Large Tarot Deck

Hi there,
Just thought I would put this out there and see what others thought.. I bought myself a Thoth Tarot Deck (I had it in the past, but due to it being my first deck, I got frustrated with it, and gave it away a couple of years ago).. The deck that I bought today is very large.. do any of you have large cards? If so, do you use them in readings and how do you go about shuffling them?
Thank you

I have a deck that's something like 3.5 x 6.5 inches, WAY too big to shuffle in the normal (riffle) manner. I riffle shuffle them crosswise (in other words, holding the two stacks so that my hands span the short dimension rather than the long one), and it works okay... but these cards are VERY sturdy. I wouldn't try it with a lighter cardstock. The only other way to manage these monsters is to sorta toss them lightly into the air, so that they fall every which way on the table, and then swirl them around, and repeat several times. Just swirling them without the "tossing" doesn't do much to mix them up, in my experience anyhow.

ETA: I see people here talking about "push-pull"--what does that look like, exactly?

annabel398 said:

I have a deck that's something like 3.5 x 6.5 inches, WAY too big to shuffle in the normal (riffle) manner. I riffle shuffle them crosswise (in other words, holding the two stacks so that my hands span the short dimension rather than the long one), and it works okay... but these cards are VERY sturdy. I wouldn't try it with a lighter cardstock. The only other way to manage these monsters is to sorta toss them lightly into the air, so that they fall every which way on the table, and then swirl them around, and repeat several times. Just swirling them without the "tossing" doesn't do much to mix them up, in my experience anyhow.

ETA: I see people here talking about "push-pull"--what does that look like, exactly?

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I know what you mean! The deck I got is about 5.5x 3.5 or so.. It's a little on the big side for me! lol. The cardstock for this one is not as sturdy as my RWS, so I am not sure that I would be comfortable riffle shuffling them (although I love that method! lol).. I think you're right though... I do the swirling around sometimes with my other decks, so that may be my only option here... so adding the tossing is a great suggestion!
I think the push-pull is when you split the deck in two, then push them together? Not sure though,lol

oh yes, I love my large deck, makes an impression and I can see them clearly without my readers...

Hi, gypsylady... I actually bought myself the large Thoth deck after getting my first reading in many years from a professional reader a couple of months ago -- she used that deck, and I was very impressed with it! I feel like I want to learn the deck, and Crowley in general, although I'm finding it to be no easy task to get familiar and comfortable with any of it (RWS and RWS-derived decks are coming to me infinitely more easily!).

I do enjoy shuffling that large deck, though -- I do it the way a dealer in Vegas would. It's actually my only deck I'll really do that with regularly, because, as annabel398 said, the cards are sturdy enough to take whatever I'm dishing out (I'll shuffle Deviant Moon like that every once in a while, too, as those cards are also a little bigger than the average, and pretty hardy). Also, my hands are big enough that when I'm properly warmed up and stretched out, I can palm a basketball, so the large Thoth cards aren't so big for me that I can't manage them. I recently saw a version of RWS, though, that was so big, the cards looked like restaurant menus...good luck trying to shuffle those beasts!

I have a Druidcraft (and Thoth) which is very large. You can shuffle by fanning out the cards and randomly picking them for your spread. I also hold the deck in one hand and pick up and slot the cards back in as a way of shuffling.

I have one the large vintage Thoth decks - which I believe is the same size as the ones being put out today. I mostly do hand over hand shuffling, doing it vertically with bigger decks - but I also do a sort of riffle, one that doesn't involve any bending of the cards. I just hold them in the same way that you would before riffling, but instead of forcing them into the shuffle, I just let the cards slowly drop into place....then instead of doing the bridge to make the deck one again, I slowly, carefully push the halves of the deck back into each other...hard to explain, I see now! This works better with some decks than with others, often bigger chunks of layers fall - and I need to do it a few more times to get a good shuffle. But it usually works very well with the large Thoth.

Oh, and for my riffle style, with the bigger decks, I hold the cards vertically, so that the long sides are facing each other before starting, not the tops.

Did this make ANY sense???!!?

frac_ture said:

I recently saw a version of RWS, though, that was so big, the cards looked like restaurant menus...good luck trying to shuffle those beasts!

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Those are giant RWS usually used for study or teaching

PAMUYA said:

oh yes, I love my large deck, makes an impression and I can see them clearly without my readers...

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That's exactly what I thought.. that it would make an impression! I don't mind the size at all, just struggling with the shuffling, lol

caridwen said:

Those are giant RWS usually used for study or teaching

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I could see that -- they'd probably be visible all the way at the back of a classroom...or lecture hall...