Sorry to all those who find these suggestions distasteful or inappropriate in one way or another, but everyone's allowed their two penn'orth I guess, and that's mine.
Jill
hi jill, no apologies necessary - i didn't mean to say that your suggestion was distasteful. i realize that didn't get into all the reasons why i disagree with you, but i can here.
i get it - the river ganges has been used for that purpose for an untold amount of time. i live near the mouth of the mississippi river, and i know a lot of people (not quite in the same way) also ritually (and otherwise) let things go into its murky waters... the dead zone in the gulf of mexico tells that tale. and while i shudder to think about the state of the ganges from an ecological standpoint, i also fully realize that most people in india have a *lot* more pressing concerns than the environment, so no judgment here.
i think returning energized objects to the elements is a noble idea - if they
came from the elements, as a crystal has. i agree that tarot cards do
refer to the elements, but that's not what they're made of. they're made of bleached cardboard, printed with (i'm guessing) chemical inks, and bonded or laminated with plastic. in some cases, i think they're entirely plastic?
please, someone correct me if i'm wrong, but i've never seen a deck promoted as being eco-friendly or sustainable?
anyway, i totally see where your well-intentioned suggestion comes from, but it created an image in my mind of someone hiking in the pacific northwest, watching the salmon leap upstream, and finding a eddy of dirty, waterlogged cards snagged in the creekbed. i realize that one person doing this once is, as you say, a drop in the bucket - but if everyone thought that way, we'd be in a lot more trouble than we're in even now.
plus, it just seems to me that if someone would treasure these cards -creepy energy and all!- it would be a waste to dispose of them in
any way.
so - this was just to explain myself a little more, i didn't want you to think i was dismissing your suggestion.