Still my strongest tool

Last night I held a "Tarot Night" for several friends. It was meant to be very informal, a situation where we could talk about and think about readings, reading styles, and different ways of interpreting cards of the Major Arcana. And it went very, very well.

We discussed the Empress, Temperance/Alchemy/Art (number 14), and Judgment/Aeon. I especially loved the comparisons between the Cosmic Tribe deck and the Rider-Waite. There was also a Stick Figure Tarot, which made everyone giggle, and a deck entirely drawn by a friend of one of the people there. I wish I'd had a chance to look at that one a little more.

The vagaries of Tarot etiquette came up: do other people get to touch the deck you use? To read with it? To borrow it? Do you wrap it in silk or keep it in the box? Buy a deck or receive it as a gift? I recognize my own restrictions as idiosyncratic: I don't let other people use it, though I do let them look at it; I don't read for myself, and I don't read for someone else if I start getting uneasy during the preparation stage. I also restrict myself from spending time with other decks, anything more than a quick browse. There's no philosophy underlying these restrictions, just a feeling that this deck is My Deck, and needs to be treated as such.

I think the only thing I'd want to improve is the number of people doing the readings--even those who owned and used decks were very shy about reading for others. I wonder if this is one of those skills where you always feel like an amateur, no matter how many years you've been doing it.

Perhaps this summer I'll undertake the full progression--go through the deck, one card per day, meditating and thinking about it and inviting its presence in my life.