That whole emotional tarot post, the one about popcorn bowls and tarot decks and saving things for company that isn’t coming — came out of a project I’m working on. I’ve been handling all the decks regularly and it’s made me incredibly reflective. And I’m in a making mode right now — trying to keep the world on its axis, making sure people know there is still love in the world. Or something like that.

But I’m susceptible to spiraling and rabbit holes. I feel like that’s evident if you just read three consecutive sentences I publish.

This tarot project — which I am sure I will share about ad nauseam later — made me decide it was time to cull my personal library. After all, the important thing to me with most decks is just that I’ve had the chance to experience them. Touch them. Sit and look at each card like it’s a painting in a gallery and give it the time it needs to breathe.

So yesterday, as I was sorting the decks I was removing from my library into 78 piles so I could compare cards across decks, I was through 4 decks of sorting — which is less manageable than one might think. Images had been pulling me in the entire time and I was trying to breathe through it and let them go. Occasionally I would love one so much I would take a picture so I could remember how beautiful it was.

Again and again. Stack after stack. Until I got to sorting the suit of cups. I continued to ooh and aah, and at a certain moment I had what I like to call my Bilbo moment. I pulled one of the cards out of the fray and set it aside. For me. Just for me. I thought I would frame it and hang it in one of my happy little art closets. They’re overdue for a glow up.

I flipped through more cards and again… that need. I think I should keep it. It’s mine after all — why shouldn’t I keep it? And that is how I found myself digging through sorted cards I had spent hours studying, pulling a single card from each pile to reassemble the deck. I had seen this deck before. I had held it before. I may have even attempted a reading half-heartedly. I don’t know. It wasn’t very well shuffled when I started sorting it, but it wasn’t in factory order either.

In the end I shook off the feeling of weirdness and pulled them all together. I’ve shuffled them, held them, looked at them. I’ve counted them to make sure they’re all there. But actually I think I got distracted partway through. Because of course I did. Let’s count them now.

One, two, three, four… I’m not going to continue with this gag. I counted. They’re all here.

The thing is, I’ve been struggling to really feel like I’ve bonded with one of my decks. You know, after the whole weird cherub dick discovery on my first deck. I wondered if I would ever find something that felt just right. If anyone has Goldilocks syndrome it’s me.

I made that term up as a joke. Is it a real thing? If it is, I might not mean what I think I mean. But I digress. I was setting things up for recycling. For reuse. Getting ready to find new homes for orphan cards. The last thing I expected was to find a deck that wanted to work with me as much as I wanted to work with it.

The deck is the Daydream Tarot. The art is surreal and dreamlike and genuinely beautiful. I’d love to credit the illustrator by name, but I can’t find one anywhere. No artist credited. No name attached. And now I’m sitting with a specific, creeping dread that my soul has latched onto AI-generated images — which would be deeply on brand for me and also genuinely upsetting. If anyone knows who made these cards, please tell me. I want to give credit. I want there to be a person to give it to.