making your own tarot decks/ouija boards

[scarlatina]

I am wondering if anyone has any experience or opinions on making your own tarot deck and if it has given you stronger/more accurate readings compared to a purchased one?

I don't recommend it but I have heard making your own ouija boards are much more effective and once made one for "fun" with this guy. (BIG mistake) we got spirits instead of a ouija answer to our question.

I assume there would be little to no confusion or ambiguity with card meanings with a handmade deck, but I'm just wondering how much more effective since there is such an enormous difference with ouija boards. I'm not trying to contact anything dead and don't think tarot even serves that purpose, & regular tarot and even playing cards have worked fine, but I think there might be some level of alchemy involved in personalized divination.

?

 

[gregory]

I am doing - very slowly, so I can't say I have used it yet. What it IS doing is teaching me a LOT about the inner meanings of the cards, if that helps at all.

 

[AJ]

creating your own tarot deck is probably a lifetime project there are several billion threads here where they've been started and most peter out about the 4th or 5th card. And probably that many decks started and dropped on Deviant Art site too.

A couple of simple ways to arrive at nearly the same point is buy or download a copy of the Rider-Waite deck in black and white and color it. Every time you pick up a crayon or pencil you'll suddenly stop and think "why red shoes?" "why do I see gray sky?" It is a wonderful process whether you choose to use your own color insight or mimic the RW, either way it makes you think.

The original Mythic Workbook has a similar process and it was very interesting to do.

A sort of cheat-sheet project is trimming the borders off a deck. You see the cards upside down and sideway and kitty-corner and always find things you haven't noticed before.

If you decide to start your own deck open a thread in Deck Creation and have it, and best wishes on the journey~

 

[amethyst57]

have not created my own tarot deck...not that artistic,lol...

BUT...ouija boards...i've tried actual boards, a ouija mouse pad with a pendulum, and a homemade ouija...with no success, no contact...
my homemade ouija was blank playing cards with the letters, etc on them, and spread out on a bare card table...used a pendulum too....
in both cases, the pendulum stood still :-/

 

[Chronata]

I have experience in creating both my own decks and my own "talking boards".

And I can tell you that I have had good experiences with both of my creations.

In terms of tarot...I find that yes, there is a strong connection (for the most part) between my mind and the deck, and therefore, I do have (again, for the most part) accuracy in reading them.
But I have also discovered that just because I created the cards...doesn't mean I always understand what they are trying to tell me.

You would think that the creator knows everything about the images, since they made them...but I have been surprised often by deeper meanings that I had not intended coming out in the readings.


Now, with Ouija or talking boards...I have had some "extreme" experiences in the past, which led to wanting to create my own. I discovered that with talking boards it's all about intent.
If I create it...or use an existing one to receive messages from Spirit or from my guides, then that is what I will get. If I want to use it to talk to spirits of the dead...well...that has happened.
And if I wasn't sure what I wanted to contact, and was open to anything, you can bet anything ...and everything...would make an appearance.

I have discovered that I would rather use my own board then someone else' design...simply because I know exactly from the creation stage what my intent and purpose was.

 

[Cerulean]

A version of this is an oracle book you create

I understand you were wondering about creating your own cards, so let me address this first. For me, I actually know what colors I use, prefer, image styles I like and why, so just looking at my own creations tells me where I was at a certain point in time--which to me is a rehash of the past. Even if I was telling a fortune or a nice meditative reading for a close loved one, I am afraid it is like I was talking to them using just my own perspective...so the picture for me, it's like reading old news.

I have found that if I add things such as poetry or other images, say a page or two each in a book page format to each card, there is more room and image and word interaction--the more outside inspiration to the card theme and meaning, the better it is for me. The reading has a fresher, more unique aspect if I haven't used the 'book' pages I created recently.

So I did create one book for retired cards that intermixed poetry and a theme deck. I may do that in the future for some modified cards that I did that intermixed fairy tale images from one particular artist and images I created for a particular suit. But I am so close to have just finished this, that it isn't a fresh deck/book/series of plates..

A friend created a few talking boards when long ago she did something for a funky old movie, and since then, I associate more humor and decoration to such things, that is just me.

I just prefer to use 22 majors that I scatter and then pick up instead on a tabletop...so cards are preferred for me...unless I decide to do page/poem pick on special occasions with the old deck 'scrapbook' I created. But I only do this twice a year, otherwise it isn't fresh for me.

I hope that adds a bit of perspective. I think it would be a lovely project, but for me, it would be a more decorative one than a useful tool for divination.

Best wishes. I am interested in other perspectives this creative topic will bring.

 

[jackdaw*]

Cerulean, that sounds fascinating. Would like to see some scanned samples if you were feeling charitable ...

I've created decks, and individual cards, many of which never see the light of day. And it has helped me learn a couple of things:

- what symbols and meanings are relevant to me for each card.
- my skills and artistic abilities or lack thereof don't keep up with what I see in my mind's eye

 

[Chronata]

Don't sell yourself short, Jackdaw! You created one of my favorite all time reading decks!

 

[scarlatina]

have not created my own tarot deck...not that artistic,lol...

BUT...ouija boards...i've tried actual boards, a ouija mouse pad with a pendulum, and a homemade ouija...with no success, no contact...
my homemade ouija was blank playing cards with the letters, etc on them, and spread out on a bare card table...used a pendulum too....
in both cases, the pendulum stood still :-/

Thanks everyone lots of cool ideas! I donno if I'd really attempt making one right now since I don't have a lot of free time but it sounds interesting and worthwhile. I think eventually I'd want to since there are so many things that remind me of tarot, and thinking in symbols starts to happen the more I use tarot so it'd be nice to put that down somehow.

Aw sorry your Ouija board didn't work out. I wish mine didn't, it wasn't even fancy at all. Maybe "where are you" was a bad question haha.

 

[scarlatina]

there is a strong connection (for the most part) between my mind and the deck, and therefore, I do have (again, for the most part) accuracy in reading them.
But I have also discovered that just because I created the cards...doesn't mean I always understand what they are trying to tell me.

You would think that the creator knows everything about the images, since they made them...but I have been surprised often by deeper meanings that I had not intended coming out in the readings.


Now, with Ouija or talking boards...I have had some "extreme" experiences in the past, which led to wanting to create my own. I discovered that with talking boards it's all about intent.
If I create it...or use an existing one to receive messages from Spirit or from my guides, then that is what I will get. If I want to use it to talk to spirits of the dead...well...that has happened.
And if I wasn't sure what I wanted to contact, and was open to anything, you can bet anything ...and everything...would make an appearance.

I have discovered that I would rather use my own board then someone else' design...simply because I know exactly from the creation stage what my intent and purpose was.

I think you are right about intent because even though the one we made was so crappy I could tell it was going to work... and we put symbols around it that were important to us which I regretted because I felt like that gave the spirit too much information on me/my psyche. For some reason putting your personality into making something like this seems significant. If you don't mind me asking what kind of extreme experiences did you have that made you want to make a ouija board? Ghost stuff?

That's also interesting what you said about still being surprised by deeper meanings of the cards because that's part of the reason I'd be interested in making some, just to be able to compare and see what is answering me. I've felt like sometimes at my ex's house when I did readings there that his recently deceased grandpa was putting negative energy into my readings asking about people that weren't him. Another time in a home where I feel dark spirits sometimes, I was doing readings for my 2 friends and got really critical readings for them so I decided to put the cards away. The devil card kept coming up over and over, coincidentally the next day I was violently attacked by someone else in the same house. I quit tarot for almost 5 months and almost threw my cards away because I thought tarot possibly possessed them. During the break the drawer where I kept them kept coming open on it's own so eventually I gave in and picked up where I left off