Man, so a few years back, I hit a wall, you know? Just felt like I was drifting, going through the motions. Nothing really exciting, nothing really challenging. I’d wake up, go to work, come home, stare at the ceiling. The whole nine yards. I figured I needed something to shake things up, something to just… make me think differently. Not like a new job or anything big, just a shift in perspective. And that’s when I stumbled onto it.
I was in this dusty old antique shop, just poking around, trying to find some random knick-knack to bring home. And there it was, tucked away in a glass case, a really old-looking Renaissance Tarot deck. Not one of those shiny new ones, but one with that faded, almost worn-out feel to the cards. The artwork was just… different. All those classical figures, draped in robes, doing dramatic stuff. I didn’t know a thing about tarot, not really. Had seen it in movies, but never actually touched a deck. But something about this one just called to me. So I bought it.
I brought it home and just stared at it for days. The box was old, the cards felt heavy in my hand. I pulled out the little booklet that came with it, tried to read it. Man, that thing was dense. All these complex descriptions, a bunch of fancy words I didn’t get. I tried to do a spread, just laid out three cards like some YouTube video told me. The High Priestess, then the Tower, then the World. I looked at them, then at the book, then back at the cards. My brain just fizzled. It was all gibberish. I understood literally nothing. Felt like I’d just wasted my money on some pretty pictures.
So, I shoved the deck in a drawer and forgot about it for a bit. But it kept nagging at me. Like, I paid for it, it looks cool, there has to be something to it, right? One rainy afternoon, I pulled it out again. This time, I just threw the booklet aside. Decided I was going to do it my way. I shuffled the cards, felt their weight, and just pulled one. Only one card. It was The Lovers.
I didn’t immediately go for a meaning. Nope. I just looked at the card. Really looked. The man, the woman, the angel above them, the trees, the snake. I spent a good twenty minutes just taking in all the details. What were they doing? What did their expressions say? What was the overall feeling? Did it feel happy, sad, conflicted? I thought about choices, about relationships, about innocence, about temptation. I just let my mind wander with the imagery. I didn’t try to force a “tarot meaning” onto it; I let the picture tell me a story.
I did that for a week straight. Every morning, after my coffee, I’d pull one card. Sometimes it was a Major Arcana, sometimes a Minor. Didn’t matter. I just picked it up, turned it over, and just observed. I wrote down what I saw, what I felt, what thoughts popped into my head. I didn’t care if it was “right” or “wrong.” I was just processing the art, connecting with it on a visual level. I started seeing patterns in the designs, how some figures reappeared, or how the expressions carried a certain weight. The old, classic feel of the Renaissance art really started to open up to me.
Slowly, things started clicking. When I pulled the Chariot, I didn’t just read “victory.” I saw the warrior, standing firm, guiding those two weird sphinxes. I felt the tension of control, the drive. When I pulled the Hermit, I saw the old man with his lantern, alone on the mountain. I felt the wisdom, the introspection, the quiet search. It wasn’t about memorizing keywords; it was about feeling the narrative the art was presenting.
After a few weeks of this, I decided to try a simple three-card spread again. Past, present, future. I laid them out. Suddenly, the cards weren’t just random pictures anymore. They were talking to each other. The story I saw in one card would flow into the next. It wasn’t like a fortune-telling thing, no. It was more like the cards were acting as a mirror. They weren’t telling me what would happen, but reflecting back my own subconscious thoughts, my own current struggles, or my own hopes. They gave me a framework to think about my situation.
It was like the dusty old deck had finally come alive. It gave me a new way to process my day, my thoughts, my worries. Instead of feeling lost, I had a tool to help me reflect, to ask myself better questions. I wasn’t looking for answers in the cards, but using the cards to find the answers within myself. That old deck, the one that looked like a bunch of gibberish at first, actually helped me get unstuck. It made me pay attention again.
