sharing your Tarot experience with your spouse

I decided to open this thread to share some experiences on how you share your Tarot life with your spouse/partner. It was triggered by a personal experience I recently had.

My partner is not of the... spiritual kind. He is warm and open, but he is also a German working in finance, so my altar with crystals and pendulums and runes and tarot decks is quite exotic for him.

He does listen eagerly to my rants about ancient civilizations or the hermetic symbolism in RWS/Thoth or the Tree of Life, but just recently we had a beautiful date night and afterwards we were drinking wine and I decided to show him my Legacy of the Divine deck and ask his opinions. I have been struggling with some of the imagery (particularly the suit of Cups). It was extremely refreshing to listen to his take on the cards, especially the meanings - he has zero knowledge about the meanings of Tarot cards, and he guided me towards details I had previously missed (in spite of heavy scrutiny of the cards).

I was thinking it might be beneficial to have a "talk" with him whenever I try to break in a new deck, just to get a fresh point of view. For example - I read to him and had him translate the old German verses from the Blue Owl Lenormand (apologies, this is not Tarot, but I thought it was relevant for the point) - and I could really feel new meanings opening up just by his translations. I knew all the translations before, but he somehow cast an entirely different meaning on them.

What are your experiences in sharing the Tarot world with your spouse?

I don't Not with anyone But when I do, I just get weird looks and the roll of the eyes

delinfrey said:

but he is also a German working in finance

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Hey, no prejudice. /German programmer

I'm not sure what I'd do. Depends on what kind of partner it'd be- I don't think I'd go around hiding my decks, but I don't think I'd really need to discuss it with my partner. If they're interested in it that's cool; if not, that's fine too.

Mine's interested but not "involved" - he visits tarot places with me (Lo Scarabeo, the museum in Riola and the one in Mechelen) and enjoys them - and he now knows a lot, too, from showing an interest in a part of me, I guess..

I wouldn't want to be with a partner I had to hide it all from, or even one who I couldn't talk to about it - it is a big part of me - just as some of his interests that aren't mine are things I show an interest in - because he is my partner, so it's important to do that, and to be ABLE to do that, I think.

I never used to, as some years ago when my partner spied a set of oracle cards that I had - he threw a fit and threatened to burn them (!). (He is somewhat like the OP describes her partner - working by "feelings and intuition" is not his thing. All should be structured, scientific and logical).

But he has much improved in his understanding and tolerance of my esoteric interests and this year, I requested he buy me a Tarot deck for my birthday in January.
When they arrived he said "So... can I see what this thing is I've bought you...?"
And when he did - he rather liked the artwork and we had a lovely talk about the imagery.
(Parallel Worlds Tarot: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/parallel-worlds-tarot/).
Then he surprised me by saying "So ah... how do these things work then?"
(I nearly fell off my chair) .

So I begin to show them more.

I guess I'm lucky in that my husband and I don't share many interests, so we've both perfected the art of pretending to be interested in what the other person is babbling about now.

He actually owned a deck before I did, though mostly for the study of archetypes. So for him, if I hand him a deck, he knows how to compare it with RWS and has a general idea of what each card represents in that framework. He tends to like art, so he does like to go through decks when I first get them--he was exploring the Bohemian Gothic pewter last night after it arrived (I knew that one would appeal to him, as did Tyldwick). And certainly sometimes he'll have insights that I don't. He's never asked for a reading, and I'd be surprised if he ever did. He does occasionally ask me to bring the cards out and work with him on plotting out some things for a roleplaying game he's working on, which is fine because I routinely use decks in the same way for my own fictional writing.

But like most other topics in the house, I try not to talk about it incessantly, because honestly, I expect it would bore him if I talked about it all the time. And I know he does the same with plenty of the stuff he's interested in that I care about only because he's passionate over it.

It's OK not to share everything. At least, it is in our house.

How romantic it would be to try this with a partner by the fireside! I dont have a partner at the moment and not any of my immeadiate family cares about tarot. I may try to share it with one family member that is teeny bit interested but theyed probley take four hours with each card! (Mildly exaggerating). And id probley pass out of tirdness and bordedom listening to them explain haha.

My dh knows a tremendous amount about the Tarot. Before we met he and his community staged a Tarot Pageant which, from what I heard was pretty spectacular both from an esoteric standpoint and an artistic one. He's a great source of information for me and has often fascinating takes on the cards informed by both natural intuition and study.

Haha my husband poo poo's the idea of Tarot but always asks me what do the cards say? He has bought me most of my Tarot decks and is understanding of my need to have a Altar in the house, I have a wonderful husband a real gift from the Gods.

jolie_amethyst said:

we've both perfected the art of pretending to be interested in what the other person is babbling about now.

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This is pretty much where I'm at haha. I try to find an angle from which to engage with his monologues about European history and he nods politely while I prattle about tarot.

I think they key is we try to only talk about our things from an angle the other would be interested in... So I'll talk about the artwork or philosophical perspective of a deck, or that its interesting how the guidebook to the Alice Tarot doesn't shy away from the more unsavoury side of Caroll/Dodgson's interest in Alice the girl. That or we preface things with: "I know you don't care, but I'll tell you anyway..." and laugh.