For the Better

I'm not gonna lie. I'm a deck slut. I'll shuffle a stack of business cards, I don't care--I love the feel of cardstock and the meditation of shuffling. But tarot has given me what all my years of collecting playing cards never gave me. I went from solitaire, poker night, and magic tricks to self-help, tarot parties, and fortune telling. Waaayyy more thrilling!

Also there is something so charmingly un-technological about tarot that is the perfect antidote to our overly digital lives. Somewhere a lot of the humanity of our world got lost and the cards are such a conduit to everything that is human about us. Sometimes Chopin or granny's shrimp creole recipe achieve that for me, too, but there is nothing like tarot to always give me this connection with myself and the world.

Tarot has taught me to pay attention to the little things as well as the obvious. It has also made me a much better listener.

Philistine said:

I'm not gonna lie. I'm a deck slut. I'll shuffle a stack of business cards, I don't care

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L.O.L. you win the award of funniest A.T. comment ever! I admit, I too am a deck junkie and often need to get my fix of this expensive habit! Also I agree with others, tarot is like the ultimate self help tool and also theraputic.

Tarot taught me that I do have intuition that actually works, and that I actually enjoy helping others. For someone who grew up being told she was selfish and had no common sense, that was an amazing revelation, and was a catalyst to all kinds of personal change.

Tarot helped me to overcome my skepticism for anything spiritual and esoteric. I begin to believe in and seek out my own spirituality without feeling like it was ludicrous. The first time I ever attempted a tarot reading, I received a brutally accurate and unhappy reading. I think it tried to shock me into seeing how it wasn't 'just a deck of cards'.

that is a great post Firestem, this mirrors my own life as well. I was really into my spirituality and divination in my teens and put it all away (literally). I came back to it in my 30's and when I picked up a tarot deck again, I was convinced it was random cards, just randomising (maybe from the universe) and I was a total atheist at the time. I also found spirituality and my intuition through getting back into it, I had repressed those areas of my life for years! It's opened me up to the world in so many ways

RiverRunsDeep said:

Honestly, I feel that my personal growth has come from other sources:
tarot is merely a tool. Rather than believing that tarot has made me become
a certain kind of person, I believe that because I am a certain kind of person,
I am drawn to studying tarot.

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I agree with this. I feel that Tarot is a tool that has helped me express myself, see patterns in my life and in other peoples' experiences, and connect with the Divine better - but I had all of those skills before I began working with Tarot. I use Tarot as a catalyst for my spiritual growth, but it's not the source in itself.

However, two direct results of working with the cards this year have been an increase in my verbal and visual memory capacity and an improvement in my free-flowing writing skills (with journaling). So that's exciting

I made the same experience as others here: Tarot brought me back to faith, or better, deepened it. In the guide book to his Tarot of the Vampires, Robert Place says that the Tarot has this mystic side to it, of giving back faith. I wholeheartedly agree.

What I have yet to learn is to listen to it's messages. Like avoiding a predicted quarrel.