Tarot
Many people get confused over what is and what isn’t tarot. A true tarot deck has 78 cards. These are divided into 22 Major Arcana cards, and 22 Minor Arcana cards. Arcana means ‘secret’ and the major arcana can show major secrets about our lives.
The reading which was spreaded by the cards shuffled and then dealt in different layouts is then interpreted by the reader and can give answer questions, valuable guidance and insight into our lives.
Many people blame those cards that have names such as The Tower and The Devil and Death and they're wary them? Contrary to popular belief, these tarot cards are not negative or evil. The Death card can show change and an end to something or time to move on, but not means the death. Our deeper --the part of us we keep hidden side showed by Devil, and The Tower may indicate too much energy welling up that needs to be listened to and troubles.
Oracle decks usually have fewer cards than the tarot and quite often have message written on them with the meaning of that card and so are very easy to learn and use to give readings. Angel cards can give a sunnioer optimistic reading that is gentle and supportive, so it's very popular. Crystal cards can help you to choose crystal everyday. Animal cards can help us to link into our animal guides and totems.
Which Deck to choose?
Many people find it hard to choose their first tarot deck which might be a better choice than others and give everyone a head start,so I wanted to write a bit about how to choose your first deck.
One of the most famous decks is called The ‘Rider Waite’ or to be more accurate the ‘Rider Waite Smith’.The designer was Arthur Edward Waite,publisher is Rider and the artist is Pamela Colman Smith. It was first published in 1910, and has been reprinted many times, and can now be found as the Universal Waite or the Radiant, or Golden Waite deck. The Rider Waite Smith deck was possibly the first tarot deck to change to full blown colour pictures of scenes from the tradition surrounding the minor arcana cards from being a plain card showing just 6 wands or 2 swords or 5 cups etc,thus making it much easier to interpret without specialist knowledge. The pictures have been updated and re-coloured in many decks and this coupled withthe easy to interpret pictures is one of the main reasons that it is still used today by so many tarot readers and teachers.
The Book of Thoth or The Thoth Tarot which was designed by Aleister Crowley using the artist Lady Frieda Harris to paint the cards is the other main deck for our purposes. In 1969,this deck was published posthumously and some editions have 3 Magus cards making a total of 80 cards.
