h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi, thought I'd kick us off...

Personally I like the celtic cross for a good basic 'Ooh, can you do a reading for me' request. Though I do tend to find it will answer the questioner, not the question! It often addresses a more overall and perhaps base problem/situation that once resolved will render the supposed question irrelevant or sorted... But I find it nicely detailed and although it seems a lot, you can often boil it down in summary to a 'here's where you are, here's why, these people may influence you in these ways, watch out for this, you will feel this way at some point, but here's the potential outcome depending on what you do with this lot'...

For specific and smaller things I like a simple three-card layout. Past, present, future, left to right...

Oh, and another thing, I've noticed 'novice' readers often do two things which I wonder about... Firstly, I've seen people putting all their cards the 'right way up'... Now in some decks, inverse cards dont change meaning, but for most decks it adds a depth of meaning and interpretation... Let the cards be!
Secondly, when dealing/revealing them, turn them over left to right (or right to left of course!), not top to bottom as you will invert the cards. This is sometimes a hard habit to break for anyone who plays cards/card games a lot! (took me a while!)

Do you agree with me on these points?

In my experience, Robyn, the CC does tend to answer the questions posted to it, and behaves itself for me

I love the three-card, I think it's so flexible and can be adapted for any situation.

As to the changing reversed cards, I don't use them at all. I don't need to the relevant meaning just seems to pop into my head whichever way up the cards. Though I do agree with how hard it was to break the paying-card habit


Can I ask which decks you favour?

I've not found one I really like yet. Not a fan of rider-waite myself, feels a little strange to me, I cant bond with the images at all. I have adopted a deck which I like, I cant remember for the life of me what it's called... A friend lent them to me and gave them to me because I found them so easy to work with, and she'd had them a couple of years and not really used them.

I also have a deck that came from 'Titania' the white witch from magazines and such, now I'm not a massive fan in general, they dont really address the darker side of life (lets face it, it's all important and I like a balance myself) but it does attach astrological signs to some of the cards, mainly major arcana, which I find useful as a point of reference as I have a better understanding of sun signs in my mind without looking things up than of the cards themselves.

I do use the inverted cards... I think of it as adding extra meaning, I assume it means there is something other than the obvious going on, i.e. not just what's on the surface of the card, but look a little deeper or see how something else affects it more subtley...

I really can't connect with the Rider-Waite at all, it just doesn't speak to me. My favourite and most used deck is Ciro Marchetti's Gilded Tarot,It's stunningly beautiful and I can read so accurately with it. I also like the Mythic Tarot and it's connections to Greek mythology.

I've seen Titania's oracles and Fortune Cards, and I really cannot bring myself to like them. The only non-Tarot deck I own and can use well is Brian Froud's Faerie's Oracle. I can read with it even more clearly than the Gilded, and I feel such a dep connection with it.

If you like to see astrological signs in your cards there are a few decks you can look at that might be of interest. Alasteir Crowley's Thoth deck is beautiful, and it works on so many levels and has deep links to the astrological systems.

As to reversals, I ignore them completely. I tend to study the relationships between the cards, and that works better for me than reversals do.

Thoth I've never liked the look of, and I have a general discomfort around Crowley and anything connected to him. Probably all mental, but as that's where it's all gotta work, it becomes a problem!

I certainly get more out of my astrology at the moment, but I have phases, and talking about things tends to inspire and encourage me!

I'm the same, though I've never been able to get my head around astrology. But the Tarot is helping to clear a bit of the mist.

The Thoth isn't the only deck to have Astrological links, most of them do if you look. Peter Pracownik's Dragon tarot is one of them, though I personally can't connect with this deck so I don't use it much

I've not seen any decks that I'm drawn to particularly, aesthetically... But I also trust that when I need one it'll find me. Until then I use the ones I have that do work for me.

I do abandon them somewhat for periods of time, but I so often find myself disillusioned, I do a few readings and then wonder what the point is, because usually I find out what I already know... And people (yourself or others if you're doing things for them) often dont hear the things they dont want to hear, so you could try and tell someone what they can do to change or affect a situation but they will literally sometimes not hear it. You can lead a horse to water.........

That and for about two years now I've had varioations on a theme... Things are coming together, what you've been working towards is coming to fruition, just stick with it...

... Great news, you'd think, but no timeline and a refusal to do anything else, just being told to sit and wait... It's like a prison! I dont like being told what to do!