Question About Finicky Decks!

LilliumStargazer

Hello! I hope this is in the right area, and please forgive me if it isn't! I have a lot of tarot decks and I generally work very well with all of them. Some are more serious and some more light but there's only one deck I own that ever gives me any issues, The Wild Unknown.

While when this deck is working well it's absolutely amazing, and gives me generally astounding, introspective answers, however, sometimes I pick it up and sit to read, and it just gives me absolute nonsense and is impossible to work with, so I have to switch over.

I love this deck so much and I would love to really use it more regularly, but it's just so finicky at times!

How do you deal with this issue?
 

Scarlet Woodland

Hello! I hope this is in the right area, and please forgive me if it isn't! I have a lot of tarot decks and I generally work very well with all of them. Some are more serious and some more light but there's only one deck I own that ever gives me any issues, The Wild Unknown.

While when this deck is working well it's absolutely amazing, and gives me generally astounding, introspective answers, however, sometimes I pick it up and sit to read, and it just gives me absolute nonsense and is impossible to work with, so I have to switch over.

I love this deck so much and I would love to really use it more regularly, but it's just so finicky at times!

How do you deal with this issue?

I have a couple awkward fellas like that, and the Wildwood has it's whole own thing where it gets "in a mood" if I'm not affording it the proper deference :D

Am sure there are better ways of dealing with this but I start with a test read of something known eg. how was my morning? If the answer is patently codswallop, I'll first give it a really good shuffle and a new question, to check that wasn't the problem, then either:

1) Decide this isn't the week to work with that deck, or
2) If I'm really determined to work with it I'll pull cards in a conversation with it, to try and get to the bottom of why we're not clicking. Sometimes, of course, it's just trying to talk about something more important than what I asked... but often it's posing a challenge, or trying to provoke a different way of approaching the matter at hand.

All that said, I have had a few decks pass through my hands (all oracles in my case), that seemed to just, plain dislike me :D
 

Trogon

Hi LilliumStargazer! I've occasionally pulled out a deck to work with and been unable to get much out of it. It doesn't happen very often, but it has happened a few times. And, when it has happened, it's been with decks which are unusual for one reason or another. For me, I usually felt that my mind-set wasn't quite in a place to work with that deck at that time. I took a look at some of the images of the Wild Unknown Tarot. They are unusual. It looks like the deck would be really intuitive to work with ... but also that your intuition is going to have to work pretty hard when you're using it.

When this happens to me, I'll turn to one of my "old reliable" decks. For me that's usually my old RWS or my Röhrig Tarot. Both of those really click pretty easy for me. If I'm still having a problem, I'll go do something else for a while to relax my mind.

Fortunately, I've only had a couple of decks which I just could never work with. Also fortunately, I found them good homes to go to. Both of those were "different" kinds of decks. I loved the images in both of them, but just couldn't read with them. But that doesn't sound to be your problem.
 

rwcarter

Use FireRaven's "New Deck Interview" Spread. Let the deck tell you what its strengths and weaknesses are and how it wants to work with you. Even though the spread is for new decks, I think it can be used with any deck as a check-in to see how you're progressing with the deck.

Rodney
 

Trogon

Use FireRaven's "New Deck Interview" Spread. Let the deck tell you what its strengths and weaknesses are and how it wants to work with you. Even though the spread is for new decks, I think it can be used with any deck as a check-in to see how you're progressing with the deck.

Rodney

Oooh! That's a good idea. My "new deck spread" is slightly different, but yeah, something like that could give you some good insight into what the deck is all about.
 

Barleywine

I don't have any decks that run hot-and-cold. Like the old saying "When you're hot, you're hot, when you're not, you're not," I usually know immediately whether I'm going to click with a deck. If I don't they go to the back of the shelf and never show their faces again. Lately I've been extremely cautious about buying new decks, so I haven't had any recent flops.
 

Thoughtful

l have had numerous decks that having worked really well, did suddenly go of the boil. They became very haphazard. It did not matter what mood l was in, l even looked forward to doing a reading with them. It did get really annoying, and expensive as it tempted me into buying other decks.
But l have been working with my favourite tarot for many months now, it gives me consistent accurate readings whether for myself or clients. l have grown to have strong faith in the relationship we have, l trust it completely. So in my case it was finding that right tarot.
l now understand why some readers use the same deck and would not touch another. Maybe l now fit into that category.
But for others it is lovely to have an array of decks and they can hop from one to another.
 

Barleywine

I used the Thoth exclusively between 1972 and 2011, but I've recently been challenged by my need to bring several decks to my public reading sessions so as to always have a thoroughly randomized deck when the clients come in herds. So I've been building a stable of reliable decks (all RWS-based) for public use. Right now that includes the Waite-Smith Centennial, the Golden Universal, the Morgan Greer, the Robin Wood, the Gilded, the Connolly and the Mystical. Not a clinker among them, no matter what I throw at them.
 

Thoughtful

Well there you are, like others you can go from one deck to another. My body, mind, spirit, intuition must be so attuned to my deck now, that using another throws me off kilter :grin:
 

LilliumStargazer

Use FireRaven's "New Deck Interview" Spread. Let the deck tell you what its strengths and weaknesses are and how it wants to work with you. Even though the spread is for new decks, I think it can be used with any deck as a check-in to see how you're progressing with the deck.

Rodney

Funnily enough, I actually did ask my deck some personal questions last night before I looked at this thread this morning! Apparently my deck doesn't like being asked questions about conflicts or when I have mixed feelings on an issue, which is often!

I actually learned quite a lot about my 3 other major decks too, which was rather interesting! I always use this spread when I get a new deck, but a most of these I've had for quite a few years and I love them all very dearly!