Your Very First Time .......

hopena

My first wasn't a tarot deck. It was an oracle deck by Angela Mcgerr, in 2003. I pulled them out in January of 2004, at around 6am, after a good day, some exercise, a shower and a good movie, and tried a few readings for my family and myself, using a spread in the book. The readings came true within the next week... the cards had predicted that my family would get sick, but I wouldn't and that was the case. (They all caught colds.) I also had the Faery oracle - not Froud's, but the cute little one, from the same woman who created Good Witch, Bad Witch.

I barely used them. When reading the newest Harry Potter book in July 2005, a discussion started on another forum (astrology), that also included Tarot. I'd visited this site a couple of times, but hadn't stuck around, because I thought that tarot reading would be beyond me. I was around that time that I read about the DruidCraft - I saw the images on the main website, and just felt drawn to them. It was the same with the Faeries. From that point on, I was obsessed with getting both decks, but I thought we couldn't afford to buy anything, what with money usually being so tight. Had I known that my mother would splurge on a HayHouse deep discount sale, buying me the Oracle tarot, and a small pile of books, I would have just asked her for the DruidCraft upfront. ;) But the Oracle Tarot became special to me, as well, and produced just the right cards, a few nights before Christmas, when I was trying to relax during a stressful time (two dogs having regular seizures, amongst other things). I spent a lot of time here, between August of 2005, and some time in 2006, read the threads about the journeying tarot deck (World Spirit), threads in the Faeries forum, and the Divination forum.

When I first received my tarot cards, I felt oddly flat. They just looked like pretty pictures... I didn't have the same feeling that I'd received from looking at the site, until I started to use them the next month, in January. I started to work with the Faeries, the day after Christmas, but didn't get past the first two exercises. I loved them, though, and used them for my second birthday reading in 2006 (the first being the one I'd used the first little faery oracle for, on my 30th, in 2005). I barely touched my Universal Waite until the second half of 2008, and even though I loved my DC, I started to use the Fairytale for daily draws after my birthday in 2006... I think I would have been better off with just the one, as I've read about from others here, rather than automatically jumping into deck polyamory. Those are my favourites, though - ones I always go back to.
 

nisaba

Le Fanu said:
but saw that my best friend's mum had the 1JJ Swiss and that was the one I wanted.
<reflectively> You know, by keeping my decks out of the way (not obsessively hidden, just not on display) when my daughter's (and some of my) friends were around, I thought I was being considerate and uncontroversial.

After reading your story, I am aghast at myself.

What if I was supposed to inspire the next Big Collector - and didn't?
 

WyrdRaven

My first tarot was the University Books Waite. I was already in love with the big beautiful posters on the wall at the Freep, and those are what drew me to the deck. It was around $5.00 and that was a lot of money back then. For that, you could almost buy two record albums. So it was a big purchase for me. The art seemed so mysterious and timeless. The pink ankhs on the backs resonated with my love of ancient Egypt and added to the overall sense of mystery. I believed that I had obtained something of Great Power! I was going to see into the future like a mystic gypsy-witch! It was all very exciting. I got one of the Eden Gray books and tried to memorize the whole thing cover-to-cover before using the cards. I never quite managed, so it was awhile before I read with my deck. Alas, I am older and wiser now. But I would do anything to recapture that feeling of magic and wonder.
 

emmsma

I learned with a yellow box RWS. I poured over the LWB until it was mine. It gave me a feeling of being in control of my young life. It was empowering.

I'd bought others on that fateful day, but none mean more to me than my little RWS.
 

Rosanne

Likewise the RWS in 1973- I had some sort of epiphany with a poster of a fortune teller and thought I was getting some mystical message from the Universe. I also thought I was meant to read with the cards. I did not know you could read for yourself- so I started practicing...like one would practice card tricks lol. Because I had this old cartomancy book I learned tarot like it was playing cards with extra's. The LWB was a help. Two choices back then and no books what so ever. I think that is why Tarot is not poo hooed here.

~Rosanne
 

Aerin

Mine was the RWS, bought at a WH Smiths straight after I'd finished reading that little Thorson's book Principles of Tarot in the 1990s. I felt as if I was doing something rebellious taking it home :D. My second was the Donaldson Dragons tarot and I couldn't read that either :0.

The deck that really started to draw me in was the Hallowquest and all its guided visualisations.

I had a lot of what seemed like false starts in Tarot, and really it was the fact that they were cards (adore cards) and 78 pieces of art that kept me going - I wanted an excuse to collect more!
 

Vesper

In my teens an older friend had given me a book about the IJJ Swiss. When I bought my first deck, it was that one, because I already had the book for it. It never made any sense to me, though, and I thought the colors were ugly. So I put it away.

Second deck was bought in the same head shop. The Connolly. Learned the book meanings for that one, and used it with some success for a while. Then heard about the Mythic. Found it in an occult shop, this lovely, dark crystal and velvet place with a curtain instead of a door, where, if you were walking past at the right moment, you might hear someone say, "Are these the only bat wings you have?"

I fell in love with the Mythic 30 years ago, and it's the only one I still have of those first three decks. (It's still in perfect shape, too, which is why I don't buy back-ups of any decks.)
 

Fool of Dreams

It seems that I'll be kind of an exception. :cool:

Well, the first deck I got in touch with was a lernomand-based deck, when I was 12. I did not understand anything from that, but It kept me buzy. I lused to spend hours looking at those cards. lol

But the first real deck from which I could learn A LOT was the Osho Zen Tarot. My father gave to me when I was 15. It's interesting, because I had no idea that it was considered a surrealistic deck, so I did not judge it. I just studied and learned what I had to until a little later, when I was able to compare it to a classic Marseille deck.
 

Healing Spirit

Mine was Bob Stewart's Merlin Tarot. The artwork is gorgeous on the Major Arcana and the court cards but the pip cards are just counters - no graphics - and that put me off.

I'm not very good at the "Learn 365 different attributes and keywords" approach.

Like something else in life, the first time was disappointing and I wondered what all the fuss was about. Since then, I've come to enjoy it much more. Oh, and Tarot, too!
 

Libra8ca

My first deck was a yellow-box RWS. I bought a couple of books to go along with it and tried to figure this out for myself (with little success at first I must say). My second deck was the Gilded which I bought about ten years later; it took me another couple of years before my readings started to make sense to some degree :D