Canny Does Tarot

Whether you get your tarot cards as a gift, buy it online or in-store, it has picked up a bunch of energies from the different people who have handled it. This means your readings won’t be as accurate as they could be. So here’s a guide for beginners of how to take care of their first tarot deck!

Cleansing:

It’s best if you cleanse your deck as soon as possible, and don’t leave it overnight without cleansing on the first night. This is because the energies the deck has picked up could be negative, and it could have an unwanted effect on you. There are heaps of ways you can cleanse your tarot deck, and you can use all of then, or even just one depending on what you have on hand. Here are some easy examples (keep in mind, while performing these you need to have a ‘cleansing’ intent in mind for it to work):

Shuffle the deck

Tap three times on the deck

Blow on top of the deck

Place a tumbled clear quartz crystal on top of the deck

Wave the deck through incense

Create a sigil for cleansing and leave it in the box

'Reset’ the deck by putting it back in its original order by suit and number

This one is best for cleansing after a reading to remove traces of previous energies

Don’t freak out though if someone else touches your deck, nothing bad will happen, just make sure you cleanse it before doing another reading so it’s still accurate. In some situations, you can have someone purposely hold, shuffle, split or draw cards from your deck if you’re doing a reading for them in person and want their energy to be better connected with it.

Bonding:

Bonding with your deck is just as important as cleansing if you want an accurate reading! You should be able to feel a connection with your deck, which helps you understand what it’s trying to tell you through the readings. These are ways you can bond with your deck:

Sleep with your deck under your pillow

Play solitaire with your deck

Watch a movie or TV show while shuffling your deck, then ask it questions about what it thought of the genre/characters/themes

Play music on shuffle while shuffling your deck, then pick a card to help explain the song

Draw a card every day in the morning after shuffling to represent how your day will be

While you’re doing these, take the time to look at the art of each card. Without looking at the guidebook, try working out what you think the card means by looking at things like the colours, shapes, background, animals, plants, figures, and repeating symbols. After you’ve don’t these, you can try a 'get to know my deck’ spread, like this one I made, or make one of your own. This can help you see what kind of things your deck is and isn’t good at reading, and it’s strengths and weaknesses.

Charging:

Like crystals, water, and most other magic tools, tarot decks need to be charged. This is very similar to cleansing action-wise, but it comes down to the intent of those actions. While cleansing is about removing energies from the deck, charging is more like putting energy back into it. This means they have to be performed with a 'charging’ intent rather than a 'cleansing’ one. Here are some examples of how you can charge your deck:

Place one or more pointed clear quartz crystals around the deck, pointing inwards

Leave the deck under the light of the full moon

Create a sigil for charging and leave it in the box

Hold the deck and envision a pure ball of energy moving from you into the deck

Shuffle the deck

Drawing and Shuffling:

There are heaps of ways to shuffle and draw cards that you can go through until you find the one you most prefer! 

Shuffle the deck gently using your method of choice, then break the deck and reverse

If a card jumps out from the deck while shuffling, it’s calling to be read

Let the subject of the reading shuffle the deck while thinking about their question

Let the subject of the reading pick the cards while thinking about their question

Spread out the deck in a line and pick cards based on intuition

Spread out the deck in a line, pick one card based on intuition, then draw the cards either side of it

Pick cards straight from the deck without spreading them

Pick the cards at the top of the deck without spreading them

Let a small group of cards drop onto each section of the spread, the pick the one that’s on top for that position

Let all of the cards drop, spread them out messily, then pick cards based on intuition

When I say 'based on intuition’ I mean that a card could have a different energy to the cards around it. It could seem a slightly different colour, or it could be the one your eyes are drawn to etc, and this is how you can tell if a card is calling out to you to be drawn.

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Other info

If you’re doing an online reading, try to get info such as the subject’s initials, star sign, hair/eye colour, gender (and pronouns), element etc to have a better connection to them for a more accurate reading

Try to avoid yes/no questions, and swap them out for something like “what can I do to make me more likely to…”

Maleficent is certainly someone you wouldn’t want at a party, but she’s also someone powerful enough that only a fool would ever dare treat her with such blatant disrespect. The only way the King and Queen could possibly have gotten away with not inviting Maleficent was to not invite any of the fairies at all; inviting the other fairies and excluding her is explicitly taking sides in the conflict between the fairy factions.

Which means they made themselves her sworn enemies, and she responded by treating them as such from then on. If you actually get into analyzing the social dynamics of the scene, it’s very clear that Maleficent was willing to show mercy at first by giving the King and Queen a chance to apologize for their disrespect to her. She doesn’t curse Aurora until after she gives them that chance and they throw it back in her face with further disrespect.

Why Catholics Say Tarot is Evil

I'm from the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country. I went to a private Catholic school, and in my teens taught Catechism to children in public school. I was Class Valedictorian, so such volunteerism was expected of me. I spent my early life studying Catholicism, and excelling at it.

You can trust me when I say there is one reason and one true reason alone why Catholics consider tarot evil.

Back when Spain owned half the world, it sent friars to its territories to convert the natives.

These friars were corrupt. They told people that heaven has seats they can reserve. That if they regularly donate money to the Church, then their place in heaven is guaranteed.

They also taught people that only they can really speak to God. That while they are encouraged to pray at home, the reception is simply better when the call is done through a priest.

During this time, tarot was already being used in Europe — in Catholic Italy and France — as a way of directly reaching out to divine powers.

The Church would have none of it. Money that could be given to them is now being handed to fortunetellers. Their reputation as the only direct line to heaven is now in danger.

So the Church declared tarot evil.

For money. And bragging rights.

That's really just it.

To justify the myth, people reverse-engineered it. They fooled themselves into coming up with valid reasons for it. "Because Satan invented it." "Because it summons evil spirits." "Because it claims to know more than God."

If you are a true Catholic, then you have to believe that your god is the only true god anyway, right? That no one — Satan or evil spirits — can even try to compete with him.

So why be afraid of tarot in the first place? Surely 78 pieces of cardboard paper are no match for the heavenly father.

Today, tarot is used by people of countless faiths. As a Greco-Roman pagan, I use it to commune with the Fates and my astrological mother Venus. My aunt, who was Catholic, used it to speak to the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. A friend of mine, who is an atheist, uses it to speak to his higher self.

Rain (any pronouns) is a genderfluid model & posts a lot about how their ability to “pass” as either a man or a woman influences them, and shows off the absurdity of double standards such as mens vs womens olympic uniforms and societal treatment based on perceived gender