Unpacking my New Light Seer’s Tarot Deck

There are a lot of tarot unboxing videos on YouTube. Watching them offers an extremely helpful way to decide if a new tarot deck is a good fit or a hard pass.

One we have chosen, or been given, a new tarot deck, we get to do our own unboxing, either on or off cam.

What happens after the unboxing?

That’s the question I want to tackle in this post, using my experience with my new Light Seer’s Tarot as an example.

This will not be a deck review. I do love Light Seer’s Tarot enthusiastically. I will give it a proper review one of these days. In this post, though, I want to document my process of adding a new deck to my exclusive group of ‘workhorse tarot decks’.

I have an extensive tarot collection. It is my goal to expand it further. I want it to be so big that it becomes both a problem and an asset for my children after I am gone from this earth.

Yet, of that extensive collection, very few decks become workhorse decks. That is, decks I will use regularly for clients, and quickly wear out from heavy use.

The idea of wearing out my beautiful new Light Seer’s Tarot, a holiday gift from afore-mentioned children, feels a little horrific to me.  Yet, the lovely images and colors spark my imagination and intuition so much that I just can’t resist sharing the beauty and wisdom of these cards with clients.

I will typically, over many years, buy multiple copies of the same deck. I have worn out countless copies of Universal Waite, Hanson Roberts, Spiral Tarot, Robin Wood, Morgan Greer, and World Spirit.

One of the things that bugged me about the majority of those decks is, well, how white, skinny, young, and obviously heterosexual many of the deck characters in most of those decks are.

Long before the importance of representation was something we openly discussed I was painfully aware that the characters in my cards did not generally look like the people at my tarot table.

In the past few years, many tarot artists have been working to remedy this problem, with varying results. Even Light Seer’s Tarot caused a difficult community conversation about one particular card depiction. This taught us all that representation isn’t enough. We need to be conscious about how we represent people of cultures different from our own, and which cultural stories need to be told by which voices.

Chris-Anne, the author and artist of Light Seer’s Tarot, did a good job replacing the card in question and moving forward. Rather than stepping into outrage and pushback, she listened, learned, and allowed her beautiful deck to take its rightful place as one which will surely become a classic. Now, Light Seer’s Tarot is defined by what it has to offer us at the tarot table, rather than by any perceived misstep by its originator.

I have had this deck in my possession for about a month and a half. Over this time, it has remained constantly on my desk, where I do the majority of my client work. It is not the only deck that sits on this deck, but it is the deck I am reaching for more and more often.

Many, many decks end up on my desk. The vast majority are relegated to the collection, to be reviewed, to be used for exercises, and for comparative tarot study.

There is great value in that sort of deck use. The more decks I learn, know, and with which I perform some spreads and exercises, the more I know about tarot as a whole. It is interesting that some decks make the workhorse cut, yet the majority do not.

Virtually all tarot decks come with a guidebook. I appreciate a guidebook that tells us why the artist chose to depict a card the way they did. The thing is, I don’t refer to the guidebook at all when I am first getting acquainted with a deck.  After more than a quarter-century as a full-time tarot professional, I have a good working understanding of tarot archetypes, traditions, and associations. When I first look through a new deck, I am interested and excited to see how the artist chose to express those things. It is only when I don’t understand what the artist was trying to say that I consult the guidebook about a particular card.

With the Light Seer’s Tarot, the card that sent me to the book was the Page of Cups. The flying pig didn’t make sense to me. Even after seeing the artist’s explanation, I don’t love the way the artist depicted that particular card. That is okay, though. I have never loved every single card in any deck.

After first looking through a new deck, my next step is to do a full Celtic Cross for myself and see how it all feels.

I shuffle the deck a bunch and see how that feels.

This is my version of the ‘deck interview’. I don’t do a spread to get acquainted with my new deck, as some people do. I do a spread to see what I see about myself in the cards that appear. In doing this spread for myself I can quickly see if this is a deck I might want to work with professionally.

When I shuffle, I can feel how the deck responds to my hands, and to my energy.

What I am looking for in a deck is easy readability, easy spiritual connection and an enjoyable process. I am also looking for a certain otherness which is hard to explain. I know it when it is there, and when it is not.

If shuffling and a Celtic Cross goes well, I will keep the deck in arm’s reach at my work desk. At some point, when beginning a client reading, if I feel like reaching for the deck, I will.

There are some decks that sit on my desk untouched for a while, and eventually make it to the shelved collection.

In the case of the Light Seer’s Tarot, I reached for it quite a few times in the first few weeks. Then, I let it sit for a while, untouched. This process, of either reaching or not, is entirely instinctive and intuitive. I don’t think about it, I just do it.

In the past week or so, I have been finding that my fingers are itching to work with Light Seer’s, and my eyes are craving its colors. More and more, I have been choosing it for client readings. The readings have been successful, easy, fun, flowing, deep and healing. Those are all the things I want professional readings to be.

A few nights ago, some images from Light Seer’s Tarot crept into my dreams, giving me a deeper understanding and connection to those cards, and to the deck itself.

The cards I dreamt of were the Two of Pentacles, and the Lovers. The personal message I took from that was about finding balance in my life and my work.

When a deck starts speaking to me in my dreams, it is time to acknowledge that deck as a true working deck.

I have only incorporated two new decks into my professional toolbox in the past decade. One was Crystal Visions Tarot, the other was Tarot Grand Luxe.

Ten years later, I am adding the Light Seer’s Tarot to the toolbox. My process of unpacking the deck allowed me to feel that this deck will work with me in a way that will help me serve my clients well.

I am not a tarot animist. I do not believe that my cards are alive in any real way. Yet, this process of unpacking a new tarot deck has made me ponder tarot animism a bit more than I did before. Did I choose to work with this deck after a period of getting to know it?  Is it possible, rather, that I gave The Light Seer’s Tarot the opportunity to choose to work with me?

Dealing with Our Decks: Different Ideas in a New Era of Tarot

There’s a general belief amongst tarotists and trend-spotters alike that tarot is enjoying a boost in popularity. Whenever I see headlines like “Tarot is Back!” I always cringe because, in my world, tarot has never been gone.

I think we can thank the internet and social media for the proliferation of tarot interest, tarot information and tarot decks. There is a concern among many tarotists that so many tarot decks are being created, so many tarot books are being written, that the quality works, and the traditional works, will be diluted by a flood of mediocrity and misunderstanding.

One need only to look at the wide variances in card depictions, teaching methods and card interpretations to know that the more minds in the mix, the more difficult it will be to hold on to traditional foundational tarot understanding.

We can see how much tarot understanding has expanded since A.E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith produced the deck that practically defined tarot for a century prior to social media. Might A.E. Waite, if he were here today, see our common tarot practices as a gross misunderstanding of his work?

In the early 1970s Eden Gray suggested that tarot was exoteric; a tool we could all use at our kitchen tables, rather than an esoteric device reserved only for the very gifted and studied few. With this open-minded approach and social media, we can only imagine how much tarot wisdom we might develop in the next decade, and how much we might add to the body of knowledge that is tarot going forward. As long as the foundation doesn’t get lost along the way, I have to think this is a good thing.

I believe there will always be those among us who keep the traditions sacred, even as tarot may at times become trendy and pop, and perhaps at other times swing back into the shadows, as trends often do.

Social media allows us to discuss in large groups our thoughts and feelings about the cards, and to share our techniques. As we discuss and share, it becomes clear that we all have different feelings and beliefs about the way the cards work, how the cards speak, who speaks through the cards and what our connection to the cards might be.

One new tarot technique that piqued my curiosity recently is the idea of a “tarot deck interview”. That is, asking a new tarot deck questions to ascertain how you might best use the deck, and what your relationship with the deck might be.

My first reaction to this concept teetered between ridicule and simple lack of resonance. I don’t tend to personify the cards overly much, and, unlike many readers, I don’t notice a palpable difference in the voice and personality of specific decks. For me, tarot is tarot.

This was true until a student shared her deck interview in an online thread about the topic. There was something that felt so poignant and true about the reading that I immediately questioned my initial reaction to doubt the process.

When I first learned tarot, there were some distinct tarot traditions; Waite, Crowley, Feminist/Pagan, De Marseille. These traditions still exist, and still inform the vast majority of tarot knowledge and practice. Now, though, there are tarot decks, and tarot-like decks, that are remarkably different from any of these traditions.

Modern decks like Chrysalis, Mary-el and Wild Unknown are very popular, and stray significantly from any tarot traditions of yesteryear, although one can see influences from those traditions in certain cards and decks here and there.

The vast number of available decks has led to some serious collecting (in some cases, hoarding). While there are still folks who read with, and own, only one deck, many of us choose not to be deck-monogamous.

Right after my online conversation about interviewing tarot decks, another online friend reached out looking for advice on what to do with, or how to use, their huge tarot collection. The truth is, while most of us have tarot shelves filled with decks, most of us confine our tarot use to only a few trusted decks. The majority of the decks in our collections sit and collect dust.

We all experience decks that “read well” or “speak clearly” for us, and decks that don’t. Often, this has nothing to do with how much we like the artwork. And this is another substantive question for each reader to ponder. What is it that causes a deck to feel readable?

One of my problems with the idea of a tarot deck interview is that I know in my own experience the majority of decks I have will sit on the shelf and not get much use. If I interview such a deck at the beginning of our relationship, will the cards really make this prediction, and will I have the wherewithal to interpret the cards in such a way after having just bought them and hotly anticipated their arrival?

On the other hand, my friend who wonders what to do with her shelf of inactive decks might have a field day breaking out each one and asking, “How can you serve me?” or “How should I use you?”

When I was learning tarot thirty years ago there were not so many decks from which to choose. Then, perhaps the majority of available decks had similar symbolism. The greater variety now available makes the idea of conducting deck interviews seem more reasonable and helpful than in might have seemed a quarter century ago.

The idea that each deck has a specific personality and might be most useful for some specific tasks more than others seems very different from the concept of “Comparative Tarot” as developed by Valerie Sim and practiced by many readers of my generation.

While Comparative Tarot does acknowledge the common wisdom that different decks can have different voices, Comparative Tarot asks us to look at different depictions of the same card and let that process of compare-and-contrast inform our understanding of the card any time we see it, no matter the particular deck.

I had developed this concept even before I heard of Valerie Sim’s work. I’ve always called it “The Deck in My Head”. Whatever deck I happen to be working with, I will often call to mind other depictions of the cards that appear on the table. This helps me give a clear and comprehensive reading with any deck; I joke I could do it with seventy-eight pieces of notebook paper.

Coming from this perspective, from the idea that all images of the card inform of our understanding of what the card can mean, seems almost diametrically opposed to the idea that each deck operates in its own way, has its own agenda and its own best practices. I will have to let some of these ideas gel to see if there is a way these two ideas can work together for me.

I do occasionally discover a deck that I will use for a specific purpose, although I have never determined this by asking the deck itself. Most notable is my Tarot of Transformation, which is way too hairy-fairy for me to give a strong comprehensive reading. I call it “The Big Guns” and will bring it out when I get stumped in a professional reading. I will never use more than three cards from this deck in a sitting because each is so intense in its message. Never has this deck failed to settle a problem or solve a mystery when I use it this way.

The question is, would interviewing decks lead me to finding other sorts of big guns for my arsenal? Might it stimulate my creativity and help me find new uses for my beloved-but-unused decks?

One problem I see associated with the mindset around interviewing decks is the idea that there should be decks that we use for specific type of readings. I’ve played with this idea too, using The Lover’s Path Tarot for romance readings and Ghosts and Spirit Tarot for mediumship readings, for example.

Overall, I really resist this concept, and think it could lead to really limited readings, for this reason. No question exists in a vacuum, and no part of life is independent from the rest of life. For example, my question may be about love, but the impediment to my love life may be my career.

I think, for professional readings and general divination, I personally need my primary tarot deck to be a full-service one-stop-shop kind of a deck. I want all the information, and all the factors.

After some consideration, I think the process of interviewing tarot decks can help us expand the way we use tarot, but could also limit us in our readings, depending on the way we choose to use the process.

Maybe most importantly, I think one of the reasons it’s great that there are so many tarot decks available is that they can teach us about each other, not only about themselves. I don’t want to see the Comparative Tarot process get lost in a sea of decks that are so dissimilar one from another as to not withstand any comparison.

The other quandary the concept of interviewing tarot deck presents for me is the personification of tarot. Can seventy-eight pieces of cardboard think and feel? I think each of us does anthropomorphize tarot to some extent. For me, though, the power of the cards in not in the cards, but in where the cards lead my thoughts, feelings and intuition, and what the cards teach me.  I feel I work with the power of the symbols themselves, not the paper on which they are printed.

I will be pondering and musing about this for a long time. Tarot culture is always growing and changing, as are we. This is one of the reasons I love tarot, and love being part of the community of tarotists who ponder with me.

If you want to read the deck interview that got me thinking, I am sharing it here, with the permission of the author, Maureen, from the Tarot Nerds Facebook Group.

Green Witch Tarot Deck Interview:

1. What can you teach me? - The Holly King (Hermit)

I will be your mentor and guide to seek your truth and journey with you on your chosen path. I am experience and knowledge.

2. Describe yourself to me- 10 Chalices (Cups)

I am happiness abundance and joy, everything you strive to achieve. I am a good deck.

Describe me-7 Athames (Swords)

You are a strategic thinker with determination and fortitude. You are diplomatic and very perceptive. You overcome challenges, are self-reliant, confident and brave.

4. How can we work together- Ace Pentacles

I will teach you the magic art of manifestation. We will do well together, I am grounded and earthbound and bring you good fortune.

5. What are your strengths: Queen of Swords-I am shrewd, orderly independent and self-reliant. Honest and sharp of tongue when necessary much like you.

6. What are your weaknesses? Page Cups

I need to be more creative and trust my inner child. I must be less pragmatic and analytical and more watery. I am a good friend but my loyalty is not honored by everyone.

7. What is our potential together-Knight Swords.

Our relationship will adventurous, but we must be thorough and avoid impatience. We must not rush this process and miss any steps.

8. Do you want to work together? -The Star

The opportunity is presented to you but you must decide. The energies are in favor of our union. I bring you the tools to manifest all you desire. Trust your intuition.