Are you a Tarot Snob??

I hate to say this...... I mean, I reeaaaaly hate to say this but a fleeting thought crossed my mind the other day as I responded to a friends You Tube Video regarding their Top 13 decks for the season. I had written as part of the comment, "Its a lovely deck, but I just don't do Lo Sacrebeo Decks".
Fast forward to that afternoon and without realizing the patter of continuation, I wrote on the Tarot professionals Facebook forum, "Does anyone get as upset as I do with bad card stock" and that my friends, opened up a plethora of responses that made me realize that I was in actual fact a bit of a Tarot Snob.

Horrified by my demonstrably prejudice attitude towards, certain decks, certain publishing companies and certain artists works. I attempted to rationalize.... ie. make excuses, the first of which was "Well, I'm a Taurus, I like quality, that's important to me, there's nothing wrong with wanting a quality product that will stand the test of time". There were others, but I think you get the picture.

Feeling momentarily appeased, I continued my day with little more thought on the matter. Until late that evening, where in typical fashion, all my chickens came home to roost, also known less dramatically as "My evening Appraisal". There I lay, iPad in one hand reviewing a few tarot blogs etc and I kept encountering new enthusiastic deck creators and budding authors. Individuals that were genuinely excited about their mission to create something for the Tarot community. This made me think back to the various decks that I had ruled out, the various companies that pissed me off due to things like crappy card stock etc and I started getting that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

You see, as I pondered I realized that each one of the decks that I had turned my nose up at, that I had completely crossed off my list due to my "search for a quality product" did in actual fact begin with one such enthusiastic artist, a gifted individual with the desire to create something lasting for the Tarot community I was a part of.  So..... "who the hell did I think I was dissing their efforts"? Sure, things like card stock might be a result of a cheaper publishing process, but by completely disregarding said product all together because I feel I have "High Standards" just really made me feel like a bit elitists.

So, I thought that on my next deck buying opportunity, I would open myself up to decks that I might have liked in the past but refused to purchase due to one of my ridicules reasons, because at the end of the day, our artist need us to be fair, they need our support, they do an amazing job at creating decks that suits all tastes and that's a very noble thing in the tarot world. And they deserve appreciation and understanding, not our holier-then-thou attitudes.

At the end of the day, I am a tarot professional reader and a tarot collector, I will probably end up acquiring decks that are specifically for collecting purposes and that won't be handled much at all. So things like card stock, publishing house etc mean very little in the grand scheme of things.

Just something to think about :-)

Much love and many Tarot blessings, Avalon xo