The Marseille Tarot deck
It just arrived. Not nearly as gorgeous to look at as the traditional Rider Waite deck that I use, but I am keen to learn from it alongside a book written called ‘Read like the Wind’ by Camelia Elias
Instead of the wonderful illustrations depicted on the Rider Waite, this deck created almost 300 years earlier has less illustrations and narrative especially in the minor arcana suits which only have have the number of pips on each card.
My first Marseille deck tarot reading!
I thought I’d try it out on a quandary I have. After careful shuffling my new deck I pulled three cards, The Star, present situation, The Tower, advice, third card, tell me more card /where does it lead, Death!
Perhaps I didn’t shuffle it as well as I thought…3 Major Arcana, on the other hand the cards were strewn rather chaotically on the duvet and I picked randomly, as ever, so perhaps significant!
Healing, renewal, bright hopes and new prospects….
I always think the Star represent an ‘out of chaos comes new possibility’ moment. As if now the decks have been cleared we have a moment of renewal, of hope and possibility of new horizons.
Disaster based on dodgy foundations…..’I am the crisis that will be the making of you’!
The Tower as an advice card, which curiously comes before the Star in the major arcana, says to me don’t make the mistake of building on the wrong foundations! It also says perhaps it’s time to re examine/dismantled pre conceived ideas?! The good news is there is a suggestion with the tower, that once it is dismantled, the decks are cleared and there is the possibility of a fresh start. Love the idea that a tower incident can be the making of us. Sometimes things have to go very wrong before we can see the error or our thinking and change our ways!
And where its leading ‘Death’…the end of an era the beginning of a new. Painful but transformative. A change in circumstance, a loss, that we have to go through in order to experience a new Era.
Death ‘I am the loss all must face before we are re-born’…
A very auspicious start for my first tarot reading with this Marseille deck and positive depending on how you read it! I am choosing to read it for myself as…..be hopeful, be optimistic, don’t chicken out and build friendships on dodgy foundations, for the wrong reasons, or return to old ones, perhaps? I am being encouraged not to make the same mistake and build friendships on genuine foundations. I am also perhaps being asked to re examine pre conceived notions . Death acknowledges that it has been painful as friendships have died away but there’s a new era ahead.
I hope so.
Do come and have a tarot reading with me online or in person in battersea and see what life has in store for you. Am so grateful for today’s reading. I was getting gloomy, not surprising with a death of an era, but am now feeling more optimistic that all is not lost!