Like most people who are interesting in reading Tarot cards, I have collected quite a few different varieties over the four or so decades since I began to use and study them. Some I received as gifts, some I purchased, some I inherited from my mother, who was also interested in playing with cards and contemplating their meanings.

My go-to working deck is the first one I ever owned, or perhaps it owns me. I know this sounds odd, but you decide once I share the rest of this story.

I was 17 years old when I was given this old deck of cards by a nice woman who got tired of me bugging her to read them for me all the time. I was so surprised by this offer to take them and learn them for myself, but she insisted that these cards were mine and that this is exactly what I should do.

They came to me as just the bare deck, with no box or cover, just the cards alone. The deck was in very good condition, no damage to be found on any of them. It was an old deck, though it would be some 20+ years later when I found out how old, through a Tarot salesman who collected them and suggested the printing of the deck to be somewhere around the turn of the 20th century, around 1900 to 1910.

I took this gift, since she simply insisted I have them. I was enamored with them really. I loved the way the pictures seemed to speak to me. Mysterious and marvelously magical, I spent a great deal of time studying anything I could find to tell me what their meanings were.

The biggest surprise of all was how deadly accurate they were. I found out very, very soon how much so, to the point where many people would have perhaps burned them, or at least been properly frightened by them.

The thing is, I’ve been having precognitive dreams (dreams that come true) since I can remember, even as a toddler. This familiar mystery of my life made me more accepting of the whole idea of predicting the future, I suppose.

This is the only deck I owned for many years, and it managed to follow me through many moves from place to place and many adventures too.

At several different junctures in my life, I decided I didn’t want or need them anymore. I tried a couple of times to give them away or sell them. They were even stolen once and came back to me. I’ve lost nearly every one of my possessions multiple times in my life, down to even my toothbrush, and these cards are still with me today.

I use them as my working deck for one reason. The reason is they’ve never once failed to produce reliable results. With so many validations over the years, it seems practical to me to stick with what works.

Something else may be said here. Cards are tools with the design or function to assist with homing in on the unfathomable, the mysterious, or otherwise seemingly impossible ways we may access information out of thin air.

Like any tool of this nature, there comes a point where we don’t really need them. They are helpers. I like them, as they have served me well, and have helped me to develop the trust I needed in my inherent abilities to read information that exists with or without the tools to assist me to focus on them.