Le Fanu said:
I keep meaning to start a thread on why it is that we sometimes read better with the decks we have never used before. An antithesis to the IDS movement! Think about it; how many times have you got crystal clear readings from a deck you know nothing about, shuffled for the first time, where months of journalling might have led to paralysis!
Seems as though you've just done what you kept meaning to.
My most obvious story is one I have described somewhere here before: when I first received the Kunati Quantum on its release I was reading publicly, and I took the deck to work to study between-clients.
A client sat down. I said "Pick the artwork that you like the best." He glanced at the row of presented decks, glanced at the quantum on the table but close to me and not presented, and said "that one".
"But it's brand-new and I don't know it yet," I said. "I haven't ever read with it yet."
"No matter, I want that one."
So I said I couldn't guarantee the results, picked it up, got them to shuffle, and got started. And straight out of the box, not even thumbed-through, it gave a killer-reading! What a great deck.
In a more general sense, I believe it is *good* for us to use decks we're not so familiar with. It stretches us, it gets us to learn or to think in fresh ways, it encourages the formation of new neural connections in our brain, the benefits are many and valuable.
It's like a top-flight classical musician. You like Beethoven and Brahms. You can play everything of theirs sublimely, drawing tears from everyone who listens. You're not so great with Benjamin Britten or Prokofieff.
Sure, when you finish breakfast and go into your music room to practice, sure, playing Beethoven or Brahms might be *easy*. And offer anyone who listens to you a sublime experience. But is it sublime to you? Picking up a Prokofieff score, the musical language is entirely different. It stretches not only your mind, but your fingers. And when you finally lick that piece of music into shape enough to be able to go to rehearsals with the rest of the orchestra without being embarrassed, what a sense of accomplishment you feel!
Use your unused decks. I don't make new years resolutions, but a quiet thought in the back of my mind was that I was going to go through the huge wicker basket that contains my collection and turn it upside-down, with all the popular, frequently-used decks buried at the bottom and all those I haven't used for ages on the top, then only use the decks on top. That plan, of course, was stuffed from the moment, yesterday, when the Science Tarot arrived. Still, I can pick it up again, once I'm through this little flirtation. If we treat our older but unused decks as new arrivals, what a joy!
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Have you ever listened to a sleeping trombone? I rest my case. (Nisaba Merrieweather)
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