Programming a tarot deck

This was inspired by the "Can Tarot Predict the Future" poll.

I voted yes, but the caveat being that it is a tool and point of focus and reference for the reader.

Now, I have a caveat to my caveat.

People discuss putting energy into objects all the time, to program crystals, or other objects...create talismans....send energy to a given person to heal or aid them during a crisis.

People discuss purifying decks that have had a previous user.

With those ideas in mind, do you believe that your intent creates energy within the deck, that makes it more suited to a particular purpose? Does that energy carry over when the deck is given to someone else? You either consciously or just by virtue of the way you use the deck perhaps imbue it with a particular energy....the receiver might not be as intent on using it in the same way, might not believe or care so much, might even be a bit afraid of the notion that the cards could work this way. But they give it a try, and the powerful energies the previous user put into the deck make it WORK far better than a deck bought new.

Perhaps this is another factor in the notion that your first deck should be a gift....supposing a deck was handed down over generations, the energy of use would build....

Haunted deck? Maybe just programmed very well, intentionally or not.

Just suggesting possibilities and wanting to hear other people's thoughts. Like I say, on the whole I'm of the "It's just a tool" mindset, but I'm open to other possibilities and am curious.

Yote

I was thinking the same thing. That inheriting a deck would be better. The wisdom and knowledge may be passed down. At the very least you have a tutor to turn to. I hope to hand down one of my decks. I may not be able to part with any.. haha.

From an odd angle, this looks like a great story plot!

1. Person's energy can be passed to an OBJECT
2. Energize OBJECT wih imprinting (programming)
3. OBJECT has to be purified (reprogrammed) to remove prior imprint if imprint is evil...or...
4. OBJECT has to be destroyed if imprint turned evil cannot be removed...

I know we're talking tarot decks, not stories, but part of the fun of this imagined tale/idea is I thought of this like a story in a Tolkien universe...Bear with me for a short digression...in the extreme, substitute the idea of a deck for say, a ring...

The Hobbit carried a beautiful object (ring) that had an evil originator. The evil originator's is imprinted in the ring. The power destroyed even the best recipient over time, aside from Tom Bombadil (who was outside of time and Middle Earth in some ways). After a few thousand years, the Wise determinded that the beautiful object had to be destroyed.

Short of a magic ring, I think that energy of something such as a tarot deck in a shared reading experience...depends on the hands of the reader that holds them and also the belief and interplay between reader and querent. I think that the 'energy' that comes to play is how both people choose to handle their beliefs, emotions and associative memory with the reading and images.

I have an old deck or two, many used decks of more recent age...none of them have been programmed by previous owners to tell a different kind of fortune. Sometimes a nostalgic or wistful or lovely mood alights in a shared reading...usually after my own clearing of my mind and grounding myself so I am more open to reading with the decks in an open mood.

I'm not saying that inherited decks do not affect sensitive people--I'm just saying the 'haunting' hasn't happened to me really. What has happened is a special, kindly mood or fellowship or feeling comes through sometimes with different friends as we look at different perspectives...and sometimes the ideas are feeling initially startling, as if predictive---but mostly it turns out there is some page of self-knowledge that already had started to turn. In hindsight, the querent sometimes says the reading was just a bookmark to a page that the querent was beginning to open. They had not quite realized they were already there.

I hope that makes sense...may edit later.

Cerulean

SphinYote said:

People discuss purifying decks that have had a previous user.

Click to expand...

<shrug> If a deck feels disgusting, maybe. If it feels like a working-tool, then no - you just get a head-start. Qujestion: if a deck feels disgusting, why are you buying or allowing yourself to be given it, anyway?

SphinYote said:

With those ideas in mind, do you believe that your intent creates energy within the deck, that makes it more suited to a particular purpose?

Click to expand...

Hell, yeah. All my decks read in pretty much my way, and I know I read two Major Arcana cards differently to most people (and no, I'm not telling). Oh, and my Bologna, it doesn't read at all. But when I can't arrive at timings during a reading and a client really, really wants a time, I get them to briefly shuffle the deck and cut it. The card it cuts at (the bottom card of the top half of the deck) is the timing. One of the suits is years, one is months, one is weeks, one is days. Pip cards are as numbered, pages through to kings are eleven to fourteen. This gives you just a little overlap here and there. If it cuts at a Major Arcana card, it indicates that even Themselves don't know when this will likely happen, the lesson or point of hte Major Arcana card has to be addressed and dealt with by the querent before the other thing can come to pass, so it is down to how much work they want to do in their life.

The Bologna is kick-arse at timings like this. From memory (and I have to think back a while!) it only took me a few weeks to train it out of wanting to read and into wanting to give accurate timings.

SphinYote said:

Does that energy carry over when the deck is given to someone else?

Click to expand...

Hell, no. I always train up decks. Of course, some are faster learners than others. Most I buy new, but I have a few hand-me-downs, some found in second hand shops, others passed on by friends.

SphinYote said:

You either consciously or just by virtue of the way you use the deck perhaps imbue it with a particular energy....the receiver might not be as intent on using it in the same way, might not believe or care so much, might even be a bit afraid of the notion that the cards could work this way. But they give it a try, and the powerful energies the previous user put into the deck make it WORK far better than a deck bought new.

Click to expand...

I have a copy of the Brueghel deck at the moment that was given to me fairly recently by an internet Tarot-friend when she found out I was looking for it - she didn't really connect with it all that well, and I was able to offer her a deck she wanted that I didn't really connect with in exchange.

Although I'd never met her, much less hugged her or even shaken hands with her, as soon as I opened the package I could feel her on the cards. I shuffled them and used them, and it didn't affect how they worked at all, just that they felt like her rather than feeling like me for a while. Now they feel neutral like most of my other decks, which I suppose simply means that if anyone else picked them up they would feel like me. they don't read any differently - better or worse - now that htey feel like me instead of like her.

SphinYote said:

Perhaps this is another factor in the notion that your first deck should be a gift....

Click to expand...

This is something I've always hotly debated. If a friend chooses a deck for you, all they can choose is a deck that appeals to *them*, and that can connect to *them*. Case in point: my friend MW, interested in Tarot, got herself a "brightly coloured" deck (I found out later it was the Morgan-Greer) years ago, then refused to work with it because she read somewhere or was told that you should only use a deck that was a gift. So she took years to work up the courage to ask a particular friend of hers to buy her a Tarot deck. That friend bought her a Rider-Waite. MW instantly didn't connect with it. She also gave the Morgan-Greer to that friend who gave her the RW as a return-present, and her friend didn't connect with the Morgan-Greer. This all happened years ago. We started talking Tarot again recently, and my friend told me what had happened. So I had a copy of the Morgan-greer that I wasn't using, and I immediately gave it to her. (and gave her a spare copy of the RW to pass onto her other friend). both of them instantly connected with the decks, because they were decks that THEY had chosen based on their own tastes and preferences. Neither of them connected with decks that the other one had chosen based on the other one's tastes and preferences. you should choose your own decks. Every so often someone will get it very right when they choose a deck for you, but usually they won't.