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Does anyone know the best place to purchase tarot cards from?

Amazon sell them, the Rider Waite deck is the most universally recognised one. You can also buy them in new age shops and bookshops (if there are any left!). I know Waterstones sell them in the new age section plus you can buy cheap sets in The Works which have a book with them but the cards are not as good quality as the standard decks.

Thanks Freddie

Your best bet is to go to a New Age shop that sells Tarot and look through several different deck styles and find the one the best speaks to you UNLESS you are just using them for trickery. IN that case I only use the Wait deck because it is the most familiar to the laity.

Here's a few sites that will allow you to check out the many decks out there.

http://www.tarot.com/tarot/decks/index.php

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/ (one of my favored sites)

http://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/627

Thank you there are some great sites here. I was thinking of building a tarot reading or some trickery with them into my routine. Just playing around really to see what suits my style and how far i can go with them

As you get more experience you'll likely find the best reactions you get are from doing just a reading, not from any tricks with them. A good reading will connect on a far more personal level than any trick.

Jobasha wrote:As you get more experience you'll likely find the best reactions you get are from doing just a reading, not from any tricks with them. A good reading will connect on a far more personal level than any trick.

Very wise words indeed...

Jobasha wrote:As you get more experience you'll likely find the best reactions you get are from doing just a reading, not from any tricks with them. A good reading will connect on a far more personal level than any trick.

I second this fact.

It is most unfortunate that we recovering magic types want to find "a trick" in everything we touch when it's simply not needed. . . at least not in how we typically consider such things. Too, you need to recognize that the public sees things like the Tarot and Rune Stones in a near religious way and will take affront when you are seen doing "tricks" with such things. Stephan Minch, Jim Magus and numerous others have written on this point and the fact that "Less is More" -- the best resource for you to digest is Ron Martin's "Tarot Reader's Notebook" in that it will show you how much trickery you don't need when it comes to creating a miraculous experience (you should get Ron's other books including his co-authored books with Larry Baukin).

I don't mind admitting that when I started looking at using tarot in magic I did think in terms of tricks. I'd used tarot as a child for readings for fun, but when I started getting into bizarre magic I ended up with several of Black Harts tricks which used Tarot. At that point I thought I should learn more about them and started more serious study. As I've gone on I've abandoned the tricks with tarot and use them purely for readings now. Its probably now my mainstay if I'm asked what I do I'll either give a tarot reading or pendulum work.

Thats quite a pricey notebook. Suppose you get what you pay for these days.

There's another tarot book which is meant to be ok for beginners (cough... cough)

Point taken my friend I will head over and take a peek.

Whereabouts are you in the country? I can suggest a couple of good shops in London.

BTW, for choice of decks - take a look at the Universal Waite, which has the same designs as the Rider deck but is much nicer to look at, or the David Sheridan / Alfred Douglas deck at http://www.sheridandouglas.co.uk/

Barry

I'm in the North East, Midlesbrough.

I appreciate your original question wasn't about which deck to buy, though by the fact that you're asking where to buy from I'm taking the initiative and assuming you're new-ish at least to Tarot and I'm going to answer that kind of query anyway (everyone else has done a perfectly good job of telling you where to buy from, you really don't need any more advice!)

Hello! Welcome to the best club in the world! Yes, I might have started with that sentence, but I chose not to. So there.

When it comes to finding the 'right' deck for you, it's a bit of a hit and miss affair. Right now, you're probably thinking "The right deck? Are you mad? The 4 of Cups is the 4 of Cups" and in many ways you'd be right. Mostly though, you'd be wrong. Any good tarot reader (myself especially) will tell you that there tends to come a 'feel' for a deck and its imagery. Not least in how we find ourselves interpreting the imagery. Now that may well sound a million years away for you, but it's something that's worth baring in mind now. I went through a few decks in my 'early years' of reading and found myself 'settling' for the Rider Waite-Smith until I (literally) ran away with the fair to become a psychic reader and I discovered the Morgan Greer deck and my readings improved ten-fold. No deck has ever 'spoken' to me more before or since and I wouldn't be without it (I still read from a 1st edition MG). Now that's not to say that a MG is the deck for you (far from it, I know few readers who enjoy it) but I just wanted to impress onto you the idea of trying out as many decks as possible, however you're able, before settling on one!

That is all.