Inherited Tarot Decks

It feels like the setup to a horror movie, right? A young Hollywood ingénue attends the reading of a will. Everyone is in black, mourning the loss of the family member in question. Some are given his car, his house, and slowly his assets are divided amongst the attendants little by little. And finally, all that is left is a small package given to our main character. She unwraps it, and reveals…a tarot deck. In a horror movie setting, the girl is disappointed that she can’t get anything that’ll pay her bills. She disregards the deck, until she realizes that certain cards…dun-dun-dun - predict peopeles’ deaths! We watch our soon-to-be final girl figure out how to defeat the inherited deck over the tight ninety-minute film, until finally she emerges victorious.

Side note: if this happens to be the plot of the movie Tarot, I genuinely have no idea - I had no interest in seeing it. I’m a fan of horror that is more in the vein of the Chucky, Leprechaun, or Evil Dead sorts of franchises.

That being said, I have inherited tarot decks from somone who passed away, and it was a very interesting experience. Thankfully, less Hollywood-canned-horror and more quirky hedge witch shenanigans.

Bringing them home

Seven decks were left behind by my fiancé's family member. My fiancé, knowing that I’m a spiritual baddie who loves tarot, oracle, and all the fun that comes with it, nominated me to inherit the decks that belonged to this family member of his. I also got to look through a lot of his books, and, happily adopted multiple tomes about bigfoot, aliens, tarot, astrology, and more.

This family member of my fiancé's was a character. I didn’t get to know him well, I’m sad to say. I met him at my fiancé's sister’s wedding, and he immediately gave me the impression of a wizard in a video game who would lead me on a fun side quest. His decks are a diverse display of what he was drawn to, and I’ve included a picture of one particular one below: The Housewives Tarot.

Knowing the kind of person that the decks belonged to, I was completely fine with bringing them inside to cleanse them. I wasn’t worried about getting rid of the prior readers energy, because his energy wasn’t/isn’t evil. Now, had I not wanted his energy in my house, I would have cleansed the decks extremely well before even entering the gate to my yard with them.

Once I was inside with the decks, I took them out one by one and carefully used mugwort incense to cleanse. I like mugwort for cleansing divinatory tools because it has been used by spiritual practitioners to encourage intuition and cleanse spiritual tools for a long time. It has a very earthy scent, and I felt strongly that this was the right incense for these tools. Keep in mind, for you rosemary, lavender, garden sage, dragon’s blood, are all scents that can be used in smoke cleansing and are very effective at clearing negative energies - do what feels right to you.

I shuffled the decks, put them in order, and paid attention to the vibes I got from each one. A couple gave me the feel of being retiscent, but open to my using them, a few of the more well loved decks (ones that I think were favorites of his), weren’t ready. And that was okay, I welcomed each one into my home, and let each one know that I was not interested in replacing their prior reader.

The Housewives Deck was and is a quirky little deck. I carefully went through the cards and carefully began to put the cards in order when I realized something surprising - the 3 of Cups was missing. I carefully looked through each card again, made sure that two weren’t suck together, carefully took apart the box, and no matter what I tried - there was no 3 of Cups.

Oh well, I thought, I’ll see if I can get it replaced through the publisher. I put the cards in order as best I could without the missing card, and moved on.

A few days later, I took the inherited cards out and did a one card yes/no spread with each one to divine where they wanted to be. One by one, I went through the decks and learned which felt more comfortable on certain altars I have, which wanted to be on bookshelves, and which wanted to be on the windowsill in the sun. One by one, I went through them, and then I got to The Housewives Tarot.

I did the same thing, and then put it back in order. Imagine my surprise when I flipped a card and found THE MISSING THREE OF CUPS.

I stared.

And stared.

I checked messages that I had sent about the missing card to a friend who is also into tarot - sure enough, it had been the 3 of Cups.

I quickly put the deck in order and confirmed that no cards were missing.

What does the 3 of Cups mean? It’s a card about coming together for a greater purpose. Sometimes it’s friends and family joining for a celebration, sometimes it’s a team coming together to win the gold. Joy and celebration are the undertones of this card, and I felt that this meant that the former reader was okay with how I was/am treating his decks.

What do you guys think? Have you inherited a tarot deck before? How did it go? Tell me about it in the comments, and feel free to ask your questions! I’m also going to start doing individual tarot readings, and if that’s something you’re interested in, you can find me at Tosha in Wonderland on Instagram! That’s where I post about my writing and about tarot - check it out!