, and she specifically warned me to not buy that deck. “Its impossible to work with, very difficult to understand the pictures and the keywords” so I nodded and told her I’d make sure to get something else 😄.
Which I did, and the only thing other than RWS and Thoth that was available in the little shop was the Gendron tarot. I wasn’t able to look at the cards before making a purchase, but I remember I thought the at least the box was pretty 😆 

 

That’s so funny! I wasn’t aware of the ‘reputation’ of the Thoth when I bought it. I found the art really spoke to me and I got a lot from it even before I started delving in more deeply. 
I remember the Gendron tarot - that was one where the nicest card was shown on the box and the rest of the deck was ‘meh’ to me. 😂

 

2 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

I bought that deck plus the Solitary guide to Wicca, and that used up all my pocket money. In the bus on my way home I opened the deck and flipped through it. I remember that even back then, the digital art looked very poorly made. But since I had no more money, I used that as my only reading deck for many years. At least it read really well, but I never liked it.

Digital art decks were so hit and Miss back in the day. I saw some that really put me off that whole genre for a long time. 

2 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

Some years later I found a person that sold second hand decks very cheaply and so I bought myself another deck. A Thoth 😊

 

It finds us all eventually! 😂

[Scarlet Woodland]

Mine was tarot, the Old English Tarot specifically, which is kind of a RWS sprinkled Marseilles(?). I wanted something traditional and old looking but didn't like the RW art. l I struggled along with it and the little white book for a bit, then soon after, bought the Druidcraft Tarot set and never looked back.

 

Have been thinking about taking that Old English for another spin for a while. Going to finally do this thing and pick it for DOTW next week. Alas, it belongs to the mists of time where I still smoked, so he a little bit stinky. Blech.

Edited December 16, 2022 by Scarlet Woodland

[Mister]

Here it was (oh lord, quelle surprise!) a TdM rework, in the fashion of church windows, albeit very colorful ones with lots of tiny shards, secretly taken out of my mothers cupboard. I still do not know which one it was, for she decided to give it away when I was abroad.

The memory of diving into the booklet which was inside the wooden box is still vividly present, as is doing my first reading ever for yours truly following the instructions.

Which started off with seperating the majors and using them for the big picture, then the minors for the details.

It was far less insightful than it was impactful.

The first card drawn was the nameless one, XIII.

[Misterei]

On 12/15/2022 at 9:53 PM, Flaxen said:

My first deck was an RWS which was bought for me as a gift when I was 15. I didn’t like the images at all but was intrigued enough by tarot to go out and buy my own.…. There was a shop close by which sold a selection of decks and I picked the Ancestral Path and Thoth. These were the only 2 decks I used for many years until I discovered a tarot forum and ‘collecting’. 

Honestly its amazing I stuck with Tarot at all. I hated the plaid backs and garish colors of that first US Games RWS. This was back in the 70s … so that was it. That was the only deck available to me as a 14-15 year old. (I think it was technically a christmas present so I would have been 14 … but my birthday is the 12th day of christmas. And yes, everyone always cheaped out and gave me one present for both };>

 

Anyway … somehow I saw past the awful colors and plaid … I fell in love with Tarot truly deeply and fully. 

 

In my 20s I discovered New Age shops and Witchy shops where I might buy a different deck. But even then the only other decks were Thoth, TdM, or Morgan Greer.

 

How times have changed!

Edited December 17, 2022 by Misterei

[Misterei]

5 hours ago, Mister said:

Here it was (oh lord, quelle surprise!) a TdM rework, in the fashion of church windows, albeit very colorful ones …

The first card drawn was the nameless one, XIII.

I think I’ve seen pictures of the deck on this forum. It’s German??? 

Anyhow … card XIII seems quite prescient. Your old view of life will never be the same now that TAROT is here };>

[fire cat pickles]

On 12/15/2022 at 7:45 AM, Aliki said:

Which one was your very first type of deck you used tarot, oracle, cartomancy, lenormand etc?

My first deck was the Dali Deck I bought for $88 in 1988 (easy to remember). I couldn't read with the minors so I read with the Majors only for quite a few years. (If you've ever seen the deck you can tell why.) The minors are a mess. Reading up on the Dali, apparently he may not have even created the minors anyway. The jury's still out on whether he even painted the Majors. My second deck was an RWS that my second partner's sister gave me. She had removed the Devil card, which is "standard" practice for some Costa Rican households I guess, at least that's what she told me. I think their mother made her get rid of it and maybe made up this part about the Devil card, not sure. It was all so dramatic when she gave me the deck. I still love it. I wrote (yes, actually sent a regular letter) to US Games for a replacement card and they sent me a Devil card. The only other replacement card for this deck is the 6 of Cups, which I lost a few years later. Other than these two, all the cards are original. I don't know how old this deck is, but she is about ten years older than me and I estimate that she got it when she was 15 maybe? So it's probably 45 years old.

 

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by fire cat pickles

[Aliki]

39 minutes ago, fire cat pickles said:

My first deck was the Dali Deck I bought for $88 in 1988 (easy to remember). I couldn't read with the minors so I read with the Majors only for quite a few years. (If you've ever seen the deck you can tell why.) The minors are a mess. Reading up on the Dali, apparently he may not have even created the minors anyway. The jury's still out on whether he even painted the Majors. My second deck was an RWS that my second partner's sister gave me. She had removed the Devil card, which is "standard" practice for some Costa Rican households I guess, at least that's what she told me. I think their mother made her get rid of it and maybe made up this part about the Devil card, not sure. It was all so dramatic when she gave me the deck. I still love it. I wrote (yes, actually sent a regular letter) to US Games for a replacement card and they sent me a Devil card. The only other replacement card for this deck is the 6 of Cups, which I lost a few years later. Other than these two, all the cards are original. I don't know how old this deck is, but she is about ten years older than me and I estimate that she got it when she was 15 maybe? So it's probably 45 years old.

 

 

Yeah the dali one is quite particular i still can't decide if i love this deck or if my liking is somewhere in the middle about it

[Mister]

1 hour ago, Misterei said:

I think I’ve seen pictures of the deck on this forum. It’s German???

Where? Please do tell.

I did look, and did not find it a-ny-where.

The booklet attached certainly was german. The wooden box looked like something my mother would like, I do doubt that the deck was sold therein.

 

42 minutes ago, fire cat pickles said:

I couldn't read with the minors so I read with the Majors only for quite a few years. (If you've ever seen the deck you can tell why.)

I saw the deck.

'tis a mess for me.

Congratulations on sticking with tarot!

[Teemu]

My first deck is/was the standras RWS print here in Germany, where you cannot tell the difference between red and violet.

[Guest]

On 12/16/2022 at 1:36 PM, Misterei said:

My dad gave me my first tarot cards when I was 14-15. Somehow he knew it would be a lifelong thing for me. It was that plaid-back RWS that was the ONLY deck in the bad old days before the digital revolution };>

 

Tbh I sorta made my mom give it to me. It just popped out of the blue in this staid, family-friendly bookstore we always frequented. Finally mustered the courage to ask my mom after eyeing it for quite some time. I knew card readings fascinated her so it wasn't difficult to persuade her. That said, I did have to return the favor with a few readings, which always made me very nervous!

[PathWalker]

My first deck was the 1JJ Swiss (a Marseille type tarot) followed very quickly by the Cloisters - a RWS type.

I don't really read (well) with any other type of card apart from tarot.

 

Edited December 18, 2022 by PathWalker

[Aliki]

3 hours ago, PathWalker said:

My first deck was the 1JJ Swiss (a Marseille type tarot) followed very quickly by the Cloisters - a RWS type.

I don't really read (well) with any other type of card apart from tarot.

 

Such a beautiful deck this is and a classic to my opinion 

[Aliki]

8 hours ago, Akhilleus said:

 

Tbh I sorta made my mom give it to me. It just popped out of the blue in this staid, family-friendly bookstore we always frequented. Finally mustered the courage to ask my mom after eyeing it for quite some time. I knew card readings fascinated her so it wasn't difficult to persuade her. That said, I did have to return the favor with a few readings, which always made me very nervous!

Oh my i can relate i was always nervous on my first readings on others 😅