Kingdom of Knuffel

Oh that makes sense! I know custom playing card on etsy can get up there in price so I bet the tarot cards with custom designs and embellishing can get very expensive.

Oh wow! How do you figure out their personalities? Is it based on how they answer questions? That is very interesting I never thought of it like that at all! Having a deck that only answers to you is very interesting too- how would you figure that out as well? Does it give nonsense answers for everyone else?

yeah! i actually never heard of anyone customising a deck just for themselves. people collabed with artists to release an indie deck according to their ideas, but i've never heard of anyone getting just one deck made for themselves. they've always sold it.

yes, it's based on how they answer questions! i thought i could get an idea of how a deck would behave based on its art, but boy was i wrong. a deck could have the gentlest art and then slap you in the face with its messages lol. my textured tarot deck is like that. i thought she would be a soft, healing deck based on the art, but she's actually a punch in the gut.

so the deck i only read for myself with is the dreaming way tarot. i got it secondhand, so it was actually a rehoming for that deck. i did a deck interview spread- basically asking the deck about herself- and for the question 'how best can i work with you?' i got the hermit. the hermit card is about introspection and solitude. i didn't interpret it, at the time, as 'only read for myself'. i interpreted it as 'i can best work with her by reading for myself but that's not the only way to work with her.'

after that, she did answer for other people but i felt a sort of resistance, like the messages didn't click immediately the way they did when i read just for me. then i asked the deck whether i should only read for myself with her and i got the lovers card. that card seemed to tell me that the deck wanted to work intimately with me; the relationship between the lovers is an exclusive relationship. so yeah, she made it pretty clear to me what she wanted and when i'm working with her, she reads like a charm.

ohh that makes sense though- I doubt tarot readers (what would the prefer term for this be?) could also make the art too! I would also just hire/pay my favourite artists to draw them for me as well! Is there any artist you would hire to make a custom deck for you :o?


ahaha that is so funny! I would think it was based on how it looks or the art style but its just like people! You never know until you get to know them. Do you give people a choice on what deck they want you to use? If I ever get a reading I might prefer to see the answers of the textured tarot deck. I feel like I like my answers straight to the point even if its a hard to handle answer

Herself? Does that mean the decks also have genders as well? Or do you base it off the energy you get from them as you use it? That is really sweet though that she wanted to be used just for you and your questions. I guess there's so much for me to learn about them! The only experience I have is with the youtube channels that does reading and the one time I almost touched someone's deck by accident (I wanted to see the art). I was told by her its extremely bad luck to do that!!

I never thought of rehoming tarot decks and that there would be a proper way of doing that. Do you own many secondhand decks?

yeah. there are some artists who also learn tarot and design a deck as a way to practice both their tarot understanding and their art. some tarot readers learn to make photo collage/photoshopped art and make decks like that. they use their own photography sometimes, or they use free and stock photos.

hmmm. i do want a good deck in manga style, with a shoujo/isekai/shounen ai kind of feel. i also want a deck with magical girls in it. i don't have a particular artist in mind. i'd love a deck which just uses dolls and crochet objects to make the scenes in it!

i really love jasmine beckett-griffith's art but her art has been used for oracle decks and a tarot deck already. and i've ordered the beautiful creatures tarot which has her art; it'll come home by the end of this month.

yes! and someone else will have the same deck and it won't be the same for them, because it's not the same copy i suppose.
but sometimes even if it's the same copy- i often think about how my dreaming way was secondhand which means someone didn't connect with it and decided to resell it. and here i connect with it more than any other deck.
so i guess really it's an interaction between the deck and the reader which shapes a dynamic.

i used to call all decks 'it' but i find that i change the way i refer to them the more i get to know them. i also think i've been influenced by owlmoon513 on youtube, since she refers to all her decks as 'she'.

the dreaming way is the only secondhand deck i have. i know that tarot readers in places like the US swap decks a lot, to exchange decks they aren't using for decks they really want. it's a way to bring new decks in without spending money, and passing on the decks you don't use to someone who does want them.

i actually bought my dreaming way used from amazon. there's very few people in india who collect decks and those who do are probably buying from amazon anyway. they often skip on indie decks because 1. they're pricier and 2. they'd have to pay for shipping to india. so they buy from whatever's on amazon and often all end up with the same decks

because of this i had trouble moving on a couple of decks i didn't want anymore. one of the decks went to a reader in israel, the other deck is still languishing in my cupboard because nobody wants to pay the shipping cost of sending the deck from india to wherever they are in the world.

recently i discovered betterworldbooks and i'm happy i did. they have free shipping to anywhere and although they don't always have the decks i want in stock, it's great when they do.
i also still check etsy cause sometimes the shipping isn't too bad.

Oh wow would you ever consider making your own deck? It seems like that would be an interesting challenge and to see if the deck even likes you after!

Ohhh yea those decks are really pretty- always reminds me of cardcaptors sakura (if you watched that anime?). I feel like my love of tarot cards started with that anime!!

I just looked up her art and I seen it around! I love how she does her faces and eyes especially.

Oh I hope you do get more choices for tarot cards :o I guess shopping on etsy would be really expensive too depending on where they ship from! Shipping internationally is so hard when you don't live in a country with lots of shipping treaties. I am lucky and I live in Canada so I get a lot of things easier through shipping. But my boyfriend who lives in america gets his things delivered faster and cheaper than me (cause more treaties) and shipped faster too. I know the struggle cause I end up sending back home (to Bangladesh) so many things for my cousins. They always want beauty products or bags!! I don't mind :) I haven't seen them in person since.... 2008? I wanted to go back home to visit last year but covid hit and then my clinical placements are starting soon so it has to be in the next 5 years? Unfortunately I only saw my grandparents 3 times in my life and they passed away this year And its even worse for my parents- they only saw them every 3-4 years.

Oh wow Im suprised they sell tarot cards on that site!! That's great you found a site to help with your deck building! Maybe you can sell on that site too? is it similar to amazon or ebay?

i would loooove to make my own deck. i keep seeing random images on pinterest and imagining which tarot card they'd fit. like this would make a hilarious Tower card: SAME. that was my first anime. i've found an etsy seller who's selling cardcaptor sakura CLOW cards and i want to buy them when i can afford to... except my country may not allow imports from China

Yes, I love her huge faces and eyes. My favourite dolls were Bratz dolls so I suppose it was predictable that I'd like her style of art

Ooh, if you live in Canada, that's where the Moonchild tarot is made. Danielle Noel is a deck creator I love and she's Canadian. She has some mass market oracle decks out (I have her Yogic Path Oracle and it's beautiful and resonant) and I really want her Moonchild Tarot. But it's an indie deck and shipping from Canada added makes it very pricey. I'm keeping an eye out on Etsy and Ebay in case copies show up there with more affordable shipping options. She also made another tarot deck in ethereal pastels called the Starchild Tarot. They're popular decks so you might even have seen them before in a tarot video.

Betterworldbooks doesn't take in secondhand books from all over the world; they go around collecting from and adding bookstores in the US. They also visit campuses and have Drop Boxes where people can drop off the books they don't want, all in the US. They're not like Amazon where anyone can become a seller. That's why there's no such thing as seller ratings and in fact you only know the location within US of the seller, not what the seller is called.

That's so many years to have gone without meeting family- over a decade! And it's hard that you have to wait 5 more years but perhaps you can keep videocalling in the meantime. That's not easy with the timezone difference but it'll be doable sometimes. I'm sorry your grandparents passed without your family getting much opportunity to spend time with them. That's painful and regretful, the world being as big as it is, people end up scattering far away from each other.

Bumping up because I'm doing tarot readings again!

How have I missed this?!? I'm down to get a reading if you want. But be warned- kinda got a lot of oddities surrounding me!

I'd be happy to read for you! And your warning sounds exciting to my ears

Would you prefer a question, or leave it open? I got a few I would be curious to see what you read from, but up to you what practice you would like.