How to Bless Your Tarot Cards: Connecting With Your New Deck

When you first get your deck, as a gift or otherwise, there is a need for you to break the cards in. Not unlike making a new friend, there are ways for you to properly introduce yourself to the cards and consequently bond.

Here’s how that’s done.

Welcoming Your Cards

When you first receive your cards, you would do well to treat them with respect. Make sure that your cards have adequate storage (a cloth bag works wonders for this).

Get to know your cards by reading the little book it comes with. It contains the details and symbols of the cards in your deck. Again, like a friendship, there is no sense in rushing and cramming all this information. It will come naturally with time and use.

It can help to chunk your learnings between the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana, in that order. The arcana describe pivotal or life-changing events and the day-to-day mundanities of life, respectively.

Shuffling Your Tarot Cards

There is a special quality to the first time you shuffle your cards. Treat it like making a first impression. In a way, this is also a way of blessing your cards — through shuffling, you dissipate any residual energies the deck may have picked up on its way to you. Simultaneously, you also impart your energy and intentions upon your cards.

For reference, the standard deck order starts with the Major Arcana with The Fool at 0 to The World at 21. It then goes by suit, with each suit going from Ace to 10 with the Court cards on one of the ends.

A good way to shuffle them would be to fan them out in order onto a large clean table. You want a lot of space so that you can move and thoroughly mix them around with big sweeping motions. It goes without saying, but please make sure that your hands are always clean when handling your cards.

The key is to shuffle the cards a lot. While it’s good to be enthusiastic and thorough in your shuffling, always treat your cards with the reverence they deserve. Take care not to fray their edges and not to drop the cards unnecessarily.

Breaking In Your Cards

After you finish shuffling your cards for the first time, you’ll want to get to the “getting to know you” part of this bonding exercise. There are many ways to break in your cards, and they all focus on actually using them.

You can start your day by channeling gratitude, shuffling your cards, and asking a simple open-ended question relating to your day ahead before drawing a single card. Then, you can spend a few moments reflecting on the card’s meaning and how it relates to your question and your upcoming day.

Constant use in a low-stakes and low-pressure environment is imperative for you to be able to feel out your cards’ energy and temperament. As you do this every day, you start to get a feel for how the cards think and feel. It also builds your confidence and ability to actually read the cards and their meanings.

Once you are comfortable with your cards and doing readings in general, feel free to explore more nuanced or complicated spreads.

Cleansing Your Tarot Deck

As you use your cards, they will naturally pick up on the negative energies that accumulate around you. Alternatively, the residual energies of those you have done readings for can also pile up.

For this reason, it’s always a good idea to regularly cleanse your cards. All in all, the focus is on removing the conflicting and antagonistic energies surrounding the cards and realigning them towards their receptive neutral default state.

• Full moon charge

One popular way to bless your cards would be to perform a full moon charge. You can do this by placing your cards by your window or in any place where they can receive a lot of moonlight during the night of a full moon.

• Sun charge

An alternative would be to fill your cards with the radiant energy of the sun. It’s the same process as a full moon charge, but be careful as heat and humidity may warp and damage your cards.

• Crystals

You may also opt to use a crystal to cleanse and bless your cards. Placing a piece of clear quartz on your cards when they are not in use can continuously cleanse them of any residual foreign energy and focus the cards’ own power.

Other popular crystals are amethyst for improved psychic intuition and black tourmaline as a grounding agent that absorbs negative energy.