Hello all of you! This is my first blog post. As a brief introduction, my name is Monica, I am a wife and mother who writes software as a day job, and I read tarot cards for myself and for others. I am starting this as a true blog, like an old-school online diary, to document and share all of the amazing experiences that I get to have with tarot.
I’ll say that I am not just limited to tarot decks – I also love oracle decks, and often mix the two in my readings. I have a relatively small collection of tarot and oracle decks, but as I start to come out more and more to my family and friends, they have started gifting me decks for birthdays and holidays, which has dramatically helped my collection grow.
The very first deck I ever had was and is a Radiant Rider-Waite deck, which is a beautiful traditional tarot deck (perfect for beginners, as I soon learned).
But let me take a step back… how did I first get into tarot? Well, it was relatively recently, while I was sick with a cold and needed something to occupy myself. I random thought popped into my head that I should lookup books on witchcraft.
Side note: I consider myself claircognizant, meaning I sometimes just know things without having a logical reason to know them. Thoughts will pop into my head about something that has happened or will happen, or random thoughts will jump to the front of my mind and change the direction of what I was going to do. This thought to lookup books on witchcraft is a perfect example! It changed the direction of my life.
Back to the main story, I started looking up some books, and found a lot of discussion of divination. And one of the classic tools of divination was tarot. Now, I can’t tell you why tarot connected with me more than anything else about witchcraft, but it seemed incredible to me that a deck of cards could be “read” to give you different perspective, direction, or even information about your life. This just was the coolest idea on earth to me. But, I was also a little scared of it.
At the time I was mostly agnostic and completely out of tune with anything spiritual. I lived a logic-driven existence, and was mostly happy with it. But I had always felt something was missing, and I had always felt I was meant for something more than what I was living. What scared me about tarot was that if everyone I knew found out I was doing it, they would judge me for being too woo-woo mystical, and not living according to logic anymore.
But then a sign came. I went to the local bookstore with my husband and daughter, and I wondered to myself if there would be any tarot cards there. It is a fairly small bookstore with a relatively mainstream audience, so I assumed there was little chance there would be. I told myself if I can find a tarot deck, I will consider buying it.
We walked into the store, and I headed to the back to my favorite section at the time: cookbooks (total foodie here). Next to the cookbook section was the only seating area in the store, with a couch and a couple of chairs around a coffee table. And what, dear reader, do you suppose was on the coffee table? Not one, not two, but THREE tarot decks, including a rather ornate one in a gift box. Up on the glass shelves above the sofa were two more tarot decks. Now, I don’t know what your local bookstores are like, but this seemed way out of character for this store. I had been in there countless times before and never remembered seeing any card decks of any kind. I was floored. My whole logic-based belief system got turned upside down. This had to be a sign from the universe, or somebody.
Despite the obvious smack-you-over-the-head signal I got, I didn’t buy a deck that day. But I went home and got on Amazon and started reading more about tarot. I found a book that looked great, and ended being my bible as I started learning the cards and doing readings, and I ordered my Radiant Rider-Waite.
When the deck arrived in the mail, I was literally nervous to open it. The cards felt like they had a power to them unlike any material possession I had owned before. I didn’t know what was in store for me, but I just felt that I was moving in the right direction.
I mysteriously also picked the exact right book for myself as an introduction to tarot – Kitchen Table Tarot by Melissa Cynova. The way she wrote, the way she genuinely shared her experiences, and her personal interpretation of the cards all connected with me immediately.
For my first reading, I went balls to the wall and did a full Celtic cross spread. This was a bit daunting. I didn’t quite understand what questions I was supposed to be asking, how the different positions of the spread related to my questions, and how the cards were supposed to answer anything. But as I went through each card in the spread, looking up the meaning in Kitchen Table Tarot, I started to see how the cards were telling the story of what had brought me to them.
I wish I had written down what I exactly I read that day in the Celtic Cross, because I don’t remember any of the specifics and I am really disappointed about that. But I remember being floored that this deck of cards was able to tell me so much about myself. I saw not just the things I already knew, but the things I needed to see but had been blind to until then. It was just……. a powerful experience. Magical.
And now here I am, still reading tarot for myself, and having branched out to reading for others, and even making some money from it. I love it more than any other hobby I’ve ever tried to pick up. (Well, maybe only rivaled by my high school rock star dreams that led me to pick up a guitar and start writing music, but that is a different story altogether.)
I hope you enjoyed me sharing this story, and I hope tarot was, is, and always will be as magical for you as it is for me! I’d love to hear your stories of how you discovered tarot – feel free to share this article on social media with your own experience!
And now for some links! I earn a small commission from Amazon if you click through the links below and purchase something, and this does not affect the price you pay in anyway. I appreciate your support!
The Radiant Rider-Waite deck is available on Amazon, and comes with a nice, detailed book, perfect for people new to tarot and a great gift:
Kitchen Table Tarot is by far my favorite tarot book, and was enough to get me started reading for myself and others without needing any other guides. You can find it in paperback, Kindle ebook, and audio book on Amazon:
If you’d like a free copy of the tarot cheat sheets I use in my practice, and to receive my newsletter to stay up to date on my latest blog posts, sign up here: Tarot Elements Cheat Sheets
