Trogon
Howdy Graspee! I'm amongst the crowd that feels that some of what you refer to as "myths" are, essentially, unnecessary. On the other hand, I do perform some rituals before readings, smudgings, meditations and so forth. So, as others have said, if the ritual works for you, then do it.
For example, the idea that one's first deck must be gifted to them. The first problem that usually comes to my mind with this is that a great many of us would probably never get into Tarot if that were true. My very first deck was a Marseilles ... didn't work for me. But I purchased a RWS deck and it is one of my best decks for reading and I've been using it for many years. Same with my Rohrig Tarot. I had suggested once, quite some time ago, that if you feel that a deck must be "gifted" to you, you can always give a gift of money to the clerk at the store and they can then give you the gift of a deck!
As for keeping your deck wrapped in silk, or anything else, again, that's not for me. Most of my decks have come in an individual deck-sized box. For the decks I use a lot, the boxes will start to fray, so I've started reinforcing them with packing tape. (I suspect some folks are cringing at this!) A couple of exceptions are decks which came in a larger box with included book (such as the Victoria Regina and the Gilded Tarot) which reside in the bags which came with them. But these things don't seem to affect the decks adversely, nor my ability to use them.
I almost always have the person I'm reading for "cut" the deck after I've shuffled them. It puts their personal touch to the reading and gives them a little more assurance that the cards are not "stacked" by my manipulation. I generally don't let people shuffle the cards themselves since, with the size of the cards, it is too easy to damage even the best of decks, but cutting the deck does give them a little control.
Now, none of this means that a person who believes otherwise is wrong. On the contrary, they're simply following their own beliefs and rituals, the same as me. I have seen some rather, well, negative remarks directed towards these rituals. But that was quite some time ago and was pretty generally disapproved of. I think that these ideas can occasionally stir up some heated responses, because sometimes they seem to be used to over-mystify the Tarot to keep folks from getting started on their own. At least that's the way it appears to me. I think that many of us feel that if someone wants to start learning the Tarot and doing readings, they should be encouraged ... but making them meet all these requirements just to get a deck and how to store it and so on, would seem to tend to discourage them instead.
So that's my 2 cents worth (and then some) ...
