Welcome to Tarot Tuesday

I bought my first Tarot deck, the Rider – Waite deck illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, in 1980. Since then I’ve acquired many decks over the years, such as the Robin Wood, Sacred Circle, Merlin, and, of course, Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris’ Thoth deck. In all I own thirteen different decks. Some were fun and whimsical, others workhorses, the kind of deck that you sweated over, poured your soul and energy into.

Hard to believe I’ve been a student of the Tarot for more than thirty years. And in all that time, despite an interest in doing so, I never took the time to actually design a personalized deck for myself. That is… until now.

It is my pleasure to share with you now, and every Tuesday throughout October, what I am tentatively calling the Skrá deck.

Skrá is an old Norse word. As a noun, it meant “skin” as in parchment, but as a verb its meaning is “to write”. Seems a fitting name for it and I have chosen it to also be the title for the first card in the deck, replacing The Fool.

Being a personalized deck, the symbolism is mine alone. I’ve renamed a few of the cards, and in a couple of places, their arrangement, but the essence is there. In the coming weeks we’ll take a closer look at a couple of select cards from the deck.

I hope you enjoy this glimpse at them. One thing’s for sure, I enjoyed the hell out of designing them.