I’ve been experimenting with the Runes the past couple of days, and as a result, I haven’t picked up a Tarot deck at all. But, that was ending today. I sat down at my reading table and reached for my favorite deck.
That’s when my intuition told me to STOP!
My home crafted Rune set had been all over my reading table these past days, and I had a really powerful sense that the table needed to be cleaned, energetically. I took care of that with diluted sacred oils.
This was certainly nothing new. I’ve long believed in the importance of energetically cleaning myself before and after a reading, my table if I feel it is needed, and most importantly, my Tarot decks themselves.
I don’t have any particular schedule for cleansing my Tarot decks, I’ve always felt intuition guides me well in determining when it needs to be done. Certainly after a ‘heavy’ reading, after the cards are used for Magick, when they’ve been exposed to lots of other people, and even when I’ve just been using them for a long period of time.
Energetic ‘gunk’ gets built up, and it needs to be cleaned away if we are to get proper readings. Not a bad way of protecting ourselves from unwanted or harmful energies either!
With Tarot decks I most often do this energetic cleansing by simply reordering the cards, to begin anew. Other times I’ll set them under the sun or moon. Sometimes I’ll use salt. All of these always with intention of course. Intention is the key.
In this case I carefully cleansed my reading table with oils and intention.
That’s when my intuition popped up again.
It told me that I needed to consecrate the Rune set.
That was something new for me. Something outside of my usual divinatory practices. I’ve never felt the need to consecrate a Tarot deck.
When it comes to Tarot, I simply buy whatever deck might be calling to me. I bring it home and start going through the cards. Sometimes I’ll feel a strong connection with them, and know that I’ll be able to read them well. Sometimes I don’t. If I do, I use them. If I don’t, they get added to my collection of neat decks.
I do, when I’ve found a new favorite reading deck do little things to increase my connection with it. Primarily just keeping it very close for a time. But I’ve never felt a need to consecrate a deck.
The Runes were different though. I felt this strong need to consecrate them.
I know from my reading that lots of ‘Rune People’ seem to think that consecrating their Rune sets with their own blood is the way to go, but alas, I’m a wimp, and I think that maybe they have spent a bit too much time watching Vikings on TV, so I consecrated my Rune set with the same oils I used to cleanse my table, adding clear intention to the process.
Then I almost felt satisfied.
Tomorrow I head off for the Northwest Tarot Symposium, where I’ll be spending four days surrounded by Tarot people. Large numbers of us filling conference rooms for hours on end, shuffling and reading cards from morning till night.
I packed for it yesterday, and will be taking five decks. Each deck in its own thick waxed cotton zipper bag, and the decks together in a larger waxed cotton zipper bag. My masculine looking Tarot travel kit, having finally moved away from standard soft velvet bags.
When I return home from the Symposium, those decks are going to need some really serious energetic cleansing. No doubt reordering, then salt, then lots of shuffling. At a minimum.
Because undoubtedly they will build up all kinds of energetic ‘gunk’ from being used around so many people in confined spaces, for such long periods of time. With eight people at a table, fifty or a hundred in a room, all reading Tarot at the same time, energies are going to be chaotic and gunk is really going to build.
Plus, and I hate to say this, but it is true… When we are in a large group like that, surrounded by people we don’t know, we can’t understand what everyone’s intentions truly are, nor what kind of energies they might attract or call to themselves. There are things out there that we just don’t want to bring home.
So as long as I was in a cleansing and consecration mode, I decided to use that same oil to anoint all of the bags that make up my ‘manly Tarot travel kit’ with the intention that they serve to energetically protect the decks and sacred objects inside.
All of those tasks completed, my intuition told me that I was good to go, so I grabbed my cards once again and sat down to do a reading.
Magical hygiene is what we are talking about here, and if you are going to practice then it's an important topic. In many traditions, esoteric/magical tools are living beings. In others they are like magical batteries, accumulating energies from their environment. In earlier times practitioners would make their own tools, and that process would make the tools theirs. I think today most people buy or acquire their tools as gifts, and that, in my opinion, requires added steps, first to sever the tie to the previous owner and then to make them yours. Once that is done the tools should be guarded, kept apart form everyday life and no one should be allowed to handle them unless it is as part of their magical use, like splitting the deck of tarot in a reading. I have never had to reset a tool. BUT I have been in places where I had to exercise magical hygiene while using the tool. These practices are spelled out in many of the training programs of hermetic and rosicrucian traditions. Many traditions also have talismanic options that are considered safe making. That said, I can imagine a public gathering I might attend, where exposure to individuals of 'colorful' self expression might concern me. In that case I have a travel set of tools and if I need to reset them, it's fine as my main personal set are un affected. As a closing thought, when disposing of a tool, similar 'disconnecting' procedures should be used. Just throwing them away is the spiritual equivalent of leaving you PIN code and Debt card in a bar. Now is all this real, in the physics and chemistry sense, or in the psychological sense, or in the spiritual sense? I'll leave that to your experience. But how would you feel about your grand father's shot gun, if it was stolen and used in brutal senseless murder? Then returned. Would it ever feel the same to you? Would that knowledge interrupt the joy you had hunting with that gun, and the wonderful memories of your grand dad, knowing the last thing someone saw was your shot gun? When you practice spiritually, you are opening your self to the deepest, most personal level. Be careful what you let in there.