I just had to tell someone!

[Le Fanu]

I just had to tell someone!

I started buying tarot decks in the very early 80s and the interest came and went with varying intensity. But I was aware that on the few occasions that I tried to locate my old tarot decks in my parents house, I could just never find them! Each time I went to their house and had a bit of time, I had a look and it seemed they had just vanished off the face of the earth. I searched everywhere, with increasing frustration. Then I discoved AT and realised that some of the decks Id had were classic, sought after decks, which niggled even more!

However, all I wanted to say was that at last - finally - when my parents were redecorating last week, they found them. Stuffed behind a bookshelf. In a place I would never have looked. Im just so thrilled!

We're talking here about vintage copies of Cagliostro, Tarot Balbi (unused!), Red Owl and Blue Owl Lenormand with verses in English, my first ever 1JJ Swiss, nice and well-thumbed, OOP Prediction tarot, OOP Magickal tarot, Royal Moroccan Fez, Ansata, plus my bag of runes. And many other decks (over 20 ) which I had learnt with when I was 13 or so... A real treasure trove of unlaminated, vintage decks!

It's a story with a happy ending. Anybody have any similar stories? Lost decks, rediscovered. Or lost decks which you never recovered from losing??

 

[franniee]

Awesome Le Fanu!!! What a find!

 

[tarotberry]

wow!!!

i can't say that i've had a remotely similar experience...but it's still a great story to read. i'm so glad you've been reunited!!! yay!

what will you be doing to welcome them home?

 

[celticnoodle]

Le Fanu, that is fantastic!!! I'm so happy for you! A treasure to have found such dear old friends.

 

[HearthCricket]

How wonderful that you were able to find these treasures, again! Did you have a nice trip down Nostalgia Lane while thumbing through them? I often wish my few original decks would find their way back to me, but I had left tarot for a few years and gifted them to someone else, who ended up never using them! I keep hoping her parents will clean up their cellar and suddenly come across them, but I doubt it!

 

[Alta]

Sadly my older decks are gone for good because of a very ill-considered period in the eighties when I turned away from all things metaphysical and just about everything else. I even threw out decades worth of diaries (groan!)

But that is a happy story and thanks for sharing. The 'lost sheep' are home again.

Alta

 

[Skimo]

It must have been christmas in july!

 

[Le Fanu]

It was the strangest feeling: seeing up close again images I havent seen for over 20 years, feeling them in my hands again. And all of them have their original boxes and LWBs. It was a very strong, powerful feeling. And the smell: even the smell of the deck just transported me back. Ive been sitting up late the last few nights just looking closely at them all!

And the weirdest sense of all is that as these were decks Id learnt with, it's as if all the decks Ive bought since, just pale in significance....I feel that these are the decks which I want to use for ever and ever!

Interesting to note that the decks which most draw me in now, are not the ones which I used most then. Im most drawn now to the Balbi and the Royal Morrocan Fez. Then it was 1JJSwiss and the Prediction tarot...How our tastes change...

 

[oak_woman]

Le Fanu, I was so cheered when I read your story! I wish you many happy hours with your long-lost decks.

 

[Sphinxmoth]

Something similar DID happen to me, but it actually concerned a number of stacks of old comic books. I can totally relate to the strong, powerful feeling, the smells, the clicking of awakened memory through the turnstiles of the visual cortex.. positively spiritual.