Away Without Tarot Cards

A Trip With No Tarot Cards?

How was it possible? I was on a Tarot journey arranged by Linda Marson with Rachel Pollack as our Tarot mentor and Guide, and unpacking my bag I realised I had committed the major faux pa of leaving my Tarot Deck behind! Aaaggghhh!!!

Did I drop an f bomb? Sure did.

Obviously I couldn’t go without a deck for the whole week I was away, I was on a Tarot trip for heavens sakes. So new friend Jan and I, we scoured Alice Springs for a new deck. We found 5. That’s it, five decks in total. I could hardly believe it, I mean what do they do in Alice Springs that they can live without a wide array of Tarot Decks in the shops there? I guess they do a lot of web shopping. Oh well, I did find a goodie. The deck is called the Ancient Mysteries Tarot Deck by Roger Calverly and it’s from Lotus Press.

The images of the Major Arcana are based on sacred temple art from the mystery schools of Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia and India and the Minor Arcana cards depict megaliths, sacred fountains and stone temples. This seemed quite fitting as Rachel often speaks of myth in her descriptions of the Tarot cards, it’s quite obvious in her Shining Tribe Tarot.

The suits in the Ancient Mysteries deck are described as Air, Water, Fire and Earth and the cards have a really ‘clean’ feel about them. Perhaps sparse would be a good descriptive as well, because the cards are very uncluttered, even simple visually, but I must say they were a real pleasure to work with. I did a rather special reading with them for myself while seated on the earth and off in the trees at the base of Uluru not that long after dawn. The deck was perfect for it – sacred place, sacred cards and sacred work.

I believe that Roger Calverly has written a tarot book to go with the cards, but as yet, I have been unable to locate a copy. It would seem that the deck was created with the intention of it being used for both divination and initiation.

I nearly got rid of this deck a while back when I had a bee in my bonnet about decluttering, but Im thankful that I didn’t, especially now that Ive recalled that it is the deck that I had on these travels with my Tarot pals. You can check out this clip for a bit of a peek into the trip if you’re interested. Some of you may recognise a few beautiful souls with younger faces, as well as some like Rachel, who have passed. It was a trip and a half. The key take-away? Always travel with your Tarot cards AND enough cash to buy more if need be!!!

Little note: I’m pretty sure you can buy Tarot decks more easily in Alice these days, this trip was back in 2008, and some things have changed for sure - from a shopping perspective anyway.