Playing with The Gentle Tarot
I just received the Gentle Tarot this week in the post and I fell in love with it immediately. I got the linen edition which is the medium-sized version and the card stock is a dream. The images and Mari’s writings (the creator) are just so heartfelt it made me feel emotional going through the cards. I absolutely loved the quote on the welcome card that reads “Sending so much love to you and to our paths towards wholeness.” Absolutely beautiful.
Before I properly got started with spreads and shuffling up all the cards I went through each card and specifically had a look at the ones that confused me. The ones that I needed the most help with were the court cards and a few of the cards which lent more heavily into animal symbolism. I think this is the first closest animal deck that I have so just taking the time to get my head around that. (Side note I’m super excited to pre-order the mini oak, ash and thorn soon!!)
So the first spread I did was a deck interview spread, this is always the first spread that I’ll do. It’s just a nice, easy way to get to know the deck, the cards, how it reads and start to build a bit of a relationship together. I used the interview spread that I got with the deck from my littleredtarot order which was a 6-card spread. I loved the variety of questions this spread had, particularly the question asking the deck ‘what can I do for you in return’, I’d never seen that question phrased particularly like that in an interview spread before. From this spread I learnt that the deck is nourishing, nurturing, empowering, confident and playful. Something that I didn’t completely expect was that it asked that I need to be ready to receive the messages and aware of my own bad habits to work best with the deck. I really enjoyed doing the interview spread and it was this first spread that solidified my love for this deck.
The next day I decided to do one of the deck-specific spreads, the “lift me up” one. I liked this spread a lot, because I was a little worried the messages from this deck would be ‘too gentle’ in that they would be all uplifting talk but no tangible actions to take away. But this spread really showed me that it wasn’t going to be like that for me. From this spread it showed me the power I have, but how I need to let go of the worries and just keep moving forward (while looking after myself of course). And I thought that’s really quite great advice for myself at the moment, just keep some steady momentum forward and let go of the worries. The worrying has been a big thing getting in the way for me currently.
All in all I would say that I feel such a connection to this deck, I am so happy I took the plunge to get it. I knew I wanted it for a while, but I was unsure if it would resonate with me. I didn’t know how a more animal focused decks would feel and I knew a lot of it was based on the Aleutian Islands, I thought this might create a bit of a disconnect when trying to work with it. But I would have to say most definitely not. This is slowly but surely making its way up to becoming one of my favourite decks.
