To those who read Tarot in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s...

[starrystarrynight]

I was in high school in the late 60's and college in the early 70's when my classmates and roommates and I were doing "occult" stuff with regularity. The culture around us was that of rebellion, anti-war activities and the ubiquitous "make love, not war" sentiment. So, we didn't give a fig about what society as a whole thought about us. We lit candles, pulled out a deck or the Ouija Board, passed around the hookah (or whatever was available) and got engrossed in it. As I recall, you could buy several different tarot decks in head shops, but I think I had only the Rider Waite (at least, I know that was my first deck.)

The greater society outside our windows was old, gray and uninformed...and you know we never trusted anyone over thirty ( ) . We knew it all, anyway, so it didn't matter what "they" thought.

 

[Barleywine]

I was in high school in the late 60's and college in the early 70's when my classmates and roommates and I were doing "occult" stuff with regularity. The culture around us was that of rebellion, anti-war activities and the ubiquitous "make love, not war" sentiment. So, we didn't give a fig about what society as a whole thought about us. We lit candles, pulled out a deck or the Ouija Board, passed around the hookah (or whatever was available) and got engrossed in it. As I recall, you could buy several different tarot decks in head shops, but I think I had only the Rider Waite (at least, I know that was my first deck.)

The greater society outside our windows was old, gray and uninformed...and you know we never trusted anyone over thirty ( ) . We knew it all, anyway, so it didn't matter what "they" thought.

Were you by chance ever a member of the Astrological Society of Connecticut? My brother and I ran our classes out of his home in East Hartford, and we had our short-lived "center" on Main Street there.

 

[Bhavana]

I was into using regular playing cards for divination as a teen, but didn't buy my first real tarot deck till the early to mid 80's, the Sacred Rose, followed a few years later by the very first Mythic Tarot (I thought my knowledge of the Greek myths would help me learn) I already had a life long interest in the occult, had the ouija board, all that sort of stuff.

At this time, there were a few decks available here and there at bookstores, but this was before there was a Barnes n Noble in every town...so I am talking Walden books, or Encore - the mall bookstores. But on South Street in Philadelphia, there is an awesome store called Garland of Letters. The store has everything, but mostly it is New Age - books, crystals, incense, etc. Back when I picked up the Sacred Rose, they had a fairly decent selection of decks, and they had sample decks, so you could see what you were getting. At a time before the internet, this was great - it would still be great if most stores did it. In fact, didn't Borders in the beginning? I seem to remember that instead of having all the decks on the shelves, they just had empty boxes - you chose your deck and then they got it for you from behind the counter, and the decks that were in those empty boxes were available to look at? At least, I think they did it that way - during that particular time, I wasn't in the market for decks so I am not sure if my memory serves me right.

Anyway, in the 80's, I knew very few other people personally who read tarot. I had a few girlfriends who got into it because of me, but other than that, the only other readers I knew of were the pros. These days, the world and other people in it is so much more available to us...sometimes I think this is good, sometimes not, but back then, the only knowledge I could gather about tarot was what I read in books. Eventually I lost interest in the cards, gave my 1st edition Mythic to Goodwill (!!!) but held onto the Sacred Rose. I pulled out the cards every now and then to read for myself or others, but for about 10 years, didn't bother much. Maybe if I'd had a computer or knew of other people into tarot, I would have stayed connected, but things were different back then.

 

[starrystarrynight]

Were you by chance ever a member of the Astrological Society of Connecticut? My brother and I ran our classes out of his home in East Hartford, and we had our short-lived "center" on Main Street there.

If only...but, no, I had no wheels then and was pretty much stuck in a dorm room. By the time I had transport of my own, I wasn't in the area anymore. Sounds like it would have been right up my alley, though.

 

[velvetina]

I bought my first deck in 1981 - it was the first i'd ever seen outside of TV and film..the Rider-Waite. there were no books to accompany it, just that notorious LWB...I just made things up accordimng to the pictures!

This is rural Northumberland in the early 80's and perhaps there were other decks in the county, but i never saw any til I went off to university in 1983 and met my friend who had a Fergus Hall tarot of the Witches....then i met two much, much older women, who were very 'old school' and had IJJ decks. They disapproved of my buying my own deck, lettting other people touch it etc etc...my friend A. & I used to play games like snap with our decks! we didn't follow any prescriptive ideas or ideology and the Tarot was something like a poem, a game, a dream.

In 1985 I discovered a market stall selling Tarot and bought a Thoth deck and then all of a sudden decks seemed to be everywhere!! And books too...my first books were probably the Crowley 'book of thoth' and Arthur Waites Pictorial Key, but I actually liked that antiquated feel.


I became involved in traveller/peace camp life in the 1980's - quite diferent from the idea of the yuppie! I was reading Tarot in a tipi or the back of a caravan for anyone who was interested

by the late 80's I was married, settled in a house and having babies & the next phase of my Tarot-life was reading Tarot professionally in a shop and I was also in a coven. We all used either Motherpeace or Daughters of the Moon tarot; and although this was a very short phase of my life, that was when practically everyone in my life had a deck of Tarot.

this was the time when everyone seemed to 'smudging' their decks with incense and wrapping them in silk scarves and leaving on the window sill under the Full Moon. And i still do these things, again, just because i like the idea of it - its magical and pretty - not because I think it means more.

 

[Emily]

I read with envy the stories of how other AT'ers started their tarot journeys. Mine started and pretty much ended in 1981. I was 15 and the deck was the 1JJ Swiss. Bought from an occult shop that I found by accident - I only went there 3 times. Second time was to buy the Stuart Kaplan book that went with the 1JJ Swiss and to be offered free tarot lessons that I turned down, and the third time was to find they had been run out of town, the shop closed down.

I was pretty much on my own, the library didn't have any books on tarot and I'd tried other bookshops in my town and had my boyfriend drive me to bookshops in surrounding towns, books they did have didn't 'go' with the 1JJ Swiss and I never saw any other decks, if I'd seen the Rider Waite then I know I would have ended up buying one.

I never took to the 1JJ Swiss and by the end of 1981 it was put in a drawer with the book and pretty much forgotten about for around 20 years. I always knew where they were though and even when I married and left home, they migrated with me.

My tarot interest started again, my real tarot journey, when I saw the Original Rider Waite in W H Smiths, I bought them, found Joan Bunnings site and from there found AT, 9 years ago.

 

[Chiriku]

Like Le Fanu, I bought my first deck in the early 80s. 83 to be exact.

I was living in Birmingham, which is the second biggest city in the UK, but still, buying a deck was not easy. Not many shops had them and those that did didn't have much choice. But I found me a Thoth!

....
And I valued that deck so much. It was special and it was precious. The whole thing was special in a way it isn't now.

And you still use and love the Thoth today, don't you? I have observed that for many people I talk to, including myself, one's first X, Y or Z (whatever that may be) remains a solid favorite even decades later, even when there are plenteous wonderful new things to be had. I believe it's that "magic" of nostalgia that leaves its shimmer on the items, places, songs, and events years and years after we first encounter them.

I've yet to be swayed by a cover of a song; the original artist and arrangement I fell in love with remains my favorite. It's somewhat of a bother, actually.

That's not to suggest Thoth is not an objectively quality deck. I think most of us are aware that it is.

But my local town had a very small bookshop run by an eccentric lady, an unmarried 70-odd year old woman who tested racing cars in her free time.

She sounds superbly eccentric.

Ok, well, I got my first deck in 1971, as a birthday gift, along with a copy of the Pictorial Key by Waite, which I faithfully consulted every time I did a reading, invariably a Celtic Cross because I hadn't the wit to do anything else. I read for myself and friends only.

I was wedded to Celtic Cross for the first year or so as well. Well, maybe not a whole year, but it felt like it. As soon as I started writing my own spreads, my readings became more meaningful.

That's one thing that hasn't changed since the old days...books geared towards beginners are still touting the good old CC.

No. There would have been more music shops, perhaps, and certainly more pubs with beer gardens where bands were allowed to play (nowdays they are all packed to the rafters with poker machines and pub-music has largely died). It took me years and years and years of searching, from the middle seventies to the early eighties, to find any shops at all that sold alternative literature, and then it was only a conventional bookshop with one shelf of interesting books way back in the back of the shop. Community? Pah! It took me until the late 1980s to start to meet like-minded people in any numbers
.

Well, there go my dreams of wanton hippie holdovers roaming the countryside and spilling out of the doorways of "taroty" (to borrow Le Fanu's term) shops clouded with incense.

But everything you shared was of great interest; I thank you. I enjoyed reading about the contrast between your 80s and 90s and today.

I was in high school in the late 60's and college in the early 70's when my classmates and roommates and I were doing "occult" stuff with regularity. The culture around us was that of rebellion, anti-war activities and the ubiquitous "make love, not war" sentiment. So, we didn't give a fig about what society as a whole thought about us. We lit candles, pulled out a deck or the Ouija Board, passed around the hookah (or whatever was available) and got engrossed in it. As I recall, you could buy several different tarot decks in head shops, but I think I had only the Rider Waite (at least, I know that was my first deck.)

The greater society outside our windows was old, gray and uninformed...and you know we never trusted anyone over thirty ( ) . We knew it all, anyway, so it didn't matter what "they" thought.

A-ha, now this is more like it! Keep feeding my groovy tarot fantasies, starry.

These days, the world and other people in it is so much more available to us...sometimes I think this is good, sometimes not, but back then, the only knowledge I could gather about tarot was what I read in books.

Yes, say what one will about the Internet, but it has certainly benefited me in my tarot work, beginning with the Tarot-L listserve, whose emailed digests I used to eagerly await in my inbox. They were my only outlet to speak to likeminded serious tarotists, and in fact, nowadays AT (and selected blogs I learned of largely through AT) serves the same function for me.

This is rural Northumberland in the early 80's and perhaps there were other decks in the county, but i never saw any til I went off to university in 1983 and met my friend who had a Fergus Hall tarot of the Witches....then i met two much, much older women, who were very 'old school' and had IJJ decks. They disapproved of my buying my own deck, lettting other people touch it etc etc...my friend A. & I used to play games like snap with our decks! we didn't follow any prescriptive ideas or ideology and the Tarot was something like a poem, a game, a dream.

In 1985 I discovered a market stall selling Tarot and bought a Thoth deck and then all of a sudden decks seemed to be everywhere!! And books too...my first books were probably the Crowley 'book of thoth' and Arthur Waites Pictorial Key, but I actually liked that antiquated feel.


I became involved in traveller/peace camp life in the 1980's - quite diferent from the idea of the yuppie! I was reading Tarot in a tipi or the back of a caravan for anyone who was interested

by the late 80's I was married, settled in a house and having babies & the next phase of my Tarot-life was reading Tarot professionally in a shop and I was also in a coven. We all used either Motherpeace or Daughters of the Moon tarot; and although this was a very short phase of my life, that was when practically everyone in my life had a deck of Tarot.

this was the time when everyone seemed to 'smudging' their decks with incense and wrapping them in silk scarves and leaving on the window sill under the Full Moon. And i still do these things, again, just because i like the idea of it - its magical and pretty - not because I think it means more.

I thoroughly enjoyed your trip down memory lane. Thank you for bringing me back in time with you.

I read with envy the stories of how other AT'ers started their tarot journeys. Mine started and pretty much ended in 1981. I was 15 and the deck was the 1JJ Swiss. Bought from an occult shop that I found by accident - I only went there 3 times. Second time was to buy the Stuart Kaplan book that went with the 1JJ Swiss and to be offered free tarot lessons that I turned down, and the third time was to find they had been run out of town, the shop closed down.

well, to be honest with you, if the 1JJ Swiss had been the only deck to which I'd have had access, I might have waited 20 years before returning to tarot, as well!

 

[VGimlet]

I got my first deck in 1972. I was eleven. I had wanted a deck for awhile, but the only thing out there were old decks with old art that were very unappealing to my pre-teen self. But finally I found the Aquarian in our local bookstore. I think if I had been in college maybe I would have found some like-minded souls, but I was too young. And my parents were older.

Like most others, I was the only person I knew who read tarot until about 1982. A friend of one of my co-workers also read tarot and did astrology, and she was the first person I met in real life. She was known as kind of a flake to her other friends, but still - it was pretty cool.
I still don't have much contact with other tarot readers in person. Now a young friend of mine (she's 21) is into tarot, and I am trying to gently mentor her here and there.

It did feel pretty magical though, to finally find my deck.

 

[Lillie]

And you still use and love the Thoth today, don't you? I have observed that for many people I talk to, including myself, one's first X, Y or Z (whatever that may be) remains a solid favorite even decades later, even when there are plenteous wonderful new things to be had. I believe it's that "magic" of nostalgia that leaves its shimmer on the items, places, songs, and events years and years after we first encounter them.

Yes, although it's not the same one. A bad thing happened to my first Thoth.

Also the thoth wasn't my first deck. My first was the 1JJ, but very quickly I got the thoth and gave that first one away.
I remember the very first reading I ever did, and that was with the 1JJ, of course. That memory has a magical shimmer of nostalgia, but I don't use that deck. I got rid of it very quickly.

But is my attachment to the Thoth nostalgia? Or is it that the Thoth is such a damn good deck with so many depths that it can last 30 years and still have something to show me?
I don't know, that deck is tied very much to who I am, but I don't think I would be able to say the same if I had stuck with the 1JJ.

Hard to say, really.

 

[Barleywine]

But is my attachment to the Thoth nostalgia? Or is it that the Thoth is such a damn good deck with so many depths that it can last 30 years and still have something to show me?

I would go with the second impression. I've used it for almost 40 years now, although I do experiment some with other decks. It was my gateway into the whole "qabalistic tarot" thing and it's still one of the best examples of its type. As a summing-up of major elements of Crowley's "magickal" knowledge, the Book of Thoth itself leads off in so many interesting directions that it can become a lifetime study, all of which feeds back into a deeper understanding of the individual cards. For example, I doubt I would have discovered Frazer's "The Golden Bough" so early in life without Crowley's prompting.