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lunadayblog-blog · 5 years

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1.31.19 - The Power of One

For my fellow Tarot readers and diviners out there who have a verifiable collection of divination tools (defined as 3+ of the same tool, but of different varieties), I have a few questions to ask you about your divination practice.

When you go to decide which deck you’ll use to perform a reading, do you ever stall out because you feel a tug from multiple of your decks and aren’t immediately sure which one your intuition is telling you to use?

When the cards don’t fall in a way that’s easy to interpret or comfortable to absorb, do you find yourself tempted to reach for another deck to get a second opinion?

Do you have multiple decks that never get used?

Do you have decks you bought because they were beautiful pieces of art, but you never take time to appreciate or display that artwork?

If you are answering “yes” to any of these questions, I have a suggestion to make. Maybe it will seem radical, but hear me out:

Eliminate all your decks but one.

I know that at this point, some of you are ready to fight me on this. Some of you are dropping off and closing the tab thinking, “This is ridiculous. If this person thinks I’m getting rid of my Tarot decks, she’s crazy.” To those people, I have one important follow-up question to ask:

Do your Tarot decks represent a part of your identity that’s so important to you that the idea of getting rid of decks is psychologically linked to the idea that you would be abandoning an important part of your identity?

I fell into this category. Like many people who grew up in religiously and politically conservative environments, I was forbidden to bring anything occult into the house. The nearest bookstore was more than half an hour away by car, so I didn’t have access to much. The stuff I did manage to sneak in was often found and thrown away without without my knowledge, and without discussion. For many years, the idea of owning a Tarot deck of my own was only a much beloved daydream. When I became an adult, one of my major indulgences was collecting Tarot decks. I wanted to surround myself in magic, and Tarot was a way of doing that. So much beautiful art! So many choices! One deck became a half a dozen became twenty, and the number of decks kept rising. But before long, I started to realize that for me, owning so many Tarot decks was becoming a hindrance to my divination practice.

How so? Tell me if this situation sounds familiar...

I have an important question or need to do a reading for a client, so I go to my collection of decks to decide which one I should use. I open up my intuition to see which decking is tugging at me, and a deck or two immediately come to mind. Then a third one. Then a fourth and a fifth. Enough decks are pinging me that I may find myself falling into a dangerous maneuver -- I start considering which deck I want to use based on which one is most likely to give me the reading I want. I know the personality of each deck, so I know that this one will give kind and gentle advice, that one will focus on the practical stuff, that one will give me spiritual guidance, this one will tell me to do things that push me outside my comfort zone...et cetera. If I spot that my ego has gotten involved, I might be able to reverse course and go with the deck toward which my intuition was initially drawn (if I can still remember which one it was!). Maybe I go with the first deck, maybe I don’t. Either way, I sit down with the deck I’ve chosen, and I perform the reading. Maybe the cards don’t fall the way I was hoping they would, or maybe the reading is a little obtuse, or maybe what it’s showing me is uncomfortable or seems unrelated to my question. And that’s okay -- sometimes, we have to clear our minds, re-shuffle, and do it all again. But then my mind skips back to the other decks I was considering before the reading began. Doubt starts to rear its head -- maybe I should have gone with the other deck. Maybe I should get another perspective on this, my doubt whispers. The other decks start softly chirping at me. Let me tell you what I think about all of this, they beckon sweetly. And it is at this point that my trust in the first reading is irrevocably shattered. Whatever wisdom I might have gotten from sitting with those uncomfortable cards or that hard-to-read wisdom has now been overshadowed by uncertainty. Not only has this reading suffered, but so too has every other reading that I’ll perform in the near future. If I fall into this trap enough times, each reading will begin with that small kernel of doubt firmly planted even before I flip over the first card. If I have a hard time with this deck, I think to myself, maybe it just means I should have gone with a different one. That’s what I’ll do if this reading doesn’t go well. I’ve given myself an escape hatch. More accurately, I’ve given my ego a way to take over for my intuition -- a death knell for any diviner’s practice.

Maybe that experience resonates with you, and maybe it doesn’t...but there are many other reasons to experiment with culling your herd of decks. Pulling away from a consumer-driven culture that tells us buying new things will heal us is a spiritual exercise that no one interested in personal development should overlook. When it comes down to it, even one Tarot deck itself isn’t necessary in order for you to access your intuition and receive profound guidance from the Universe. But if you’re going to use Tarot as a tool and treat it as a guide, try to let your relationship with it deepen; there are really meaningful lessons to be learned from that. Tarot teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. If you abandoned a teacher every time they told you something that challenged you or tried to teach you something that didn’t immediately make sense, you would never learn anything, and your scope of understanding would never grow. If you’re reading this blog post, my guess is that as a diviner or magical practitioner, you’re not in this thing to remain stagnant. You’ve got places to go and things to accomplish, and your divination practice is a part of that.

So, experiment. See what trimming it down to just a single deck does for you, and be open to whatever comes. Having engaged with this change to my practice for the entire month of January, I can tell you that the list of potential benefits just keeps growing and growing. You might find, like I did, that your readings have greater clarity because they have a stronger voice that’s easier for you to identify because you’re more familiar with its particular sound and dialect. You might get better at meditating on the cards when the readings are difficult to interpret or absorb. Cards that used to be difficult to understand will finally start to gain layers of meaning for you. The deck you decide to keep will become a good friend, and one that challenges you to be better rather than an acquaintance whose advice you can easily dismiss when another acquaintance will tell you what you want to hear.

If any of this sounds appealing to you and you want to give the “one deck” approach a try, a few suggestions:

-- Keep a deck that travels well -- if you’ve only got one, you can’t keep a deck in every location where a reading may need to take place. The smaller tarot decks that live in travel tins are an excellent choice. You can throw them in a bag or purse without fear of them getting damaged, and they won’t take up much space. (I dearly love my Smith-Waite Centennial, now my only Tarot deck, pictured above.)

-- Keep a deck that you like. That might even mean going out to buy a new deck because you find that you don’t own a single deck that you really enjoy or with which you deeply connect. Follow the instinct to find that deck, then commit to it and get rid of others. Consider supporting a local new age shop or bookstore with your purchase.

-- If you really think a deck is worth keeping because of its beautiful art, make sure that art is out on display. If you never appreciate or handle the deck, it’s taking some beauty out of the world. Don’t let that beautiful artwork waste away in a shadowy, unopened box.

-- Sell expensive or collector’s decks, give decks to friends who will cherish them, and donate the rest. (I put my give-away decks one or two at a time in a local Free Little Library box so that other kids who were weird like I was will have a shot at scoring their first deck for free.)

-- If you have decks too beautiful, expensive, or sentimental to part with them, put them somewhere you won’t be tempted to reach for them. Store them in an attic or a storage unit, or tell a friend or significant other to hide them for a while; I would recommend at least a few months.

If this process hurts a little or brings up emotions for you, see if you can sit with those and try to understand them. In the process of winnowing our collection down to a single deck, we find the kinds of meaning we assigned to certain decks, and we find how the physical representations of our practice have defined us. But nothing physical that you own truly defines you, and giving any of it away does not mean you’re giving away your identity. Your identity as a diviner or magical practitioner will always belong to you if you want it, and only you can choose to release it. So be a little ruthless in the pursuit of personal growth. Find a way to let all of old ideas and attachments go. You might be surprised at how much they’ve been holding you back and surprised at all the places that having fewer magical items can rapidly expand your practice.

Go ahead. Imagine it. You walk up to the place where dozens of decks used to be, and now you see a single deck. Opening your intuition up to connect with it, you hear one voice -- clearer, louder, and more certain than before because it doesn’t have to be heard above the clamoring of others. You pick up the deck and begin shuffling the cards, and you start to feel that now-familiar feeling of the deck waking up in your hands as your energy moves through it. You think on the readings behind you and the readings ahead of you, and you find yourself deeply grateful for all the moments of difficulty that spawned growth and understanding for you and others, just like you cherish all the moments of joyous, happy revelation that the cards have given you. You take a breath. Close your eyes. Turn over the first card.

And begin.

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