HOW/WHY did you start with tarot ?

Hello,

when did you first start with Tarot and why ?
For me it was about a year ago when I was 28.
I knew of Tarot's existence for quite some time indeed, I have just felt like I needed to give it a go myself.
I went for a Yoga retreat and the Yoga teacher owned the Osho Zen Tarot.
He let me borrow it and I found it fascinating.

I then went and bought the Osho pocket version (that has only the major arcana cards).
Not long after that I bought Osho complete tarot.

That was in a big bookshop in Prague and they had a big selection of tarots.
I started being interested.
I started looking for more info on the net, found this forum for example.
A friend of mine gave me a book called Living Tarot for my BDAY. That was a fascinating read, but a bit heavy for a begineer as it has strong connections to Kabala.

From there on it was a steep learning curve, fascination with the subject and now I own several decks and oracle cards (as can be seen in my profile).

How did it all start for you ?

Is it the book by Amber Jayanti? That was my first book, too. And it was pretty deep for a beginner and it had nothing to do with my deck. But you never forget your first Tarot book, or your first deck.

I started learning Tarot when my oldest son was a baby and I was bored out of my mind at home all day. I've had a lifelong interest in all things "occult". My mom's an astrologer, my husband has been using runes since he was a teenager, and it was really a natural thing for me to get into.

Well - Amber Jayanti also wrote Tarot for Dummies - and you know what ? It's not half bad !

My saga is here on the forum somewhere............. there are other threads !

I began at the age of thirteen, when I was interested in magic and things like that. In retrospect it seems to me that I started for superficial reasons, since I didn;t know what I was getting into at the time. My first deck the Oswald Wirth, the "bad" version by U.S. Games. I bout it beacuse I didn't know what I was buying at the time, and I thought that all the decks were the same! My first book was "Step by Step Tarot" by Terry Donaldsen, a great book that I would reccomend for any beginner, since it puts great emphasis on personal interpretation of the cards and working with them to improve your intuition and imagination.

Anyway, as I didn't get a long with the deck that I had, I more or less left Tarot for a while, and then I got the RWS. Then I began to learn in earnest, but I still couldn't get the hang of it. It was only when I got my Morgan-Greer, which is still one of my favorite decks, that I began to "get it." And the rest is history.

However, I still felt rather isolated in my Tarot journey until I found Aeclectic... and then... well... then

I began when I was 22, during a phase where I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the assorted spiritual beliefs of different people -- world religions, folktales, that kind of thing. So I picked up a Tarot deck as part of that journey, and things fell into place from there.

Deana said:

Is it the book by Amber Jayanti? That was my first book, too. And it was pretty deep for a beginner and it had nothing to do with my deck. But you never forget your first Tarot book, or your first deck.

I started learning Tarot when my oldest son was a baby and I was bored out of my mind at home all day. I've had a lifelong interest in all things "occult". My mom's an astrologer, my husband has been using runes since he was a teenager, and it was really a natural thing for me to get into.

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Hello Deana,

yes it was the book by Amber Jayanti.
I really liked the book and I think it is almost out of this world knowledge
I think Amber did a wonderful job and the book is genuine. It feels as if the author is talking to you, did you feel that way too ?
But I had to give it away because it really was a tad heavy for me.
I lack any knowledge of Kabalah, and without a live person teacher I dont feel like taking this path by myself.

Wow, your family sure sounds interesting !

Kat

For me it was in July 2004 at the age of 20

In July 2004 my hotel manager took me to see a psychic.

She claimed to do runes and be psychic. She took me to have my cards done. I had this recorded and the outcome was most accurate. I didn't prompt her at all. She knew things that went on to happen.

I became curious about how it all worked and started surfing the web trying to figure things out. I came across a site fortunes now where i started to get readings done as it was free.

I invested in my own tarot cards in an attempt to figure out why she knew these things and how it worked.

I then spent two years trying to figure out my life and reading for other people. I wasn't very intuative with the cards, but was highly intuative when i closed my eyes and focused on the person it concerned!

However i was great at divination remote viewing. I could close my eyes and answer someones question in my minds eye. I could see a senerio play out in my head and when i presented this in writing to someone they were facinated by how accurate i was.

To be honest so was i???How were theses images in my head, just like day dreaming fit into someone elses reality. How could i describe someones house, someone's looks and charactor and know things that had happened in the past.

This went on to become my way into mediumship because i realised that sometimes i would tell people about dead people, people who had once been apart of there lives, i didn't know this at first, but i was seeing someones life gone by.

In september 2004 i became pregnant and went through an abortion because my boyfriend said he would kill himself if i didn't. Maybe then the woman who did my cards and read my palm, saw my body language and new from subtle energies that i was in my prime to become pregnant. The woman who did my reading new that i had and was going to go through alot of pain. She told me things too about my current situation that she could not have possibly have known. I do believe that we have the ability to see the future based on present indicators, it is not neccesarily steadfast and reliable though.

By November 2005 i was working in a local shop with a woman called lynn who was a tarot reader, she brought out the best in my tarot reading. She showed me how to be more intuative about the cards. I've always been able to tell the reader what is going to happen via divination or remote viewing, but trusting the cards, without the book is something that happened later.

I went into learn about mediumship and went to tarot classes online and did meditations that brought the cards to life. I now use them with accuracy when i don't censor what they are telling me for a more soft meaning. When i let the cards tell me instead of taking the meaning i would like from the cards, i can be highly accurate.

Since getting into tarot, i have bought multiple decks, many books, been on many websites and done many readings. I still after all this time doubt myself, perhaps more than i used to when i was just beginning and was experiencing many successes in doing readings for others online.

I'm getting more into tarot again now. I did have a break from it as it was so draining and not very productive in my life. I always come back to it when i need to get back on the right path and it always guides me with accuracy.

Thanks for reading,
Love

Janey xx

I got started with tarot in my teens... guessing maybe 16 or 17ish. I saw some cards at a local store. I thought they were all way too ugly except the Sacred Rose. The box showed the pretty backs of them (not the fronts.) That is what sold them on me. I just loved the backs. I was so disappointed when I got them home and saw their fronts. Since I didn't have much money at the time and no internet etc I tried very hard to learn from them anyway. I got so I could read the majors pretty well. I never really clicked with the rest though. On a more positive note I did have some nice meditations just staring at the backs of them. The colors and back design triggered a lot in me. I still feel they were less ugly than the other choices available to me at the time so I considered them "better than nothing."

Nininka said:

But I had to give it away because it really was a tad heavy for me.

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That's funny! Funny because I got rid of the book. Then, a few years later, I searched used bookstores for it again, and even got the B.O.T.A. deck to color myself. Then...I got rid of it again. And now I've been eyeing it again in a used bookstore (heck, it's probably my own copy!). It's a very good book, as you said, very genuine. But it has so very much information that my brain starts feeling like I'll never learn it all and I give up on it.

I'm not sure whether my family's interesting, but I grew up around my mom's astrology so that sort of thing just seems natural. When I was a teenager, I used to do "compatability charts" for my friends and their boyfriends and I thought it was the most fun in the world. When I met the man who is now my husband, I did his chart and knew I'd marry him. I don't do astrology anymore, but I was never much of an astrologer anyway.

My mom also taught me some simple spells when I was growing up but she does not use the "W" word and it was all very hush-hush. She learned from her grandmother, whom she always speaks about in very hushed tones. I know there's a story there, but I don't think I'm every going to hear the whole story.

My husband...well, he is the only person in his family interested in the occult at all. When we were dating, I told him I was Methodist and he told me he was Presbyterian. Then after we got married, I was like, "Oh, by the way, I also do this-that-and-the-other occult stuff" and as it turns out, so did he. Which is a weird thing that could have gone very badly but somehow turned out nicely. Life is strange, I guess.

SkyDancer1111 said:

On a more positive note I did have some nice meditations just staring at the backs of them. The colors and back design triggered a lot in me.

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That actually sounds very intriguing. I think I'm going to try that tonight if my kids every go to sleep. I hadn't thought of meditating on the backs, but now I'm excited by the idea. I could shuffle, lay out a spread, and then never even turn them over. There are definitely some decks with meditation-worthy backs.