DO YOU remember the moment you became interested in Tarot?

[chongjasmine]

For me, it is when I took a look at the rider waite tarot.

That fascinated me and made me became interested in tarot.

[EmpyreanKnight]

Nope. But I remember that I saw it on TV and movies quite a few times since I was a kid, when their mystique and hidden powers really captivated me. It has always seemed to me that the ability to see the future seems much more far out than any mutant power.

[chongjasmine]

Nope. But I remember that I saw it on TV and movies quite a few times since I was a kid, when their mystique and hidden powers really captivated me. It has always seemed to me that the ability to see the future seems much more far out than any mutant power.

 

The shows creek me up. They often portray tarot as something evil.

[Trogon]

It occurred in two stages for me. I recall my mother buying the Albano Waite when I was in ... probably jr. high? So, probably back in the late '60's. I was interested in it and would look through the deck and the LWB when I got the chance. (My mother gave me her deck several years ago now, but it is not well made, and one of the cards split when I was trying to shuffle it.) That kind of gave me my first taste. I was also learning to use a pendulum at the time - one my brother had bought, then left behind when he joined the Navy.

 

Now we jump forward some years to about 1992. A new person had moved into the house next door - she was very outgoing (much more so than my wife or I were back then) and after she had gotten settled in, she invited us over for dinner. I noticed, as she was showing us around the place, that she had a framed, hand-drawn/painted Tarot card on the wall (much larger than a regular card - it was a gift from a friend). And now that I put my mind to it, I think it might have been The Sun. I asked about it (I recognized it because of my previous exposures to Tarot) and that got us started. I bought my first deck shortly after that and have been travelling along this path ever since.

[Ace]

I played with a Friend's IIJ Swiss deck in college (back in the stone age, early 70's) we were just using the Major arcana and a book or the LWB, and I scared myself so badly I gave it all up: tarot, hunches that were true, all of it. 12 years later in late 1986 a friend showed up at a party and pulled out a RWS deck. I remembered again how much FUN the tarot was and resolved that night to take a class and learn about it again.  The rest is history. But that was the turning point of my life.

 

barb

[EmpyreanKnight]

Nope. But I remember that I saw it on TV and movies quite a few times since I was a kid, when their mystique and hidden powers really captivated me. It has always seemed to me that the ability to see the future seems much more far out than any mutant power.

 

The shows creek me up. They often portray tarot as something evil.

 

Lol not always tho. I remember that some shows (even cartoons) pegged them as helpful.

[Libra 58]

YES! :) That was when I saw the James Bond movie "Live and let die" for the first time with Jane Seymour!

[Ephemeridae]

When I played this room escape game: http://www.rustylake.com/adventure-games/rusty-lake-roots.html

 

One of the puzzles is a "who is lying" type where you have to match up the characters with a tarot card, and another one is a symbol matching game where you match runic figures in the room to the cards. The imagery really pulled me in and so I got sucked into a google rabbit-hole of tarot and found myself buying a deck on a whim and the rest is history.

 

The entire series is excellent and the earlier games are free. This is the first one if anyone wants to give it a shot :)

 

http://www.rustylake.com/room-escape-games/cube-escape-seasons.html

 

[Little Fang]

I watched Cardcaptors as a child back when it was on TV dubbed.  Sakura was using her Clow cards as a divination tool.

I think that was the moment I started looking up these things and developing an interest!

[Maggie Gordon]

A friend of mine was getting into them, and I decided to look into them so we could talk about them. I started looking at available decks and was amazed by how many options there were! Then I started doing readings for myself and I was hooked!

[~D~]

When I was about 7..My Mom and Dad had a cool friend that read cards and had a crystal ball, and we use to visit her for tea (She was fascinating)...I also use to love her huge junk jewellery collection...

[gregory]

I was mad at my partner. We'd been reading books about Sybil Leek and stuff and he bought a deck (University Books RWS).

 

I was cross, so I bought a different one. (1JJ from K-Mart - the only one they had.) The rest is history.

[gregory]

I played with a Friend's IIJ Swiss deck in college (back in the stone age, early 70's) we were just using the Major arcana and a book or the LWB, and I scared myself so badly I gave it all up: tarot, hunches that were true, all of it. 12 years later in late 1986 a friend showed up at a party and pulled out a RWS deck. I remembered again how much FUN the tarot was and resolved that night to take a class and learn about it again.  The rest is history. But that was the turning point of my life.

 

barb

Oh Lord - that too. A few years later (we are talking late 70s) I got my own RWS and a happy go lucky friend demanded a reading and I said I didn't DO that - but she begged and said it would all be fun and the rest. So we did a Celtic Cross (that was what the book said to do...) and crawled around on the floor: This card placed here means that, and that card there... and on page 79 it says that if that one is next to...

 

She went home in floods of tears because it hit home so hard - and I didn't read again for over 30 years.

[Lantana]

I feel like I’ve talked about my moment so much, but...

 

I came across a writer who would talk about using it to explore and help recover from their trauma. Since I was a recent abuse survivor with no access to healthcare at the time, and also slowly dabbling in that sort of magic/metaphysical/etc stuff, it piqued by interest. I bought a copy of the RWS at a local store and that was that.

[Carlo]

Reading Piers Anthony's Tarot series (God of Tarot, Vision of Tarot, Faith of Tarot).  You can find a description on Goodreads.

 

The first two books pack a real punch - no-holds-barred, make you think.  I personally found the third one didn't quite measure up to the expectations raised in the others (a la the Matrix series), but c'est la vie.  Ties in with his Cluster series but is independent.

[fractalgranny]

I often scratch my head about that one.  In the early 90s in university I had to do a small research project in psychology.  I was very busy so needed to do something that would integrate into my life as seamlessly as possible.  I naturally gravitated towards a project where I investigated where tarot cards could incubate my dreams.  Can't for the life of me remember why that was so easy and natural, other than the fact that my grandmother "read the cards" to the rich farmers' wives in Germany when I was little, to keep her family above water not too long after the war.  The deck I used was the Native American deck, and I can't remember where or why I got it; I had it by the time I did that project.  From then on it was really gradual until about 6 or 7 years ago, I got the Crow's Magick and suddenly tarot completely opened up for me.

[Alta]

I was living in Vancouver, my first job and thousands of kilometres away from home. I found a tarot deck and a book In a lovely little the bookstore. I also had a reading done locally which turned out to be very good.  I finally discovered the Robin Wood deck and that solidified things for me

[DanielJUK]

Loving this stories and I do remember vividly!

 

When I was 12 / 13 (this was the early 90's), I was in my local WH Smiths (stationary and book chain in the UK) and my local store used to have large book and music sections and stairs downstairs to a basement with specialist music and book genres (sadly these sections have now all gone and there is no downstairs in this store anymore). I came across the Esoteric section buried downstairs in the basement and I was always into this sort of woowoo area my whole life but I came across a "Fortune Telling Kit". It's now OOP but it was a beautiful gold cardboard box with bits that slid out and had a tarot deck (it was some sort of poker size Marseille tarot which had a black box and seemed a little generic in production), I-Ching with loads of little sticks and a red tube where you could toss coins from or use dice for dice predicting. It came with a small size but really thick book which covered almost every fortune telling method, it was wonderful! (I still have it somewhere). This was my first introduction, but the store would not sell it to me because I was under 13! (this was their store policy apparently and not law) but my parents got it for me. They didn't mind me having it and never opposed it but it wasn't their thing.

 

I didn't really know what tarot was or had heard of it before I bought that box!

 

With hindsight the included tarot deck was awful for beginners, it was way too complicated and no illustrated pips! A year later I bought a RWS deck from the same store and a larger book. The RWS deck was much easier to read.

 

I used to read tarot then by looking up the meanings. When I was about 20, I packed it all away and I am not sure why! I didn't need it anymore. When I turned 30, I had a really depressive period and I got my tarot stuff out again! I got serious about it and started to read intuitively with it and started using google to look up meanings or ideas and found ATF! It was much easier in the decade after I started when I found an online community to learn :)

[faerybraids]

Sort of, in a general sense? It wasn't so much of a specific moment for me, but rather a general accumulating of experiences that led me to it. I was definitely interested by the time Sakura used her Clow Cards for a reading in Cardcaptors on Teletoon. I was a preteen then, but any other number of shows that had featured tarot cards at some point could have helped nurture that interest. I mean, I was making potions when I was eight because I was drawn to witchcraft and magic since before I can remember, so, idk.

 

(Some of those potions had hilarious results, though looking back I'm a bit horrified at how wrong things could have gone. I'm super glad I never mixed anything to ill effect. I've also watched the original Cardcaptor Sakura series several times since those Teletoon days. Nostalgia yay!)

 

I didn't get my first deck until a while after that interest had bloomed, though--all the ones I had found in person I either wasn't interested in or was too embarrassed to buy (the shop had a rather...imposing...shop clerk there most of the time, always felt like she was judging me), so it was sometime later (I think on a road trip?) when I was a teenager that I bought one. I wish I could remember what it was called. I tried a few readings with it, never really connected to it, so I ended up forgetting about it for a bit. Ended up giving it to a friend in uni, but I never found a deck I liked well enough and could afford to replace it. After that life took over and it was only after some major shifts in uni and going travelling that I was mindlessly browsing and stumbled across another deck that drew me and rekindled my interest. I can't remember what even compelled me to start looking again more than a general feeling of 'I'mma just do this right now'...

 

I don't think the interest had ever really died, though. Just reduced to embers. I'm picky with aesthetics and the feel I get from things, and I feel like if I had tried forcing myself to like a deck I didn't fully connect with just so I could read them I might have been turned off tarot for another several years.

 

So, yeah. TL;DR The interest formed over time in my childhood and was definitively rekindled several years ago when I decided to look at decks again.

[Nivian]

I was in Barnes and Noble and was looking up psychic/dream books and saw the yellow RSW box and bought it. That was many years ago and throughout all the decks I've ever owned the original Rider Waite is still my favorite.

[Emilija]

 

 

I read several years ago and I had an impressive collection. I also had success with reading the cards intuitively. When I converted to Islam, I gave that all up.

 

Recently, I've become more interested in tarot and I've always had clairvoyant dreams. I bought the Rabbit Tarot on Etsy-- it's my only deck. I'm still trying to get this plane to take off, so to speak.

[Star83]

Yes I remember in 2005 someone told me about tarot readings. I seriously didn't even know they worked. She told me everything came true. So I saw one and everything she said came true. A year later I saw another one and everything she said came true too. So I bought my own beginners books and mythic tarot deck and evolved since then. I love the cards. They are great for understanding the different types of ppl we have in the world.

[Page of Ghosts]

Like faerybraids I can't think of one moment, it was more like a buildup. I've always had an interest in strange or metaphysical things like ghosts, magic, witches and aliens. I must have seen tarot decks in Buffy the Vampire Slayer too. My roommate had a deck of Doreen Virtues Unicorn cards and I pulled a card from it once. Some time later I was in a thrift shop and I saw that deck as well as some other ones. I chose the Roots of Asia deck since it looked a bit more mysterious to me and the colours on the box were really nice. It's not a deck I use a lot but it got me interested in learning tarot!