I just ordered my third Universal Waite
deck. I seem to have trouble keeping this deck in my collection because I go through moods with it. Sometimes I love the artwork and sometimes it puts me off. But it is considered by some “the standard” when it comes to Tarot and I feel it’s important to have in my collection. However, I get in one of my “cleaning house” moods and everything goes that I’m not currently using. I’ve actually sold a lot of my decks for that reason. But as I keep ordering this one, I think I’ll keep this deck. Obviously I do need it.
Some decks I outgrew. For a while I really loved the Osho Zen Deck. I still think the artwork is lovely, and individual cards can be used for meditation. However as a Tarot deck it did not work for me. Plus upon learning who Osho was, I became uncomfortable with the source of the deck’s inspiration. It’s a personal decision, of course. But it tainted my feelings about the deck, and made it unusable for me. That one has since been passed on to someone who may appreciate better than I.
My current favorite for personal use is the Fey Tarot. When I first bought this deck, I thought it was incredibly cute and I loved contemplating the images. But as I became more acquainted with it, I began to see past the initial “cuteness” to deeper levels of meaning, and many different voices. This is the one deck that truly speaks to me – to my heart – and I have been using it almost exclusively for my personal readings.
I’ve been using the Gilded Tarot featuring the stunning artwork of Ciro Marchetti for readings for other people. I love the art, but this deck does not speak to me personally at all. But as my style of reading incorporates the client’s responses to imagery more than my own, we work together to find the meaning that speaks to the client. These cards are quite useful for me in that way.
I recently received the delightful Bohemian Cats Tarot as a gift and I adore it. The deck is not sturdy enough for regular use in spreads, but I will sometimes take it out and gently mix the cards and pull one for myself. The book is a pleasure to read, as it describes each image in detail, which cat photo was used, and gives a background of the architecture and artwork of Prague, from where the background images were taken.
Two others that I use occasionally are the Tarot of the Cat People – because of my love for cats, and Hudes Tarot – because the artwork is quite lovely.
I’ve had other decks that have moved on to other households, and there are many, many that I still wish to acquire. I think it may be a form of addiction, as I know some people who two or three hundred decks in their collections. I really would like to keep it under a hundred myself. So I will likely continue weeding them out occasionally. But these decks will likely always form my core collection with a handful more that I still need to purchase – ones that I think are likely to be “keepers”.
