There are many opinions about how to take care of your tarot cards, how to store them and whom to let handle them. Some readers have a deck they use for themselves and a second deck they use when reading for their clients.
Steven Culbert, author of Reveal the Secrets of The Sacred Rose, regards most of these rituals are worthless superstitions that distract you from your response to the cards. I think it is important for us to draw our conclusions and do what feels right.
A Tarot deck is a picture book of essential human characteristics, a catalog of seed ideas. You open that book to do individual readings that illuminate your life in particular, transforming the cards into richly detailed, personal snapshots.
So the question is, how would you treat a treasured photograph album or scrapbook that documents all of your life experiences? That’s how you want to treat your tarot cards.
Although we have seen readers use old, ragged, dirty cards, our preference is to be gentle with our Tarot Cards and to keep them clean and undamaged. We should feel better when we use cards that have a nice appearance.
By Taking care of our Tarot Cards and handling them gently with clean hands, we are also Simbollically honoring our inner archetypes. We are tending to and showing respect for vital aspects of ourselves. And this conveys to our higher self that we will handle with care the feelings and ideas our cards will evoke in us today.
In addition, removing our tarot cards from their wooden containers and cloth wrappings or cloth bags and carefully shuffling them creates a mood for us. We shift into a different state of consciousness, a different awareness.
Our action says that these cards are special and the soon-to-follow reading is an important occasion. We reestablish that feeling and focus every time we engage in that simple ‘care’.
If you need additional actions to set your emotional scene, then by all means use them. Layout your cards on special cloth reserved for your reading. Light some candles or incense. Place inspiring items near you, or sit facing a particular direction.
Energy is traditionally considered to flow from north to south and east to west. Some professional readers suggest that the readers should face the direction from which the flow comes, i.e, east to north. One of the best and easiest little care of your energy reading is simply shuffling your cards for a few minutes before each reading. It breaks up the energy of previous reading and infuses new energy as you focus on your question.
As you do these things [or others that appeal to you], you become mentally prepared for an important experience.
By creating a particular mood, attitude, or set of conditions and engaging in the appropriate actions, you convey to your higher self that you are ready to proceed. You establish harmony with the gods or the circumstances of outer nature and metaphorically balanced your inner nature as well.