Hey there;

I had wanted to start this summer of learning Tarot at the start of next month (July) however I am away for the first week on holiday and likely won’t have the time to dedicate to tarot nor the time or equipment (i.e. laptop) to type any of it up with me so instead, I decided to start it now.

Now I said previously I didn’t have a deck – that wasn’t completely true, I had a deck I had bought years ago – before my interest in Witchcraft and purely because they looked cool and edgy – and I thought I’d lost a bunch of the cards as I hadn’t taken great care of them, but when I recounted a few days ago I had all 78 of them. I also discovered the name of the deck, and have now bought a replacement – as I adore the deck, and sadly let these cards be battered and abused but I have such a strong connection with it I’m not even sure if I’ll use the new one right away.

Now, keep in mind I must have been a preteen at the time when I bought them but the deck I am currently using is the Wishcraft Tarot Cards by Fantasma Magic very childish looking and maybe not the best deck, but there’s just something about this deck I adore, maybe the fact I found it before I’d even started actively on my path. Who knows, either way, the cards are all there so I decided to kick off my Summer of Divining today with a reading for myself and getting myself oriented for the best way to move forward in learning the language of tarot.

Now I won’t have this great long introduction each day, I just wanted to give a bit of context to why I decided to start this halfway through June, now I have already written down my thoughts and such about the reading in my own Grimore but  I’ll share it here for now – just not in as great detail.

So,

Day 1:

I started off by shuffling the deck, something I struggle with because I have teeny-tiny hands, but the more I did it the more comfortable I became with handling the deck, so don’t stress if you drop cards or can’t shuffle cards as smoothly as you may have seen. I shuffled until I felt I had found the ‘right‘ card – now this always seemed off to me – what do you mean the ‘right’ card? Well for this card at least it happened to pop out of the deck a few times, both at the front and back, then it appeared in the middle of the deck so I decided to pull that card – that card being – the 4 of Wands!

Now one issue with this deck is that it looks similar to playing cards, or at least the majority of the Minor Arcana (which can be related to playing cards – but that’s for another time I’m getting off track).

 

The 4 of wands (reversed – as seen from the back of the card) looks as below.

          

Now in order to learn, I’ll be looking first at the card artwork, then looking at further learning from online sources (currently 2 because I don’t want to overcomplicate things for myself).

Artwork: duality, mirroring, synchronicity,

Further learning:

Biddy Tarot: Key-words:

Upright: Celebration, joy, harmony, relaxation, homecoming,

Reversed: Personal celebration, inner harmony, conflict with others, transition,

all-things-witchcraft (Tumblr):

Wands element is fire,

Timing: spring or weeks

Suggests movement, action and initiatives

4 of Wands –

Upright: celebration, harmony, marriage, home. community

Reversed: a breakdown in communication, transition.

Thoughts:

The duality/mirroring I got initially could relate to a couple (i.e. 2 people) or our inner/outer selves – ‘inner harmony’. Conflict with others can be seen as the wands appear to be directed at each other.

~

I decided to pull another card – but keeping the 4 of Wands out. Shuffled the deck again to see if another card would jump out.

Pulled: 2 of Cups – upright

Now I really struggled to get anything from this artwork intuitively – I don’t know enough, so I cheated a bit and looked up the 2 of Cups from another deck.

I don’t know the name of this deck but I actually really like the artwork (so if anyone knows please let me know)

Artwork: companionship, harmony, unity, similar yet different,

Further learning:

Biddy Tarot: Upright: unified love, partnership, mutual attraction,

Reversed: Self-love, break-ups, disharmony, distrust

all-things-witchcraft (Tumblr):

Cups element is Water

Timing: Summer

Direction: west

Suggests: emotions and expression of feelings, thinking with the heart rather than the head,

2 of Cups-

Upright: Unified love, partnership, attraction, relationships

Reversed: Break-up, imbalance in relationship, lack of harmony,

Thoughts: learning through artwork and intuition with this deck will not work – perhaps a different approach? Learn the basics of the suits first for a starting point?

~

Now I decided because I had two possible meanings for the two cards to pull a clarifying card:

King of Swords: upright

Artwork: protection, defensive, straight to the point, barrier? The formation of the 8 swords around the crown makes me feel protected or hidden behind a barrier of some sort? The crown has 3 blue gems and 1 pink, suggesting growth? Protection through growth?

Further Learning:

Biddy Tarot: Upright: mental clarity, intellectual power, authority, truth,

Reversed: quiet power inner truth, misuse of power, manipulation,

all-things-witchcraft (Tumblr):

Swords element is Air.

Timing: Autumn or months

Suggests: action, change, force, power, mind and intellect

Can be double-edged – the balance of intellect and power and how either can be used for good or evil. Balance alongside Spirit (Wands) and Feelings (Cups).

King of Swords-

Upright: Clear thinking, intellectual power, authority, truth,

Reversed: Manipulative, tyrannical, abusive

Thought: The barrier idea can relate to a mental barrier to allow clear thinking and Clarity.

Honestly, I found this card hilarious, I asked for a clarifying card and I literally got a card for Clarity. Didn’t find that at the time it led to much clarity to the two previous cards.

looking back I feel that it was not needed, I was just looking at the cards wrong – to me at least the 4 of wands reversed and 2 of cup suggests a transition from one relationship to another – one where I am considerably happier, but the King of Swords offers a warning, not to tip the balance and risk having the 2 of cups become reversed, or the King himself.

Either way, this was a great start to this, I found out a lot about three of the cards and discovered my deck could be humorous.

That’s all for now, I’ll see you all again for day 2 🙂

I hope your day is as pleasant as you.

Luna

xxx