Veronica, sorry I didn't see this sooner. I hope you're all sorted out now. Yes, in short, the ODW used the International Icon Tarot or a TdM (I think), and the focus was not study but reading, reading for others and getting waaaaay out of your comfort zone. In a way, the IDS is about delving deeper into your comfort zone, until you find the floor of it and keep digging. It's a way to knuckle down and get what you want out of the deck you choose.
Onyx said:
I got them confused because I thought that the IDS meant to be exclusive to only one deck. I don't think I can keep that promise but it seems that there can be provisions made. Some are using oracles decks and I think that I might just use the deck I choose for the IDS for personal reading and use my normal reading decks for those. I might even think of just using one single reading deck. I worry that I will get bored.
It
does mean to be exclusive to only one deck. One
Tarot deck, yes, but it seems to me that the people who forswore Oracles as well as other Tarot are the ones getting the most out of the exercise.
To use the IDS deck only for one type of readings while reading with other ones as well really is defeating the purpose, which was (originally) to omit distractions and confusion arising from differing imagery, to challenge oneself to summon the discipline and willpower required to resist the temptation to take the easy way out.
When your IDS deck doesn't speak to you, two or three weeks into the IDS, it's about working through that blockage. This is when people who aren't doing the IDS stop using the deck that's been good for them for a few weeks, and move onto another. I wanted to stop taking that easy way out. So I
made myself move through it. It involved "breaking" one of my smaller rules (to handle or read with my deck every day), but in the end I came back to my deck and we've come along in leaps and bounds.
\m/ Kat
