How to begin working with a deck

Hold the deck. Notice the size. If the cards are too large for your hands, shuffle in smaller packets. There is no moral prize for a riffle shuffle you cannot control.

Shuffle until the pack feels mixed to you. Split. Draw from the top, or fan and take the one that your hand goes to. Pick a way and repeat it so your body learns a ritual that is ordinary, not spooky.

Look at the card the right way up for you. If it arrives reversed, you may turn it upright for now. I have not given you a reversal policy in this course, and I will not let you invent a disaster because a picture landed on its head. You can still look. You can still read light and shadow later without needing the card to be upside down.

Keep it clean enough to use. A box, a cloth, a drawer: whatever means you will find it. If a card is bent, it is still a card. If one goes missing, you counted them in an earlier lesson, so you will know.

You do not need to smoke it, bury it, or refuse to let anyone else touch it unless that helps you respect the work. Superstition can become a way of not reading. Respect is: I use this, I know it, I do not chuck it in a wet bag.

If you read for other people, wipe the table, wash your hands, put the deck away when you are done. Opening and closing as ordinary care. We will do the energetic version later, without drama. Today is the object.

I do not need a story about the deck choosing you in a moonlit shop, unless that is actually what happened and it still makes you pick it up. I need you able to sit down, shuffle, draw, and look.

A student who shuffles badly and reads honestly will outpace a student with a perfect ritual and a closed mouth. Learn a handling you will keep on a tired Wednesday.