Shuffling can be an unlikely hot topic in the tarot world: How do you do it? Do you let other people shuffle your cards? What do you do with Jumpers? This last point has nothing to do with knitwear!
Over on the Wildwood Tarot study group, we posed the question: what’s your preferred method of shuffling? We got as many different methods suggested as there were people answering the question.
Of course, you can have the bog standard shuffle (hand over hand) style which pretty much everybody does at some point during a reading. However, there are other techniques which you might like to try to switch things up a bit:
FW favours a shuffle and then fanning out all the cards in the deck before passing her hand across the fanned out cards, paying attention to any sensations in her hand that might indicate a significant card.
Perhaps you don’t want to use your hand. SP shuffles using two different methods, each three times and then cuts the deck into three piles before using a pendulum to select cards.
RB splits the deck and slips the top half beneath the bottom half until she feels that it’s time to stop.
KP shuffles and pulls from the top. If the cards don’t feel ready, KP then shuffles face-up until a Major appears, then shuffles face-down and then starts drawing cards from the top.
NOBODY selected the dreaded casino riffle!
Do you let other people shuffle your cards when reading for them?
At the end of January, I ran a totally unscientific poll on the study group and invited people to vote.
As you can see 126 brave souls voted, with 46% dead set against letting anyone else handle their cards, but 54% were either not bothered or quite happy to let other people touch their cards.
I’m one of the folks who voted Yes! but to tell you the truth, it depends on the deck. Yes, I’ll let people shuffle my Wildwood, but I won’t let them shuffle any privately-printed decks that I own. They’re too expensive to replace!
The joy of the Wildwood Tarot (or should I say, one of the MANY joys of the Wildwood Tarot) is that because it is a commercially printed version it can be easily replaced without too much heartache.
I rather enjoy a ‘smoosh’ type of shuffle where I spread the cards on the carpet (face down) and just mix them up by smooshing them around. Once the smooshing is complete, I shuffle hand-over-hand with the question in mind. I set the intention that it will be the Xth card from bottom (day of client’s birthday, day of the month etc) and select the appropriate card. I do that for every card position in the spread.
If I’m looking for two cards – for and against, past and future etc. I decide on a significator (so many ways to select a significator!), turn that card back to front in the deck and shuffle hand-over-hand. Then I work through deck without disturbing the order of the card until I spot my wrong-way-round card. Then I simply take the card above and below the significator. If a third card is required, it will either come from the top or bottom of the deck.
This is quite a handy system to have when reading at fairs etc when smooshing on the carpet is impossible and you have a lot of readings to get through.
And Jumpers, what are they?
A Jumper is that card that flies out of the deck, regardless of how carefully you are shuffling. Some people just chalk it up to over-enthusiastic shuffling and pop the card back into the deck, others keep the Jumper to one side and read it as a special message for the Querent from the deck about the issue in hand.
