"Deck Guardian" myth?

Sorry, didn't know whether to put this here or in Talking Tarot.

Anyway, to the point.
I recently sauntered into a Polish tarot forum to check things out and maybe find some fellow readers in my whereabouts, when I came to an interesting topic.

Interesting is putting it lightly as mostly I was baffled and didn't know what I felt more like doing: laughing my pants off or crying in despair.

There seems to be a wide-spread view that you should pick your deck's Guardian, from the first three cards: the Fool, the Magician and the High Priestess. This way you choose which of the spirits will be guiding your readings and residing over your deck.
Now, I've often before heard people referring to their deck as only a means to contact their spirit guide, but I assume this is not what they had in mind.

There are rules (people in Poland are very authoritarian about their views, even in - one would think - such a fluid and subjective area of esoteric workings) to follow, too, but I didn't read much into them, except for the first one: if the guardian card is the first thing you pull out in a reading - you should stop the reading.

You can imagine why I didn't want to read the rest. What, so I devise a spread for someone, and the first position is titled "how does X see me?" and it's impossible for X to see someone as the Magician, if that's the deck's guardian?

The level or ridiculousness is astounding, unless I'm being too close minded to actually see the use in this.
Has anyone of this more cosmopolitan forum heard anything like this? Do you use it? Why? How does it help your readings?
Where did this come from? (Some of the myths out in the tarot world do actually make sense, but this?).

I would have asked around there, but judging from the other topics (Should I bless my deck with holy water? Yes, yes you should, Satan won't possess you then!) their idea of research is pretty vague.

(hope I'm not offending anyone...)

No, I have never heard of that before. The deck's guardian has to be one of the three???? The Fool, Magician, or High Priestess????

Well everyone has their own way of accessing the information and using the cards. (shrug)

But I do have to agree with you Yurikome, that this does limit the use of the deck though. Because there would be times that someone would need the information from these three cards. You gave a great example of this. hmmmmm.......

And no you haven't offended me in the least!!!

Ah yes, those three, because B. Antonowicz-Wlazińska seems to say so in her book "Przepowiednia z jednej karty Tarota" (and the written word is GOD, if you didn't know yet. Seriously, everyone has their own way, but why do they delude the people seeking to learn that their way is law? How many people quit their passion after not being able to learn these horrible rules?)

In short: the Fool is the curiosity of the child, the Magician goes with intellect and the High Priestess with intuition, so, you know, that pretty much covers the options *rolls eyes*
Why don't we just settle and reduce the whole Majors to these 3?

**ROFLMAO**

And of course if it's written in a book it's the truth, isn't it? hehehe

Interesting perspective. I'd never heard of it before.

As with all deck rituals/beliefs/myths etc., I would say - take what makes sense to you, and leave the rest.

Presumably the people who devised these rules saw some sense in them.


As for blessing the deck with holy water - in a Catholic country like Poland, it makes sense. "No my deck's not dangerous, it's been blessed" can be the stock answer to people who are scared of tarot for religious reasons.

Each to their own, I suppose.


Having said that, I rather like the idea of having a "deck guardian"; though why limit ourselves to the first three majors? Why not choose one from among them all? Nor would it have to mean that you can't read the guardian when it comes up. It could mean simply: pay attention here, the deck guardian has something special to say. I would be funny if the deck guardian is the Devil - double dose of holy water for that one!!!

Anyway, you can experiment in all sorts of ways.

I agree, it's an interesting starting point and I'd love to know where it came from (maybe that author lady is quoting after someone else...?).

As to blessing: the Church is against any type of divination, why would they allow blessing a pagan tool of sin?

Yurikome said:

The level or ridiculousness is astounding, unless I'm being too close minded to actually see the use in this.

Click to expand...

I kinda think you are being too closed minded. Why, after all, is this more ridiculous then believing that painted cards shuffled at random can give you life's answers?

Some would say that level of ridiculousness is astounding.

However, what you really seem to be saying is that it seems silly for them to follow only one particular book on this topic, and to limit themselves with that particular superstition of the "first card." Though we will grant that the guardian can show up elsewhere in the spread, and likely they create spreads where that first card has less emphasis to deal with this problem (i.e. the fact that the Fool, Magician or HPS can never be that first card).

I, certainly, would find that rule ridiculously limiting, myself. But then, I have my own rules and superstitions that limit my readings, and from what I've seen in my time, this is common to most readers, though perhaps not so strict as this. To each their own. But do take care what you label "ridiculous" when you're talking about Tarot Cards. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Yurikome said:

As to blessing: the Church is against any type of divination, why would they allow blessing a pagan tool of sin?

Click to expand...

For the same reason that the church accepted pagan gods and made them into saints (example: St. Brigit). For the same reason they took pagan holidays and made them their own (example: Christmas and Easter). For the same reason that they took many pagan traditions and incorporated them into their rituals. Because if enough people are engaged in the pagan practice, then it's better to make it holy then to forbid it.

It's only divination, after all, if you don't get the answer from god. If those cards are blessed, then all you're really doing in reading them is asking god for an answer, as with prayer. And interpreting the answer you get from god the same way you'd interpret signs telling you what you should and should not do. The answer is from god, not demons or spirits or anything else that could lead you astray. So there's no objection.

Thankfully, I don't believe paper and paint can give you life's answers either safe there. I personally don't believe there are any answers or guardians in the cards or speaking through them. Just a tool for me, like psychological tests - what you see in the picture tells more about you, reveals keys to your subconscious.

Yes, the church did that, but did they admit it? I mean, everybody knows why they did it, it doesn't make it fair though. At least their policy on fortune-telling is clear. It's God's divine plan, and no measly human being has the right to try and see through it. That's what I've heard.

ETA: Perhaps I didn't manage too well in my original post with conveying the authoritarian approach presented on that site. You absolutely MUST pick a guardian for your deck, before you do any reading with it, because if you don't all your readings will be more luck and guessing than anything else, and if you wanna read GOOD, you gotta do this and that and...
so I know - everyone has their own little rituals, but they shouldn't be imposing them on others. Which is quite obvious for us here, but not as obvious for most forum-goers in my native parts.

Plus I'm curious as to the origins of this idea, maybe there was some deeper sense in the beginning that got somehow distorted by passing it on clumsily or something?

I only have one deck that comes with its own built-in, screamingly obvious "guardian" - my copy of the Granny Jones Australian Tarot. And she is the creator of the deck, who sits behind me and chuckles a lot at the way I say things <grin>. She's warm, kind, humorous, and occasionally a bitch. She tells me that she particularly visits me when I work with the deck because I don't necessarily like it better than anyone else, but I *get* it better - she likes my level of understanding of the small stuff in the deck. She occasionally drops by and visits other people when they work with it, but she loves to watch me - apparently the back of my head is a real pleasure! (so people would say who've recently been arguing with the front of it!)

I don't make an effort to contact her - she just drops by. With other decks, I ask (no one in particular) that I read well for the client, and that's it. Some of what I say comes from the cards, and sometimes a random thought will pop in or my mouth will take me somewhere unexpected, which I assume is valid guidance.

I *do* deliberately seek to contact guides occasionally, but not through decks, and like humans, they are intricate and complex people, so limiting them to one-dimensional archetypes is a bit insulting. Too much High Priestess can get a bit annoying, and I'm not sure I'd completely trust either the Fool or the Magician, for different reasons.