Guardian of the Deck

[Marieve]

I was wondering if people use the cards assigned as a Guardian for the deck and if yes is it just one card per deck, or more? Who is your favourite deck Guardian and what does the Guardian telling you?

I have the High Priesstess in my vampyre deck and whenever she appears when I cut the deck, it's a warning that maybe I'm not quite ready for that reading at the moment, or the answer will better stay covered for a while. Sometimes I use also other Majors and more than one at the same time. Would be interesting to know if others also use guardian cards, I have searched the forum, but couldn't find anything.

[elvenstar]

I don't think I've ever heard of this guardian card concept before, could you tell us a bit more about it?

[Marieve]

The deck guardian is a card chosen usually from first 3 Majors (but of course it can be any card) either by preference or randomly and it's task is to kind of warn you if there is something wrong/unfavourable etc. in the reading, it could be either in question itself, the setting, the intentions etc.
Guardian also lies as the first card of the deck to "protect" it. It is a kind of tarot myth very popular among Polish readers. I really like it and it saved my skin many times. It can sometimes pop out flying from the deck while shuffling and then I'm watchful, or it can be found under one of the piles while cutting the deck and then people have different methods of understanding what it means and their own agreements so to say with the cards. For me I usually don't continue that day or with that deck or with that question.

Also I find it helpful to have general guidelines about the reading when in some decks I use more than one card as a guardian.
For example:
High Priestess - the querrent probably would be better off with finding the answer to this question themselves (might be that in a different way than tarot reading)
Devil - the querrent has strong expectations and this could be reflected in a reading
Moon - the question is too blurry and general in order to obtain valuable answer better to narrow it down
Wheel - sudden twists and turns of action, the answer might be totally different cup of tea than the question
Oh The Fool - the answer is already known to the querrent but they just want to check you out

Most often I just use the guardian that is assigned to that particular deck but I it depends, sometimes I feel like some extra help is needed and I use many of them, also different cards that in examples above.

[NikkiB]

This is interesting, I've also never heard of this before.

Do you assign them like a signifier during shuffling? does your allotted guardian stay the same always for that particular deck?

how do you see the card if it comes up in a spread? read as normal? is it just as a guardian if it comes up at a cut or as a jumper?

i quite like this idea

[Marieve]

Yes, it stays the same in a deck once it is chosen, but of course you can change it if you want no rules here, sometimes I feel like the other card starts to play this role better than my initial idea. And exactly if it comes up in a reading it's as normal, as you said just during the cut or as a jumper ;-) (nicely put) In some readings I ask more cards to act as helpers if I feel like I need it of course prior to the shuffling. Then with different readings I would come back to my initial guardian card. I have one of them in every deck I'm using.

[Manda]

I never thought about it just like that, but if I get the High Priestess at the bottom of the deck, the Shadow card, I know the reading is not and cannot be complete just yet, for reasons I can't know just now, so I take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

Interesting thought, thanks for sharing!

[elvenstar]

Ah, thanks for explaining

I never thought of it that way exactly, but the High Priestess, Death, the Tower, the 5 of cups and the 3/5/10 of swords often work that way for me, depending on the deck. They say, each for different reasons, that this reading is not advisable at this time. They may jump, or I may specifically cut the deck before starting and check for one of them if I have reservations. I like the Guardian idea though. They guard me from my own folly