"they" say the best way to study tarot is to make a deck.

i did that with the 80's tarot , although that deck does not exist anywhere physically (yet). but now i am finishing up the trinity doughnuts tarot -- the collage tarot deck meant for nobody but me, and i am in the home stretch of completing the actual, physical, cards-in-hand deck. it has really been a new and satisfying experience. and not just because i love the smell of contact paper.

i am no photoshop whiz now, and i was even less of one when i began making this deck. the print quality is everyman-shoddy. i don't care. i made tarot cards, that i can hold in my hand. it's been about four years since i began the project. i am still posting the cards online one by one and writing the text for each one by one. but by the end of this weekend, the deck itself will be finished.

i will knit a little bag for it, and i will start using it for daily meditations.

the cards are petite. and because of the contact paper, they are also rather fat when held together as a deck. it will be very hard to shuffle, for divination purposes, and possibly easier to just let go of and smear around the table, like when one uses the mah-jong for divination. however it goes is okay with me.

i wonder if when i'm in my sixties i'll be putting together another collage deck for myself, with new images and ideas relating to parts of my life that i haven't even uncovered yet. when sitting at the kitchen table yesterday cutting out cards, i thought; if i ever have a child, i will make a deck for them, and let the tarot become part of their minds that way. big, beautiful cards that we can read together like storybooks.

it has been too long since i've been making the tarot a part of my everyday work and life. i'm hoping this journal will make things easier for me to keep track of and motivate me to study.

the deck i'm using now for readings and meditations is the tarot de paris by j. phillip thomas. it's my current choice because we are planning a trip to paris this fall.

prior to this i had been using stevee postman's cosmic tribe tarot. i still find this deck supremely original and beautiful, but it's imagery started feeling a little "young" and outdated for me. i have not given up the deck; i doubt i ever will, although recently i have given away quite a few decks, including my rider-waite, which i never did enjoy using.

in addition to the text that goes hand in hand with whatever deck i am using at the given time, i also use the text from a site on understanding the tarot which is no longer online. fortunately, i printed out every single page in september of 1998, which is when i stopped working full time. this text is all based on a rider-waite deck, and i think these interpretations are important to utliize along with the author's text from whatever deck one is working with.

also, in this notebook with all these printouts, i found that i had made a calendar for the month of september 1998, upon which i had recorded every daily meditation i had made, and then, at the end of the month, made comments on cards that i saw appearing frequently, or only on certain days of the week, and cards that i expected to see in upcoming readings. i was pretty on the ball!

time to get back on the ball.