30 Days of Tarot — Day 2: What was your first deck and why/how did you get it?

My first tarot deck is the US Games’ Universal Waite. It uses the line work of the Rider-Waite-Smith but the coloring is by Mary Hanson-Roberts, the designer of the Hanson-Roberts tarot. It is a deck I still have and has become the primary deck in my small stable.

After dreaming of entering the scenery of the Tower card, I wanted to know more about this Occult Tool Of Great Danger that I had been warned against by so many. The coloring of the original Rider-Waite-Smith was harsh, unwelcome, and dull to little unsophisticated me. But the neopagan reworks and novelty decks struck me as more toy than tool at the time. The Universal Waite was a happy medium. Traditional enough that I could use it with any study guide or course. Pleasant enough that I could tolerate looking at the cards for extended lengths of time.

Not much of a story to tell in how I acquired it. Other than the sticker shock when I checked eBay. I was under the impression that tarot cards were either a collector’s item or hard to find. When an Internet search showed me the price for a new deck of cards, I breathed a sigh of relief and sought out a local store instead. To my delight I found a metaphysical store in driving range and purchased a set that contained that deck and a print copy of Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot. That book was my first introduction to tarot meanings and interpretation and was almost launched out the window on far too many an occasion.

The 30 Days of Tarot Challenge was created by Ree of I Am Starstuff and can be found at the post: “30 DAY TAROT CHALLENGE“.