How do you Shuffle?

I'm wondering how you lot shuffle your cards. I was reading Rachel Pollack's Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom and she describe a way of spreading out the cards and then putting them back together. I on the other hand (used to) shuffle as in a normal deck of cards.

What other ways are there?

Hey Kenny

Haven't seen you here in a while, how you doin?

Anyway, regarding your query... both ways you mentioned are perfectly fine. It's just a matter of preference. These little rituals like shuffling, cleansing, meditating etc. with the cards are only done in order to create a bond with the deck of cards. They aren't set in stone rules about such things... just as long as you don't tear the cards up in the process

The method that you mentioned about spreading out the cards and putting them back together is quite good if you're working with reversals. But remember, only do whatever you feel comfortable doing


I do both, depending on my mood.

Hope this helps

Love and blessings

I like to deal the cards out into seven piles and then take one of them and deal it onto the remaining six piles and so forth. This is meditative and helps get the mind ready for reading.

This is this is a great method for use with oversized or fragile cards but I enjoy it so much that it has become my usual shuffling method.

--Myrrha

I shuffle

Every once in a while I deal out the cards in 6 piles
one card to each pile. 13 cards to a pile equals 78.
I do this in a relaxed, happy way~ for the fun of it.

Then I pick them up and, as Umbrae says, shuffle.

The 78 DOW was one of the first tarot books I read and it is a good one.

My usual way of shuffling is to do the simple lift/fall type of shuffling, and sometimes when I feel it's important to do so, I knock on the deck 3x, shuffle once more, then draw my spread. I do this to infuse my cards with special energy and give the reading a more serious tone.

It depends on the deck- mostly on the card stock. Plastic coated cards get treated as if they were plastic coated playing cards (casino style shuffle). Cards that aren't plastic coated get mixed in ways that are more friendly to the fragile nature of these cards.

Umbrae said:

I shuffle

Click to expand...

Ditto. Fancy that.

Just riffling, even for three or more times, cards near the top tend to stay near the top and cards near the bottom tend to stay near the bottom. This would be true for anyone, at least for the 2 cards at the very top and very bottom. I wanted to present this with clever little graphics but I think you know what I mean. So in addition to riffles I cut the deck, at least after riffling or sometimes into three stacks and riffle some more.

I riffle shuffle, and also cut the deck into four piles. As i don't read for myself I let the querent choose which pile i will read from.