How I began with Tarot

[Talisman]

'Lo all,

I don't intend to unroll my mat, sit upon it, and tell a tale. I've told my beginner stories.

But I would love to listen to your tales. The very first time, the first inspiration, the first deck, the first time you pulled a sense of wonder from the box. The dreams your stuff is made from.

Perhaps there was a time when Tarot swam into your ken, occupied an idle thought in an idle moment, then passed out of mind, only to appear much later as a real very first time.

I'm not asking for much. Just the cosmic big bang that launched your Tarot universe, and that contained the inspiration for the logic, the cosmic glue, that holds it all together. The stories that begin, "Once upon a time . . ."

That's all.

Talisman

[Demonesse]

Easy.

I wasn't HOOKED - as in really hooked - until I stumbled onto this little site, better known as Aeclectic (Aeclectians, it's all YOUR fault) and feasted on the sight of exquisite tarot decks...As a result, I have now morphed into what is popularly known as a tarotgollum.

[wavebreaker]

Once upon a time ;) somebody sent me a link to the online Glastonbury Tarot (http://www.isleofavalon.co.uk/tarot/index.html) (unfortunately, I can't remember who it was that sent me this link... I'd love to thank him/her!!). I didn't know anything about tarot, but I thought it was a fun "game". Over a few weeks I did several readings online and found that they did make sense (although they were not as accurate as "real" readings, as I later found out). That got me interested, I wanted to know more about tarot.

I searched around the internet for some more background information and decided to buy the Rider-Waite deck to start with. When I got it, I remember sitting on the floor with the deck and the LWB eagerly wanting to get started and... not getting anywhere... :D

So I went back to the internet to search for more info, and found Joan Bunning's website (http://www.learntarot.com). I think I also found Aeclectic at this time, but at first I didn't see there was a forum here as well. Joan Bunning's website got me started and soon afterwards I found this forum and the rest is history... ;)

[Keslynn]

I too got hooked on online readings though I believe my usual site was www.facade.com. I thought it was fun but I started to get curious about doing it myself. So... it being in my character to follow my random whims, one day, I just felt like buying a deck. So I did. I learned using Joan Bunning's website and book (which I ordered almost the same day). The true moment when I really knew that this was something I wanted to do was when I took my brand new deck and offered to do a reading for my best friend. I had to read every single meaning out of the book, but it was DEAD ON. I was fascinated and pleased, and tarot still does that for me (30 odd decks later - lol).

:) Kes

[Joywalker]

I worked in a bookstore and it was there when I first saw the RW tarot deck.Everyday,I would walk pass that shelf, pick it up and look at it.Don't even know why.Eventually,I bought that deck and it is still with me,12 years later. :)

[MeeWah]

Mine began in a matter-of-fact way. I already had the RWS deck. The result of an impulse purchase, it was the only deck available at my then favorite bookshop, Brentano's. I was doing fine with my regular deck of playing cards & with Zolar's Astrological Fortune Telling Cards so I did not try to use it.

I turned to Tarot after my regular deck of playing cards disappeared & Zolar's cards lost their appeal. There were few Tarot books then, but I was not really looking. I came across books by Eden Gray & Arthur Waite, but they did not inspire me nor was I able to relate to the book meanings. The LWB left me cold at first glance. I decided to sit down & write my own interpretations of the Major Arcana, using numerology as a basis. The lightbulb lit, & I wrote interpretations of the rest of the cards. Since then, I have read a few books & am more appreciative of Waite's book & but I still rely on my initial reaction to a card.

[rota]

When I was a mere lad, my mom would have been considered one of those wacky moms, who read books and talked about politics and religion. She wasn't appreciated in the microscopic rural town I grew up in. An inveterate reader, she read anything that came to hand, trying to make do with the small collection in the county library. That meant a constant parade of borrowed books of every kind were on hand in the house all through my childhood. I can remember the time a Jehovah's Witness came to the door one Saturday morning and spotted on the coffeetable a book by Sybil Leek...

Anyway, when I was 11 or so, along with the books, a partial RWS deck passed through the house. Not knowing what else to do with it, I played solitaire. I was actually into dinosaurs and prehistory at the time; I thought the card pictures were kind of neat, though.

Years pass, and I'd become an adult working as an artist,studying Blavatsky, Besant and Leadbeater, and I'd become a 32nd-degree Mason, and by then I'd run across many many mentions of the Tarot in my reading. Also, I was asked by a Tarot scholar to help with the artwork of a deck he was designing.
I knew nothing about the Tarot, really, except in a vague and objective way, and I found out that even though I could draw and he could describe, I was unable to make a decent Tarot deck because I just wasn't interested.

That happened later, in my 40's. I woke up one day with the idea of getting hold of a Tarot deck and starting to learn about it. It was as simple as that. I just sat myself down for a half hour every day with books by Eden Gray or whatever I found at the local used book store, and taught myself the standard card meanings. Slowly I learned to use and interpret them in a more intuitive manner.

So, for me it was an education arrived at as an adult by conscious decision.

[Silverlotus]

My story is a bit odd. I honestly became interested in Tarot because of a video game. :-) Really, I'd pretty much always had an interest in the "occult", but playing Ultima IV was the final step. In the game, you choose what type of character you will play by answering questions. Each answer is represented by a card. My older cousin, who was living with us at the time, said they looked like Tarot cards. We got talking about Tarot, and a few days later he took me downtown (wow!) to The Occult Shoppe! (lol! The things that thrill a young girl.) There I bought my first deck, the Aquarian Tarot, and the book that went with it. I was so excited.
I can remember the cold day and the long bus ride even now. Sadly, the store closed down a few years later, my cousin moved away after finishing school, and the long bus ride became just a short part of the ride I took to university every day many years later. I still have my love of tarot though. Although there were times through high school that I thought about giving it up. Being "different" is difficult in high school, but I stuck by my religion (Wicca) and my cards during those years. I think I'm stronger for it. Tarot has had an interesting place in my life over the years, although I have come and gone from it.
Thank you for starting this thread and getting me thinking about this. :-)

Silverlotus

[anjocoxo]

Once upon a time... I remember when I was about 18 (just starting university) I saw some deck in a store and become fascinated by them... so I "convinced" my friends to buy me one deck as a birthday present. They offered me the golden rider and I studied the LWB and began to do readings in university (only with the major arcana). I went on reading them (on and off) and for the last four years I barely touched them until 2 or 3 months ago, my spiritual side come back. I started to read again, I joined aeclectic and, b/c of that I had to buy two more decks:)!

Now i'm studying the minor arcana (after all they are easier than what I've thought) and my wishlist is getting bigger by the hour...
Oh, and everyday I find a new exciting detail in my cardssss... my preciousssss....

[Diana]

edited

[ihcoyc]

When I was in middle school, it would have been the early 1970's, around when Chariots of the Gods? came out. The book fascinated me, not because I found it convincing in its argument that human civilisation was founded by ancient astronauts, but more because of its general atmosphere of mysterious ancient manuscripts, secret teachings, and mysterious symbols carved in rock in remote sites.

In the school library I found a book on alchemy. I began reading through it, learned all sorts of mysterious symbols for elements and substances, and gathered that the idea was to turn lead into gold by a process that no one dared put down in plaintext. I was eager to try and make it work, confident that with application I could learn the ancient secret.

This was the sort of thing that fascinated me, and led me down a path whereby I read books on alchemy, and branched out to the books that were next to it on the library shelves. One of these mentioned tarot cards and their use in foretelling the future.

It looked easier than astrology, which had too much math. When I found a deck of "Tarot Cards" --- the Swiss 1JJ deck --- at a local Spencer Gifts, I jumped out it. I wanted these ancient symbols to tell me my future. I got the Eden Gray book and began working with them, learning to associate the numbered cards with the Rider Waite images, and learning their meanings that way.

[WolfSpirit]

My interest with divination with cards began with my boyfriend (now ex-, this was years ago) who had a Lenormand-deck. I was fascinated by spreading cards but disappointed about how he used it: only for superficial physical things, he did not really use them in a spiritual way. So I looked for something better and found tarot, I was fascinated about the set-up of a tarot deck, but my knowledgde remained a bit theoretical and I stopped using it until this year, when I wanted to make changes in my life causing me a lot a questions I could not answer straight away.
So that brought me back to tarot, but now I decided to look for some back-up from like-minded on the web, found aeclectic, first discovered there were so many more decks than the rider-waite that triggered my imagination better, than discovered there were many people here I could learn from :)
In the last half year I just learned so much about tarot and I would spend whole days just studying tarot if I did not have other obligations.

[Logiatrix]

...a young friend of mine killed himself at the age of eighteen. that was All Saint's Day, 1999. i thought i had a good grip on the whole death thing, but this really threw me for a loop.
i turned to research for answers about "why" and so on--that's my typical reaction to stuff i don't understand. in many books about death and dying that i looked at (psychological, anthropological, etc.), the "death" card of the tarot showed up. it always illustrated the transformative aspect of death; this was an opening to the perspective that death is not really an end at all. anyway, this concept was very timely and comforting for me.
so, on one of my numerous trips to a bookstore, i bought a bargain-bin tarot deck-and-book set (that barnes & noble number with the book by sasha fenton). howevwer, i soon got tired of continually turning to the book for card meanings, so i spent that december REALLY learning tarot with a few more tarot books and the RWS deck...then the thoth deck...then the visconti deck...then...
you know how that is. :D
SO, once upon a time, tarot found me and healed me, in a manner of speaking...and it still does.

[Alex]

in a party some 9 years agol; I was impressed by her accuracy (she had just finished her 1st introductory course) and at the time I said to myself "one day I'll learn it".

So last mother's day I decided I was gonna give myself a present; so I went to the bookstore and bought my first deck.

[Talisman]

'Lo all,

Gosh, don'cha love it, hearing all these stories?

I'm guessing, 'cause I read your posts, that many of you, when you were just toddlers, alternated between begging, "Tell me a story," and demanding, "Let me tell you a story."

But, maybe I got this off to a wrong start, asking for a cosmic Tarot big bang (!) and all.

There are some more gentle stories here too. You know, sneaking up on you, like finding a starving and rain-soaked kitten mewling on your doorstep, just trying to stay warm and survive.

Talisman

[Jewel]

Wish I could find and post another thread we had on this quite a few months ago so we could post the link in this thread as well ~sighs~ ... I am so technologically challenged it even scares me!

[Teal]

I'm a newcomer to tarot, but when I saw this thread, I was surprised to realize that I really don't remember what got me started. It must have been fate, I guess. LOL I was just suddenly fascinated with tarot and it's grown from there till now I'm a very serious student. Not only that, but I'm even losing the feeling that I have to keep it secret. I'm not ready to tell my mother, mind you, but I don't feel such a need to hide my decks, either.

[RingTheory]

Well, I grew up with the tarot-one of my first memories is over my aunt and uncle arguing about what the Tower meant in some spread... I didn't get my own deck until I was nine, though...it was an IJJ Swiss, and I'd already memorized the meanings...what did shock me was the fact that some of my friends parents wouldn't let them play with me anymore after finding out we did tarot...to me, a tarot deck was like a blender, just something useful hangbing around the house....

[little]

I started because I love stories, and because I believe that stories have power- that we interpret our actions by the stories we know, and fit our lives into the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Everything, from our most solemn ceremonies to our idlest conversations, revolves around stories.

And the tarot seems to me (in my very, very extremely inexperienced state) to be a story-builder. Each card connects to a complex network of stories that have become part of our collective understanding of the way the world works, stories that are fundamental to the way we see ourselves. As the stories arrange themselves, we use them to understand ourselves.

So it was, in a way, kind of natural that, as I was building stories of my own, I would come to the tarot as an aid, and become utterly fascinated by it.

[Teranar]

As a little kid an old gypsy woman (Who did readings at the Rennasance fair by coincidence) took a liking to me and read me. I didn't try to understand what the cards ment, but it was always a peaceful feeling. About 3 years ago a friend handed me a deck, and I proceeded to try to use them. I placed some cards down and WHAM! It was like they were shouting to me, I instantly knew what they ment. It turned out the deck was really old, but I read accurately from the very beginning. With no one to really guide me I created my own spreads and made most of my readings on intuition. Since then I've basically taught myself, then whenever I joined was when I wandered in here and joined.

[lawguy51]

I've mentioned in other threads how I had a deck for years, and how a few years ago I wrote a book that had a Tarot reading character in it, so I bought some books and the Mythic deck for research purposes, but that was it. Until this summer.
I have this nice little Tarot program on my Palm Pilot. It generates a 3 card spread. I asked it a very important yes/no question. Never before had I ever gotten a "Definitely No" response, but this time I did. Only problem, my Palm froze and I could not find out what the cards meant. So I wrote down the sequence and weeks later, my friend who is a clairvoyant was over at my house and I took her downstairs and pulled out my old IJJ Swiss deck and replicated the spread and asked her what it meant. She told me but then said that she didn't like that deck, did I have another one. I pulled out the Mythic deck. She had me do some different spreads. She has always told me I had intuitive abilities. We fooled around for a while and in those few moments, I became hooked.

[Sea Sprite]

I bought a deck of Rider-Waite when I was a teenager but got freaked out by the images and packed it up and didn't get the urge to learn the tarot again until just couple months ago. This year I feel compelled to delve deeper into my inner core and discover the nature of my spiritual beliefs and the true meaning of life. I've come a very long way just this year alone. I signed up for a free tarot class at barnes and noble online and bought another deck Rider-Waite and a book on the topic. I've been hooked ever since. The tarot does not cease to amaze me. :)
I've collected more decks too; Russian of St Petersburg, Whimsical and Gendron on its way to me. :)

[Shadow Wolf]

I was raised Roman Catholic but I always had a "witchy" bent.
Of course, some would would say I was just plain "bent".
I wouldn't buy a book about Wicca, or tarot or anything like that.
Then all this disgusting nonsense started coming out about the
Catholic Church and how the priests were molesting children for
over 40 yrs. These priests weren't made to leave the priesthood
they were just transferred to new parish. I felt so betrayed,
hurt and angry. That's when I really started beginning to go my
own spiritually. That's when I bought my first Tarot deck and I
have'nt had a single twinge of guilt or regret. It was a big step
for me, I had to let go of a lot of Catholic guilt, but the church had
betrayed my trust and I couldn't, in good conscience continue to support it.

So that's my story, once I freed myself from the church's UNTRUE
doctrine that reading Tarot was a sin, it freed me to go ahead and
make one of the most exciting purchasing of my life !!!!!!

[kabuki]

It's all my mothers fault ... for some reason she bought me a pack of Tarot as a christmas present when I was thirteen years old. I can remember feeling very confused and bewildered by the present, especially as my mother is a christian and i had been bought up in the christian tradition. For the next few years, as a teenager I began to read the tarot cards - I still have all my old exercise books in which I put spreads, readings, meanings of cards etc. This was all supported, enthusiasticly, by the mother who was always asking for readings, or would look at the cards with me and discuss their meaning. Although, strangely, she would never read them herself. I asked her, when I was older, why she had bought me the cards, as it appeared to be contradictory to her beliefs and lifestyle. She explained that although she had bought me up to be a christian I had began to question the religion - I had decided at thirteen to inform the church I went to that I no longer had faith in christianity. This upset her as she wished me to have a spiritual basis to my life, although wasn't concerned if it was chriatianity. She had spoken to a member of our family (who I have never met) who suggested that she buy me some tarot cards, so that I could explore how I felt about religion and spirituality ... which she did. For the past number of years although I have always considered myself to not be a christian, thanks to tarot cards I have always maintained an interest in my spirituality and now at 28 am beginning to understand my own, individual path ... so I supppose my mothers wish when giving me my first pack has come true.

[Talisman]

I still love these "how I began" Tarot stories.

If you haven't told yours yet, we're waiting . . .

Talisman

[Marua]

For as long as I can remember I have been interested in the supernatural (witches and magic).
So when I was about 14-15 years old, I joined this mail order club thingy, that would send you several pages each month about various metaphysical things, such as astrology, herbs, crystals, etc. with a new theme each time, (family, success, love).
A Marseille-style tarot deck came with the first package, so I played a bit with it. But some how I didn't connect with it, (I also thought it was pretty ugly) and I ended up throwing it away, which I kinda regret now. At the time there was a small crystal shop in the street where I lived, and one day I saw a tarot deck in the window. It was the Thoth, with the universe on the cover of the box. So I bought it.
Funny enough it turned out that my uncle had the same deck, which I didn't find out untill years later, but I remember having seen it at his house before I got mine.
So for a long time this was my only deck. But my interest cooled a bit, and I hadn't used it in years, untill about 7 months ago when I was surfing the web for a new deck (I felt the Thoth was suddenly too hard to read), and ended up here at Aeclectic.
Strangely enough I don't remember my thoughts, hopes and dreams about tarot, when I first started. I guess it's just one of the many "crazy" things you venture in to as a teenager, thinking: "Hey, this looks interesting, i'll give it a try", but sometimes you don't know why. At least I didn't. And I'm not sure I do know now, either. :)

[Lady Orchard]

For a very long time I had been slightly intrigued by tarot but knew nothing about it. I felt - and I don't know if other people can identify with this - like I had no right to use it. Like it was reserved for confirmed psychics and mediums or something. I also misunderstood what it was about, and thought that it might bring something unwanted or uninvited into my life.

About 18 months ago my cousin paid for me to have a professional reading in London. It's the only time I've had a face to face reading, although I've had a few online now. Anyway it was brilliant. He was so "normal" yet incredibly intuitive, it made me realise that there was nothing scary about tarot at all!

It still took me about a year to pick up the courage to buy myself a deck though, which I did just before christmas. I looked online and it didn't take me long. When I saw this image, I knew these were my cards:

http://www.theintuitivetarot.com/images/III_Empress.jpg

It's funny how people talk about things like going into a shop so many times before they finally bought their first cards. I think you just instinctively know when the time is right, when you're ready to start learning.

[catlin]

Once upon a time there lived a 13-year-old girl in a boring German city.

One day, she went to the hairdresser's and there was one of those glossy magazines women usually read (was it Vogue, Cosmopolitan or another one???) and as the girl was a bit bored, she just leaved through this magazine until...there was a double side in the middle of the magazine with 22 brightly coloured pictures the girl had never seen before.

There was a kind of mystery, promising about these pictures so the girl asked the hairdresser if she could have the 2 pages. As the magazine was an old one, the hairdresser said "Sure, just take it. I don't need it anymore." so the girl was very pleased with the magazine (much more pleased with it than with her new hair cut).

At home the girl cut out the pictures, glued them to a cardboard and coated it with self adhesive foil. After having cut out the pictures, the girl did her very first card reading (until then she had never heard of tarot cards) which was a terrifing 10 cards Celtic Cross Spread. The girl was very pleased with what she got from the cards so she decided to try to find a book about tarot. In these days of German remoteness, there was only one book by Hajo Banzhaf available. This book did not quite match to the cards because they looked very different but the girl did not mind that.

One year later the girl bought her very first French tarot deck in Avignon. It was the Tarot de Marseilles but as the girl did not know there were so many different TdM's out there she did not pay attention which deck she got. The girl remained faithful to both decks until she left home at the age of 20. She decided that tarot was something related to her teenage days so she did not take the 2 decks with her (the 35 year old "girl" typing these words tried several times to kick her a*** for this) and so they were gone for good.

At the age of 25 the girl decided that she could not do without tarot cards so she bought one copy of the pocket Rider Waite, pocket Thoth and the book and card set of the Legend Arthurian Tarot, a deck which was simply breathtaking. Some years later the girl - now a grown woman with lots of things on her mind - stumbled into the wonderful world of AT and became...catlin!

[Lady Orchard]

that's a great story catlin!

[temperlyne]

I stumbled onto a Haindl deck when I was purchasing college books. It reminded me of a book I devoured when I was a kid. (Lena is anders by Nina Rauprich I think it was...)
Anyway I took the deck home and it never left my side. I was always shuffling and awing the deck.
The real bang was the first time I read the cards for a stranger, just for fun. I didn't know the guy and was only studying tarot for a week or so at that time. I pulled my cards and told him what I saw in them. I didn't have a book, so it was all based on the images and intuition. The guy grew very silent and retreated to his room. When he returned he showed me his diary and some of his poems. He had written the exact terms I had used, the same frases to discribe his life. This shocked me, and I realised that the images of the tarot are a very powerful tool to unlock intuition.

[sharpchick]

A very dear friend of mine, knowing I was going through some personal and professional difficulties, offered to read for me. He used the Morgan Greer deck, and the reading was so accurate, I was stunned. As he read each card, he handed the card to me to examine. I was looking at the image and listening to what he said, and I could literally see the story unfold. After the reading, I asked him questions about the cards in the spread, i.e., "in another situation, could this card mean this?" and we talked for about an hour about the deck and tarot in general.

I started reading online sources about tarot and about a month later, bought the Mythic Tarot as my first deck. I only read for myself for a few weeks and when I saw him again, I asked him to look at the deck. We talked about it, and my growing enthusiasm for tarot. I was stunned again, when he gave me his Morgan Greer deck and said a little blessing over it for me.

After that, there was no looking back.

[billv]

My very first experience with Tarot came when I was around the age of 10 or 11. It was the early 70's, and every Saturday I would ride my banana-seat bike downtown and go to this shop called Deckers - they had all kinds of stuff, from sporting goods to games and other stuff. I was an amateur magician at the time, so I was always very interested in what decks of cards they had available. They had lots of regular decks of cards, including one of my all-time favorites, Kem cards! They also had Tarot decks. My first inquiry about the Tarot card deck placed safely out of children's reach in the display case was met with a stern look from the somewhat scary elderly gentleman who ran the store, saying "Your parents will have to say it's okay before I show or sell those cards to you". Immediately an aura of mystery began, and I mentioned this to my Mom (a fundamentalist Christian) and she said that I shouldn't be curious about those cards, that they were used in fortune telling and that the bible prohibited that type of stuff. So much for getting straight answers!

Flash forward to thirty years later, on my own, a freethinker, and no longer worried about what Christians might think or do. I am deep into studying about the mythical origins of religion, and started to read up on the Journey of the Hero. Eventually I came across something that mentioned the major arcana, and how they relate directly to that story, and how Tarot cards can be used as a tool for self-discovery and trancendence. Very intrigued, I went to our local occult shop here and gazed on over 30 different decks, finally reaching out and buying the deck which picked me - the Thoth deck.

That deck proved to be incredible and overwhelming - and I also had a really wild experience with it right after I got the deck, which is chronicled here:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=43780&highlight=billv

Anyway, that's how I got started! Since then I've gotten two other decks, the RWS and Gilded Tarot. I love all three decks for different reasons. This has been a great trip down memory lane - I haven't thought about that childhood incident since it happened, so very long ago.

[pickled pixie]

My story may sound a little strange.... I was given my first set (Swiss LJJ) by my dad when I was about 21 I played about with them for about 6 months and then quickly forgot about them and didnt give Tarot a second thought for 12 years, until 3 months ago when I moved into my new house, almost straight away I kept seeing tarot card symbols around the house i.e in the curtain patterns and on the tile floor of the bathroon I could clearly see tarot symbols!!! It was like it was calling me back, I couldn't stop thinking about Tarot, so I started to look online for a perfect set of cards (this is how I stumbled on to AT :) )
as soon as I purchased my deck I stopped seeing the images around the house and here I am today...completely nuts about Tarot!!!
I'm not a wacko honestly!!.....hey come back...don't run away... lol!!! :D

PP XXX

[a_shikhs]

Two years ago, i had no idea that something called 'Tarot' existed.. A friend and me went to a book shop for coffee and there we saw a RWS deck on one of the shelves. My friend instantly bought it and then threw it too after a few months. I remember coming home and doing a little research work on this and what fascinated me was that how could a pack of cards read your future. The next few months, i totally forgot about this. Then suddenly an aunt told me that her daughter knew how to read the cards and she was also teaching.. The next thing i remember is going to her and learning the cards. And my life has been great since.. :)

[lilacblooms]

Ive always been fascinated by astrology, numerology and the like. and id pick up books or read columns on these. I was still in school when i almost bought my first deck. I was in this shop selling old books where i chanced upon a tarrot deck selling for about US $ 1. I wanted to buy it because they were selling it so cheap!!! But somehow didnt ..........I kept on reading predictions in magzine columns etc. and the interest kept on growing till after another 5 years i bought my first deck...

[Chiara]

IWhen I was in college, I took a psychology course called "The Abnormal Personality" which was about the mind-body relationship and how different personality types can predict the types of illness a person could have...kind of like Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer. At term's end, I needed to do a paper and chose "faith healing" as my topic. I only had two weeks and researched Tarot, tea leave reading, palmistry, numerology, and astrology. I was fascinated by the Tarot, it's images...it talked to me. I bought my first desk RWS. But there was too much to know, too much to learn, too little time. I ended by doing the paper on tea leaf reading and had them read by a little old lady who read the tea leaves side-by-side with a regular deck of cards.

Now years later, something on tv about tarot caught my eye, then a song on the radio tht referenced the tarot caught my ear...and I looked for that deck...still in the original box. The cards just sing to me. I'm hooked.

P.S. I got an 'A" on the term paper.

And, I loved everyone's stories.