Question by Anisa: I want to buy a deck of tarot cards but when I went to the store there was so many, which do I chose?
I went to Barnes & Nobles the other day and in the spiritual section they had box cases of tarot card decks. There was many different varieties from the “A dummy’s guide to Tarot Cards” which included a deck of cards and a mat to other more generic ones. How can I decide which one will be the best buy? Will any be different from others?
Best answer:
Answer by Who aren’t you?
The art will be different. They all should be the same number and variety of cards. Though even Barnes & Nobles doesn’t have that great of a selection.
I’d suggest you look at them and find one that comes with some literature on it too, unless you want just to have a deck of cards and no more.
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It doesn’t matter, they don’t really do anything. But if you have your heart set on a deck, the the Rider Waite deck.
What exactly are you wanting to do? Have you considered praying? I have generally found that more productive and therapeutic than trying the mystical methods such as tarot cards
The Rider-Waite deck is the most popular deck in use today. You should be able to find books on how to read the Rider-Waite deck with no problem. You can find information keyed to it on line as well (http://www.ehow.com/how_4614873_read-rider-waite-tarot-cards.html , for example).
If you’re going to buy a deck with a different set of designs, be sure you can get a book on how to read the specific cards you do buy. Eventually, when you can read most layouts most of the time without referring to the book, you may want to try a different design or even design your own. While you’re learning, however, it’s critical to be able to discern what the cards are telling you, and you’ll need instructions that are keyed to your cards for that.
There are two ways going about this. If you want to use the cards for meditation/intutive perspectives, you could browse over the card illustrations and pick a deck which “pulls” you most.
If you want to learn tarot, I would suggest you pick the Rider-Waite or a variation of the Rider Waite for a simple reason that it is the most popular deck and most other decks build/variate on its concepts and the the RW is a good first foundation deck . Another reason is that you will find a lot of free reading material on the RW deck on the web. Most discussions and online reading sites also use RW which helps you learn and connect more.
Good luck,
Tarot Faith
http://tarotfaith.blogspot.com/p/learn-tarot.html
at Aeclectic Tarot there are reviews and some images of many different decks. They also have them listed by themes and characteristics – which should help you figure out what kind of deck would work best for you.
Even within the Rider-Smith-Waite decks there are many to choose from, as far as color and size. And if the images don’t appeal to you, you can get decks that are similar in context but use different themes. Check out http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/ before you buy anything.