I remember the first time I ever saw a deck of tarot cards. I was a teenager standing in the back corner of Vacaville’s Lesbian Bookstore. Next to a case full of silver pendants with all sorts of mystic meanings, leather-bound journals that looked primed to receive and contain life-giving knowledge, and a rack of Nag Champa incense were the tarot cards.

I don’t remember much more than that they were tarot cards, they were super duper mysterious, and I was sure my parents wouldn’t want me to have them. There were a few different decks available, but one caught my eye. A forest-green box with a man twinkling with light, looking out from underneath a hat made from the head of a deer. It sounds kind of gross and hillbilly horror when I say it that way. But the vibe was nature. Gentle. The dude on the box reminded me a little of my very gentle uncle. Or Bob Ross.

I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t into shoplifting. So I left with empty hands and a heavy ache in my heart.

Some interesting life choices later, I ended up doing childcare for the only man I ever remember working at that bookstore, a counselor named Thom. Who was also my counselor. Yeah. It was a little weird. But it was the 90s. What are you gonna do.

When I got paid, I bought that tarot deck. The one I knew nothing about except that it looked like Celtic hippy shit and was probably going to get me in trouble. The thrill was palpable. I needed to hold them in my hot little hands.

At the time I knew nothing about tarot.

Now, maybe thirty years later, that has all changed.

Now I know next to nothing about tarot.

I know the mechanics. Seventy-eight cards. Twenty-two Major Arcana. Fifty-six Minor Arcana. I know some decks are majors only. I know deck creators sometimes add an extra card that feels relevant to them. I’ve received decks with blank cards and always assumed they meant something — the great unknown, the void, a choose-your-own-adventure insert — so I laid them aside like jokers in a standard deck of cards.

I know the most popular system is Rider–Waite–Smith — though it should probably be Smith–Rider–Waite, because Pamela Colman Smith was the one who actually illustrated all seventy-eight cards. She did the art. The imagery. The fully illustrated Minor Arcana that made the deck revolutionary in the first place.

Arthur Edward Waite provided the esoteric structure.

Pamela Colman Smith made it visible.

Credit matters. And downplaying the involvement of a woman in the creation of the most prevalent tarot system in existence is bull fucking shit.

See? This is how I end up lecturing instead of reading.

I know the cards follow a story. A path. A journey.

I know new deck creators often swap out cards that don’t mesh with their ideology and in my experience that usually means the Hierophant.

I know the Thoth deck exists. Same seventy-eight cards. Entirely different cosmology. Astrology stamped on everything. And much like Rider–Waite–Smith, there was a woman doing the real work.

Lady Frieda Harris painted the Thoth deck. Painted it for years. Translating Aleister Crowley’s philosophy — brilliant, self-aggrandizing, and cruel — into something you could actually hold.

Crowley cultivated infamy.

Crowley reveled in being called The Beast.

Crowley built a legend out of being terrible.

Harris built the deck.

My brain wants to keep rattling off these facts. But mostly it does that so I can avoid the confession that usually comes when I babble…

That Robin Wood deck ignited something in me. Something I didn’t really understand. Something that warmed me through and through.

Consumerism.

I became obsessed.

When I moved to Portland a few years later, I discovered there were far more tarot decks than I could have imagined. I built a little collection. Picked one up at Powell’s every once in a while. Drooled in every metaphysical shop. Made irresponsible purchases when the cost of a tarot deck was also roughly my grocery budget in my early twenties.

Including one illustrated by H.R. Giger — yes, the H.R. Giger, the man responsible for the original designs of the Xenomorph from Alien. Because apparently what I needed in my spiritual practice was biomechanical horror and existential dread in card form.

Occasionally I’d meet someone who didn’t have a deck and I’d give them one of mine. Because I could. Because it felt good. Because someone once told me no one should have to buy their first tarot deck, and I took that shit to heart.

I bought my first deck. I didn’t know the rules.

I learned about the rule shortly after I had already supremely fucked up by buying my own, and I’ve never really gotten over it. So of course I tried to fix it.

But honestly? I don’t even know if that rule is real. I don’t know if it’s an actual piece of tarot lore or just something someone said offhandedly once that I latched onto and built a whole moral structure around. That’s the thing about me. If someone says something with enough confidence, I will carve it into stone and carry it around for decades.

Here’s the dirty little secret.

As many decks as I collected, I never used them.

Sure, I’d open them. Shuffle. Ooh and ahh over the art. Praise myself for my spiritual depth.

And then back in the box they’d go.

Always and forever.

I didn’t read for others because I didn’t feel like I understood what the cards were saying. I could appreciate the art. The work. The narrative arc. But I didn’t feel it. I didn’t get it.

Even knowing all the cards, I still needed the little white book. Then the bigger book. Then a different bigger book. At some point I wasn’t reading tarot — I was just reading about tarot.

Even a one-card spread became an ordeal. I had to know. To see. To feel. So I’d read everything available. I’d sketch the spread in a notebook. Record each card’s placement. Dutifully transcribe interpretations.

Then I’d put it all away.

And it would be a year before I did it again.

In my early forties, when my daughter and her friends were in that tender mystical phase, I decided I didn’t need a tarot collection anymore. I began handing decks I deeply loved but didn’t really know to kids I deeply loved but didn’t really know.

All except Robin Wood.

And the Giger deck. Because some things are sacred.

I hoped the decks would bring others the joy I never took from them. I hoped it would unclutter my life. I was tired of needing something so viscerally only to glance at it and never hold it again.

It did free up space.

But then the whispers came.

The memory of every other time I told myself: This time I’m going to learn it deeply. Tarot. Painting. Quilting. Embroidery. Jewelry making. Bookbinding. Photography. And so on.

The decks started showing up again.

As if by magic.

I mean I know how it happened. I bought most of them. But still. It felt inevitable.

Because the thing is… I really fucking like collecting tarot decks. They hold so many of the things I love in one small box. Art and mysticism. Symbolism and spirituality. Reflection and pattern recognition. Categorizing. Collecting. The promise of hidden meaning. The hope that if I understand the system, I might finally understand myself. It’s almost unfair how perfectly they fit inside my brain.

But what about the part where I literally do not do ANYTHING with them?

I didn’t want to read tarot. I wanted to study it like alien life. I wanted tarot murder boards. Connections. Cross-referencing. Total immersion.

I didn’t want intuition. I wanted mastery.

Because only then could I know what they were telling me.

There’s something consistent in my life.

I’m not particularly great at anything.

I like the idea that I could be. That I might be a prodigy. That I might naturally channel magic. That if someone just taught me to sing on key I’d be a fucking star.

It’s easier to believe in potential than to test it.

And I don’t do it for two reasons.

First, my energy rarely matches my desire.

Second, I might actually not be good at it.

It’s like Schrödinger’s cat.

As long as the box stays closed, I might be brilliant.

But the second we open up the box and let me out… if I’m not amazing, then the only other option is abject failure.

Also, once I understand the fundamentals of something, I get bored.

I hate that about myself.

“If I’m not a prodigy, it’s not for me” is not a sustainable way to live.

So I picked up my first deck again. Sat with it. Tried to know it.

And as much as I loved it, I looked at the art and saw weird creepy shit and little baby dicks on cherubs and I was like, absolutely not.

You can stay. I just don’t have to look at you.

So Robin Wood became decor. History. Proof I once tried.

But I was determined to succeed differently this time.

I held the cards. Looked at them. Tried to understand them without external scaffolding.

Every reading still became a murder board.

Eventually I bought the book everyone recommended. It felt almost rebellious to buy something that wasn’t a pretty deck.

I read it.

Then I recommended it.

Then I graphed the entire system.

Because of course I did.

I lined up decks side by side. Cross-referenced. Evaluated. Judged stylistic choices.

Built my tarot murder book.

And only after finishing did I realize I’d done the very thing I was trying not to do.

That notion needed to fuck off.

When have I ever done anything the way everyone else does?

Now I do weekly readings.

Stacks of books. Pens. Marginalia. Highlighter streaks. Notes. Reflection.

Not to tell my future.

To build it.

A few years ago we bought a beautiful midcentury carved wooden salad bowl. We imagined entertaining. Table-side Caesar. Charm. Friends lingering.

None of that was ever going to happen.

We don’t want to entertain. We don’t want salad guests.

That bowl would have lived in a cabinet forever.

One night I pulled it out, cleaned it, and filled it with popcorn.

Forever after, it became the popcorn bowl.

Nothing ceremonial. Nothing aspirational.

Just used.

That moment changed something in me.

We collect beautiful things and hide them. We save them for special occasions that never come.

We protect them from living.

Just because I’m not using something the way it was intended doesn’t mean I’m using it wrong.

So the collection continues to grow.

I study. I side-eye. I rabbit hole.

The only wrong way, for me, is letting them become dust catchers.

They’re not sacred objects.

They’re popcorn bowls.

And I’m done saving them for company that isn’t coming.