Tarot Experience: Working with Multiple Decks

Lo Scarabeo’s Tarot Experience is a treasure chest of intermediate ideas, activities, explorations, and practices. If you have the basics under your belt, this book will give you lots of opportunities to grow as a reader.

As a reader and as someone who owns many decks, I love using more than one deck in a reading. Each deck has its own personality and its own wisdom.

Here are some ways I like to use multiple decks.

Use one deck to select the significator from.

In a relationship reading, use one deck for one partner, one for the other, and a third for the relationship.

Use one deck to lay the initial spread and say it represents what is apparent or on the surface level of the situation. Use another deck to lay another card next to the original card to represent something that is hidden or not easily apparent.

Tarot Experience offers more ideas such as making one deck your personal deck, another your study deck, and another (or several) that are for use in public. Or use a different deck for each position in a spread.

Here is a reading technique from the book that I really like:

Use the Majors only from one deck and lay out three cards. These cards define the “position” in that spread. For example, if you pulled the Empress, Hermit, and Temperance, the positions might mean Abundance, Solitude, and Balance. Use a second (full) deck to deal a card into each of these “positions.” In this way, you are trusting tarot to guide you as to the nature of your question (very useful with clients who “don’t have a question”) as well as to tell you what you need to know about those areas in your life.

Most of us have more than one deck, so it makes sense to develop techniques that are both relevant and useful to modern readers. Get creative and please feel free to share some of your favorite ideas.