If you could start over

[Scandinavianhermit]

I'm still very grateful for the 36 and 52 playingcard reading methods I learned from my aunt and an elderly lady in the village where I grew up.

 

I'm slightly irritated on RWS. Waite's best books have mysticism and alchemy as subjects. His verbose and incoherent Pictorial Key isn't one of them. Tarot books when I was a teenager were illustrated with the 1JJ Swiss and the RWS, so we were fooled into thinking, that these two decks were the obvious choices for beginners. If Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot, CBD Marseille and reasonably affordable reproductions of Wirth's 22 trumps had been available back then, I wish I had bought those three immediately, instead of spending money on decks I felt uncomfortable with. The garish colours of Grimaud's Marseilles deck from 1969 on drove me away from Marseille style decks for quite some time, and CBD was something of a revelation (and also revealing that Paul Marteau wasn't infallible when it comes to colour schemes). Likewise, Paul Huson fused trumps, in the Milanese order, with pips following Etteilla's keywords: Exactly what I had been looking for in vain for so many years. If someone, beginner or not, isn't an aficionado of Golden Dawn style magic, RWS and Crowley's Thoth aren't suitable. I don't have to delve into two doorstops by Israel Regardie in order to use tarot cards! I'm sure RWS and Thoth are excellent, if you are an Anglo ceremonial magician, but not all tarot readers are. 

Edited July 22, 2024 by Scandinavianhermit
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[RickInBakersfield]

Hmm, if I had to start over again...ok.

 

~ I would buy all of Mary K. Greer's books

~ I would buy and use the book Pictures from The Heart: A Tarot Dictionary by Sandra A. Thomson.

~ I would read more people I don't know than people I do know.

~ I would still use an RWS deck.