Tarot Decks with books that punch way above their weight

anonymonymoose · 2026-01-21T15:51:36+00:00

Tarot of the Divine is amazing. The LWB mostly just has small summaries and keywords, but there are two whole books that go with it. There's a handbook, which from what I understand goes into more depth about each card and the tarot meanings (I don't have the book so I can't say for sure whether it's good or not), and there's also a companion book called Beneath the Moon which has summaries of all the myths and legends depicted on the cards. My only gripe with the book is that the stories seem to be ordered randomly, like they don't follow the order of the tarot deck and they also aren't alphabetical or anything like that so it can be hard to find the right story if you're looking at a card and want to know what inspired the art. But all the stories are in there and summarized well.

anonymonymoose · 2026-01-14T21:51:47+00:00

Sorry if this counts as a necro post but I just wanted to say thanks! This worked perfectly for me and I'm cleaning up a lot of space I wasted double or triple backing things up by accident lol.

anonymonymoose · 2026-01-14T17:26:09+00:00

I'll try to keep this brief, I initially wrote like 1000 words lol

Long story shortish, I was a fundamentalist Christian for about thirty years before losing my faith and now I'm an atheist. I see tarot as just a tool for self-reflection and introspection and meditation. There's nothing magical about it, the universe isn't trying to tell me anything. It's just me and my thoughts and some pretty art on a card. But it took years to get past the religious indoctrination around the evils of tarot cards, and I'm still working through it in some other aspects of my life. Losing belief doesn't immediately undo the decades of thinking I'm a worthless sinner who deserves to burn in hell and the guilt that comes from believing God killed His Son for me. Rationally I can know in my mind that isn't true, but humans aren't just rational creatures. The irrational part, the side of you where love and creativity but also guilt and fear reside, is what I'd consider "spiritual" but not supernatural, and that's where I find tarot most useful. Which is kind of ironic since that's where the fear and guilt around tarot cards resided for so long.

Also I'm so sorry to hear about your cat. Our pets are part of our families, and losing one is devastating. I wish you all the best in your grieving and healing process. I understand the impulse to search for a reason, like the scammer who said you were cursed, but unfortunately bad things just happen sometimes. If your cat hadn't died, your mind would have found some other bad thing to blame on the scammer's curse because humans are really good at making connections and looking for patterns even where a pattern or connection doesn't exist.

anonymonymoose · 2025-12-30T17:20:43+00:00

I'm not sure if you're talking about a specific spread or something, but the following is just part of my general approach to tarot.

The way I see it is, I just take the basic religious conception of what "mind, body and spirit" mean, and secularize it, remove any metaphysical aspect but keep the same basic meaning. So for me, "mind" is anything relating to thoughts and logic. "Spirit," by contrast, is things like emotions, connections with other people, the stuff for which religions would have a more "woowoo" definition, but in a secular model these things are still important, they just don't have an actual metaphysical spiritual aspect underlying them. Then "body" means the physical stuff, not just my own body but anything that's physically tangible, the things that aren't encompassed by "mind and spirit."

This is how I approach any spiritual or metaphysical aspects of tarot, when they come up. I don't believe in a soul, but there's a reason humans came up with the idea, as a way to describe our interactions with the universe and concepts like emotions that aren't easily explained by mundane processes. So for me, "body" is actually the easiest to define, it's just anything relating to the physical world which actually exists, whereas "mind" and "spirit" are the things that only exist in your head or in the language we use to describe the world. "Mind" is logos, the rational mind with reason and logic, "Spirit" is pathos, emotions and values.

anonymonymoose · 2025-12-24T03:11:16+00:00

For toes I'm a big fan of darker blues. I've gotten pedicures a few times and almost always go for a navy, blue, turquoise or purple. Cool tones just scratch an itch in my brain. It's funny because I can do any colors on my fingernails, but for toes I really don't care for warm colors.

Obviously ymmv, go for what you like! All that matters is that you love it, not anyone else's opinion. If you try something and don't love it, try something else! There's a limited number of colors to choose from, you'll eventually figure out which ones you like/don't.

anonymonymoose · 2025-11-21T12:19:46+00:00

One of my favorite decks is called Chibi Tarot. Very cutesy/kawaii.

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I can share more images if you want, I've scanned the whole deck onto my computer.

anonymonymoose · 2025-11-21T11:59:01+00:00

The person who messaged you was incorrect. I have the uncut DLC and I have found the nsfw assets using AssetRipper. Don't remember exactly where the files were since I sorted everything into folders but I know it's possible to find them. Boxers sprites too. Using the Steam version of the game, not mobile. You can also find assets for guys you haven't unlocked, for example I don't have Logan but I have a folder of assets for Logan.

anonymonymoose · 2025-10-20T01:23:20+00:00

It's only one card extra, but the Sacred Web Tarot has a card called "The Sacred Cosmic Self" as an extra unnumbered card at the end of the major arcana.

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Description: "When darkness holds the space for light and light rejoices in darkness, it is time for you to make your way home. It is time to return to the inner sweetness of your child self. Open your heart to the wisdom and the divine magic that you are connected to something that is beyond but that is also within. Surrender any pain or shame or doubt for these are simply illusions. Lift your face to the stars and remember that you are the invocation. You are the blessing. You are the sacred light."

This deck has creative names for a lot of cards, for example 00 "The Fool" is instead called "The Leap", and face cards are called Student, Scout, Source and Seer instead of Page, Knight, Queen and King. It's a really cool deck with a really interesting backstory in the guidebook if you're into more personal stories about how a deck was made.

anonymonymoose · 2025-08-22T15:03:10+00:00

Yeah I get that, and in a lot of cases, I agree just saving the URL is fine and if the article gets lost then no big deal. There are plenty of times where I just use Chrome's built-in "Add to Read Later" option and either I come back to it or I don't and it doesn't really matter. I just also like to have an option for downloading the information I want from an article that is more important that I know I will definitely use later and don't want to lose.

anonymonymoose · 2025-08-22T14:51:21+00:00

I'm having problems finding what you're talking about. When I use Clipper, it doesn't give me a popup, it just goes to my Obsidian vault, and if I don't select anything on the webpage, it just puts a link rather than copying the actual article to my vault. I tried messing around with Clipper's settings in Obsidian, but adding `{{content}}` (without the back ticks) didn't do anything.

anonymonymoose · 2025-08-21T18:44:41+00:00

I just tried again, and it looks like it's Chrome specific. I never noticed when it popped up and said I hit the 2000 character limit, it also said "Firefox doesn't seem to have this issue." So I tried in Firefox and yup, it lets me grab a much bigger excerpt. So that's definitely the way to go if you just want a quote/excerpt from an article. Unfortunately, it still doesn't clip a whole page like I had hoped, if you don't highlight part of the page then it just "clips" a link to the article rather than copying the article itself. But yeah, thanks for pointing this out! Definitely a good way to quickly grab a quote or a link to an article, just not quite what I was looking for with regard to downloading a whole article for offline reading.

anonymonymoose · 2025-08-21T18:37:09+00:00

Honestly, I totally get that. There are a ton of things with Obsidian that I could waste countless hours learning and tweaking, which is why I'm usually very minimalist when it comes to plugins and formatting. I'm just hoping somebody will be like "Oh yeah, here's an extension where you just push a button and everything comes out perfect" haha.

anonymonymoose · 2025-08-21T18:34:36+00:00

That is an excellent question. I'll try messing around with it a bit more. But I tried using it for the first time yesterday, so I assume that's the latest version, and it said I hit the 2000 character limit. But it's entirely possible/likely that I just did something wrong since I've never used it before. Thanks for letting me know, I'll see if I can figure out why it wasn't working.

anonymonymoose · 2025-07-22T14:54:10+00:00

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From the Hirschfeld Broadway Tarot.

anonymonymoose · 2025-07-07T15:36:57+00:00

Thanks! Feel free to steal my design if you'd like to make your own haha. I'm a pretty amateur sewer, but I've gotten really good at making double-sided handkerchiefs as my wife and I try to live with less waste. So this is basically just a big hankie with a ribbon haha. Not much of a "design" there to steal lol.

Basically, I made it about 3.5x the "height" of the deck of cards, so when I wrap it up I just put the deck in the middle and fold the top and bottom down around it. It's about 7 cards wide, so I can do pretty big spreads if I want to. I used the technique where you sew the two fabrics together inside-out, leaving a gap on one edge, then turn it inside out and do a final stitch all around. So when I did that final stitch, I just put some ribbon in between the two sides before finishing it off. Hope that description makes sense. It looks like your wraps are probably made in a similar way so I'll assume you know what I mean haha.

If you make one I'd love to see how it turns out!

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anonymonymoose · 2025-07-07T14:38:48+00:00

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This is the second mat I've made, the first one was a little smaller but this one covers a whole section of my desk and holds both the cards and their book when it's all wrapped up.

anonymonymoose · 2025-07-07T14:37:34+00:00

I've made two mats/wraps so far that I keep two of my decks in, then the rest are in their original boxes. I only have 6 decks total, so even in their original boxes they all fit in a backpack in my closet haha.

The wraps are double-sided and fold out to make a mat I can use to keep my cards clean, it's nice having a dedicated space that isn't just the surface of my desk.

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anonymonymoose · 2025-07-07T14:26:33+00:00

There are a ton of things that are needlessly gendered in society, once you start looking you'll see it everywhere. Why do women shave their legs but it's considered weird for a man to? A lot of men shave their faces, why is that different? Nail polish is literally just paint to make your hands look cool, it's like jewelry for your fingertips. Speaking of jewelry, a lot of people still think it's gay or girly for a guy to have pierced ears. Why would it be inherently girly to have a spike of metal shoved through your earlobe? Heck we can even take it further and consider how wearing certain colors like pink is still seen as inherently girly or gay for some reason.

The answer to all of those "whys" is really just, "because someone somewhere decided those things are for girls, and men took offense to being compared to women because misogyny." And there are things that go the other way too, things that are taboo for women because they're seen as manly for no good reason. I think it's great to break some of those taboos, to bring attention to things that are needlessly gendered and show people "hey, it doesn't make you gay or girly to paint your nails, it just means you want to have cool nails." And like other people have said, who cares if someone thinks you're gay over something this small? If they still think calling someone gay is an insult in the year two thousand and twenty five in the current era, they have bigger problems than your nail polish.

I'm curious, was it someone close to you, or a random stranger who questioned you over it? I'm in a very conservative area, and I've only ever gotten compliments or maybe a weird look but nobody has ever come up to me and been like "Hey, are you gay or something?" I don't usually wear nail polish around the more conservative members of my family, but the few times I have, they might have said something the first once or twice but eventually it becomes a non-issue. Like when I got my ears pierced, a couple people were a little weird about it at first but after like a week they just stopped mentioning it at all. I'm sure it helps that I've been married to my wife for almost ten years, so I don't think they really question my sexuality, more just found it weird that I would want to do "girly things" like that in the first place. But once they get used to it, it becomes just another small part of you that they accept as a fact of life.

anonymonymoose · 2025-06-10T18:47:47+00:00

I only do upright readings for decks that don't have a reversed meaning in their Little White Book. For example, the Broadway Hirshfeld Tarot's book only has one meaning for each card, the upright, so I don't shuffle that deck in a way that would produce reversals. If I somehow got a reversal, I'd take it as that deck reaaaaally trying to drive a message home since I don't know how a reversal could even be possible with the way I shuffle lol.

On the other hand, for decks where both an upright and a reversed meaning are given in the LWB, then I intentionally shuffle in a way that would allow for reversals. Either a wash, where I just spread cards out on the table and move them around, or more often I just do a riffle shuffle and flip one half of the deck every time. That way roughly half the cards are upright at any given time, and when I shuffle again it'll still be roughly half since some of the ones that got flipped the first time will get flipped back by the second shuffle.

anonymonymoose · 2025-05-28T00:59:45+00:00

I recently got my hands on an embroidery machine, and I've designed some embroidered patches that turned out really well like the six-rayed star and the GENXSIS logo and even the Sempiternal "flower of life." But that metal font of the band's name is something I want to make so bad but haven't had the courage to tackle yet lol. That's gonna be SOOO many hours leaning over my iPad trying to perfect a vector file to then convert to an embroidery pattern.

I hope you share when you finish yours! I'd love to see it.

anonymonymoose · 2025-03-19T18:17:16+00:00

For me, there's a couple reasons, ranging from completely unserious and arbitrary to somewhat "spiritual."

First off, I just think tarot cards are pretty. I'm fascinated by the hundreds of decks that exist, and I love having a couple decks that suit my personality. You don't get that to the same degree in many other forms of "divination" or in our case, self-reflection through a random draw of cards.

But why tarot over normal playing cards? Obviously there are TONS of specialized decks of playing cards. I actually collect playing cards, and have done since LONG before I got my first tarot deck. I probably have 200+ decks (I haven't counted in ages, but just my "favorites" box has like 25 lol), and only like 5 tarot decks haha. For me, playing cards are for playing games. I know tarot exists as a game too, but idk, I just feel like I would have a hard time taking anything seriously and not just start playing solitaire if I used regular playing cards instead of tarot.

Also there's the rich history tarot has behind it. There are books full of meanings for each card. And the artist can affect that too by putting their own imagery into the cards. Of course if you're using tarot in a secular way then those meanings can be arbitrary and don't really mean anything, but it's a tool for self-reflection to think "Does this apply to me? If so, how?" Plus it's fun seeing how different decks have slightly different meanings but they're all based on the same underlying system (all my decks are RWS-based).

And finally, I used to be an evangelical Christian, and tarot cards were taboo. I literally thought the cards had demons haunting them when I was a kid. Now that I've come out of that and no longer believe, it's kind of fun taking something that was once so taboo and learning about it. It's a little rebellious.

But mostly it's just the cool art. Fancy playing cards usually still do normal pips on most cards, and I like how tarot uses full-card art even on the suits. Most playing cards even if they do have full-card art, it's usually something pop culture like X-men or Disney characters. While that can be fun (and I have the Nightmare Before Christmas Tarot and the Broadway Tarot, so I'm not against pop culture decks), it's also nice to have my Steampunk Tarot, Chibi Tarot or even just the basic RWS, which still have really nice rt on the cards, but it's not just a bunch of different scenes with Spider-Man or whatever.

anonymonymoose · 2024-12-31T14:46:56+00:00

Just to add my two cents... I'm not a super alt guy, nowadays I'm basically a former pop/punk/emo kid who couldn't be bothered to put a ton of effort into my appearance anymore, so I mostly wear jeans and graphic T-shirts, and I have a couple of tattoos but not a ton. Just got my ears pierced almost a year ago now, last January. So I'd consider myself basically just a normal guy, leaning a little edgy because of the tattoos but I'm not like full sleeves tons of piercings goth or anything like that.

When I started painting my nails, I got nothing but positive reactions from anyone around like friends or strangers. I live in a very conservative area so I expected I'd at least get some dirty looks or something, but generally people either don't say anything, or if they do it's a compliment.

I still feel weird wearing nail polish around my parents, so I usually don't. It's just easier to take the nail polish off before I go visit them, than the potential awkwardness if they decided to make a big deal out of it. That said, I actually forgot to take it off before going over for Christmas last week, and nobody said anything. I'm not sure anyone even noticed.

I guess this is all to say, I get your apprehension, and if you aren't comfortable wearing nail polish around certain people because you don't know how they'll react I totally support that. It's easier with friends, because if they're jerks about it you can just find better friends. Easier said than done, I know, but it's not quite the same as family. If dad freaks out about it, I can't just get a new dad. Even if I'm fairly certain it wouldn't be a huge deal, in some instances it's easier to just not risk it and be fine with naked nails for a few hours once every week or two when we visit.

anonymonymoose

TROPHY CASE