I gotta be real with you guys. I was just plain bored stiff with the standard tarot decks.
Every time I saw one of those RWS decks, I just rolled my eyes. Too many flowers, too much medieval stuff. I wanted something that felt ancient, something with some actual weight to it. Something that looked like it belonged in a museum vault, not a coffee shop. I felt like I needed a tool that was less about whispering sweet advice and more about delivering a stone-cold truth. That’s why I decided to dive headfirst into the Egyptian stuff.
One day, late night, just scrolling, I stumbled on this specific Egyptian deck thing. Man, the art hit different. Gods, hieroglyphs, all that heavy symbolism. I figured, okay, this looks like a whole new headache, but maybe it’s the good kind of headache. If I could crack this ancient code, it felt like I’d actually accomplished something practical, not just memorizing someone else’s modern interpretations. The whole point was to cut through the fluff and establish my own direct connection with these powerful, scary-looking pictures.
Getting My Hands Dirty (The Setup and Research Scramble)
The first thing I did? I flat-out refused to buy some $80 fancy imported deck. Forget that. Nope. I hit up a big online marketplace and just looked for the cheapest, most basic reproduction I could find. Ended up with a thin cardstock deck that cost me maybe twelve bucks. Perfect. Less pressure if I mess them up or if they turn out to be total garbage. This immediately removed the ‘precious object’ barrier, which I think stops a lot of people from actually using their tools.
I didn’t immediately buy a massive “Mastering Egyptian Tarot” book, either. Forget that noise. My strategy was always to keep the learning dead simple, right from the jump. The core objective of my practice was to figure out a fast, effective reading method, not to become a professor of Egyptology. I knew the basics of the 78 structure, but the Egyptian names and images needed a completely new system.
I needed a quick guide to the basic card meanings, but I wanted it my quick guide. So, I opened up a basic note app on my phone and literally just started typing what the image felt like. I’d look up the simplest, one-line meaning for the Egyptian deity on the Major Arcana cards, and then I’d close the search and write down my own blunt version. No deep history required.
Here’s what I really focused on and logged aggressively in my notes:
- The Majors are totally different beasts: The standard Fool card? Forget it. In this set, names like Thoth or Osiris pop up. My practice was assigning a direct, quick human equivalent to each one, ignoring the deep history for a second. Thoth = knowledge dump. Isis = nurturing power. My version of the Magician was simply ‘the hustler.’ I stripped away everything that wasn’t immediately actionable.
- The Numbers are your friend: I realized the suits themselves were secondary to the number value. Wands, Swords, all that—I simplified the hell out of the number core. All Aces are new beginnings, all Twos are balance/choice, all Threes are growth/manifestation. I just married the simplified number meaning to the crazy Egyptian picture. I looked at the image, then the number, and then put my simplified meaning right next to it. That was the ‘quick guide’ I created.
- The Courts are people I know: The Pages, Knights, Queens, Kings. I assigned them to people in my life. The Queen of Swords? That’s my blunt-talking aunt. The King of Wands? That’s my buddy who’s always starting businesses. This made the images—which were often just scary statues—stick immediately. I personalized the heck out of every single court card.
The First Time I Actually Tried Reading (It Was Rough But Real)
Once I had those messy notes down—just a couple of pages in my journal—I went straight for the deep end. No practice spreads on myself about “what should I eat tonight.” I figured, if this is gonna work, it has to work on a real question for someone else. I called up my neighbor, the one always complaining about her dating life, and said, “I’m gonna read your cards, but these are weird ones.”
I used the simplest spread imaginable: Past, Present, Future. Three cards. That’s it. My hands were shaking, honestly. I pulled the cards out fast, shuffled them like I was dealing poker, and laid them out. I had to stop and stare at the cards for a second. Card one was some crazy looking God dude (my ‘knowledge dump’ card). Card two was a Ten of something. Card three looked like a boat (my ‘sailing away’ King card).
I opened my notes app right in front of her and just read off the bullet points I’d written down earlier. No flowery language. Just, “Okay, this Past card means you were struggling with a big choice and trying to get every possible fact.” “This Present card means you feel totally trapped by material comfort right now, even though you have everything you need.” “And this last one means you need to just sail away and stop overthinking things—the solution is to just go.”
The shocker? She looked at me like I was some kind of ancient mystic. She said I was absolutely spot on about the choice she was making. I didn’t know anything about her dating stuff, but the quick, non-jargony meaning I grabbed from my simple notes hit the mark perfectly. I didn’t even try to interpret the Egyptian art. I just spoke the simple truth I had assigned to the card in my log.
That’s the whole trick, and that’s what this journey really taught me quickly. It wasn’t about spending six months studying Egyptian history. It was about grabbing the deck, assigning a quick, brutal, actionable meaning to each one, and just saying it out loud. My practice log shows three days of making notes, and then I just started reading. That’s it. Stop waiting for the perfect moment. The practical magic is in the action, not the textbook. If you want to start your own journey, get the deck and start writing your cheat sheet right now.
