Earl Grey Books

Last year, I had a number of tarot decks come into my collection. Naturally, some of them became favourites and I use them frequently, but that also meant that there are a lot I just don’t get to. In an effort to change that, I’ve decided to do a sort of seasonal TBR of my tarot.

It’s a TBR because you read tarot, get it? Yeah, I am pretty proud of myself for that.

Anyway, for each list I’ll pick out a few decks I really want to use and then I’ll make a conscious effort to do just that. I won’t limit myself to only being able to use those decks because I know myself and if I say I have to do something, I will absolutely not do that thing. So as I said, making a conscious effort to use the ones I choose. Finally, the ones I pick out won’t necessarily fit the season—I feel like in Melbourne we really get either boiling hot Summer days where you feel like your eyelids are burning, or miserable grey Wintery days. Basically, these aren’t seasonal in aesthetics or whatever, they’re just what I want to work with.

Our Tarot

Our Tarot is the newest deck in my collection (at least for a few more weeks), but I haven’t really had the chance to use it much yet. I got it in December, and I’ve been trying to use all my decks so I could pick out which ones I wanted to focus on for this post. But this gorgeous deck was created by Sarah Shipman and it’s basically famous women from all throughout history; from Cleopatra, to Anne Frank, to Elizabeth I to Zora Neale Hurston. What I like about it is that it still follows the major and minor arcana and so that helps with learning the meanings and whatnot—I’m still very much a beginner. It also has perhaps the most detailed guidebook of any deck I’ve ever seen, it has biographies of all the women and of course, explains their connections to the card. As you can probably tell, I’m pretty excited to get to work with this one. I hope that I end up loving it as much as I think I will because it could quite possibly become one of my favourite go-to decks. You can find out more about this deck on the Our Tarot website, and you can see a flip-through from one of my favourite Tarot-tubers Tale Raven Tarot who also does a series deep-diving into each of the cards.

Dreaming Way Tarot

I’ve owned the Dreaming Way Tarot for a couple of months now, but just haven’t given it the attention it deserves. This has a very whimsical, almost Alice in Wonderland feel about it, which is honestly, not my usual cup of tea. I love a good pastel colour palette, but for whatever whimsical stuff isn’t always my thing. But this a gorgeous deck—it’s by Rome Choi, and the illustrations are really beautiful. I’ve definitely used it a few times—in terms of the more practical elements of the deck, it’s good quality card stock, and it’s a good size. It’s also pretty easy to shuffle which is nice because I have the world’s shakiest hands and shuffling is a literal nightmare sometimes. Anyway, I think this’ll be nice to go alongside Our Tarot which is much more a picture/collage style, while this is more illustrated. There isn’t really a lot of information online for this one in terms of a website, but you can find a quick little flip-through from Tarot Oracle on YouTube.

Hush Tarot

And for the last deck for this post, I had to pick a favourite—this is Hush Tarot from Jeremy Hush. Again, I haven’t quite given this the attention it deserves but every time I do use it, I am struck by how gorgeous it is. It’s a very dark, grim deck with almost a sort of Steampunk/Victorian feel to it. I know this definitely won’t be a deck for everyone, but I’ve always sort of liked this style of art that is a little unsettling, a little creepy. Surprisingly, this is sort of a ‘soft’ deck for me. I have some decks that I constantly pull cards about depression and grief, but Hush is one of the ones that feels a little safer. So it’s definitely the one from this list that I feel most comfortable with, but like I said, it just hasn’t been used as much as it should’ve been by now. But hey, that’s why I’m doing this challenge. Again, this doesn’t really have a website either but here’s another flip-through, this time from Curious Tarot and Oracles.

And so those are my tarot picks for Autumn. I’ll be sharing my next round of picks for Winter around the end of May along with maybe some kind of wrap-up or reflections post on these decks. But for now, I’ll see you on Sunday with my favourites & disappointments post for February.