First Deck: the ritual

First Deck is an evening with your first tarot cards. You spread a cloth printed with the tree of life, light two vanilla tealights and a little incense, shuffle, and draw one card. You look at the picture before you read a word about it, then write the card and one sentence on a slip of paper. Tarot here is a mirror for thinking, not a machine for the future.

Where the custom comes from

Tarot did not begin in a temple. It began as a card game. In the courts of northern Italy in the fifteenth century, painters made luxurious decks with an extra suit of picture cards called trionfi, triumphs, later tarocchi. Some of the oldest surviving cards were painted for the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan. In France and Austria tarot is still played as a card game.

The idea of reading meaning in the cards is much younger. In 1781 the French scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin wrote that tarot held the hidden wisdom of ancient Egypt. There was no evidence for it, but the idea caught on. A few years later a Parisian card reader who called himself Etteilla published a deck made for reading. In 1909 the artist Pamela Colman Smith drew a deck in London for the writer Arthur Edward Waite, with a picture on every card. That deck, often called Rider-Waite-Smith, shaped most tarot decks you will see today. A traditional tarot has 78 cards: 22 picture cards, the major arcana, and 56 in four suits.

There is a saying among readers that your first deck should be given to you, never bought for yourself. Nobody knows how old it is, and it is not a rule. We like it because it turns a deck into a gift between two people.

Why a candle

Cards are read by low light for a simple reason: a small flame shrinks the room to the size of the table. Everything outside the circle of light falls away, and the picture in front of you gets your full attention. Lighting the tealights is the signal to yourself that the evening of reading begins.

This ritual uses two small flames instead of one. The vanilla tealights from Ancient Wisdom sit in a pair of flip holders in midnight grey: pressed glass that holds a dinner candle one way up and a tealight the other. Two lights, one on each side of the cloth, make an even light with no shadow falling across the card. Grey is the colour between black and white, the colour of dusk, and it suits an evening where you sit with questions rather than answers.

The scent

Vanilla is the scent of the tealights: soft, warm, a little like a kitchen where something is baking. The vanilla orchid comes from Mexico. The Totonac people of the Gulf coast grew it, the Aztecs flavoured chocolate with it, and only in the nineteenth century did people learn to pollinate it by hand outside Mexico. Many people find vanilla familiar and comforting. That is why we chose it for a first deck: the cards may feel new, the room should not.

The Ancient Witch incense is named after the old cleansing ritual. Its base is bamboo, coconut shell powder and benzoin, a resin from Styrax trees that smells warm and sweet, close to vanilla. The name describes a custom, not something the smoke does. We chose it because a thin line of smoke rising beside the cards is the oldest way to say: this is a ritual now.

Why these pieces

The Moon Face tarot deck has a moon face and blue foil that catches the candlelight, with a booklet to start reading. The booklet is there for after you have looked, not before.

Blue Foil Tarot Deck · Moon Face

The tree of life reading cloth, 75 × 75 cm, gives the cards a place to land. The tree of life is an old image of roots, trunk and crown that appears in many cultures, from the world tree of Norse myth to the tree in the garden of Genesis. A cloth keeps the cards clean and turns any table into a reading table.

Tarot Reading Cloth · Tree of Life

The Ancient Witch incense comes with a small rock crystal pendulum in the box. Rock crystal is clear quartz. The Greeks thought it was ice that never melted. The pendulum is for another evening and its slow yes-or-no questions.

Ancient Witch Spell Incense "Cleansing" with Rock Crystal Pendulum

The flip holders in midnight grey hold the tealights tonight and dinner candles on another evening.

Flip Candle Holders, Midnight Grey

The vanilla tealights, six in a set, are enough for three evenings with two lights each.

Vanilla Tealights

Together they make a reading table: cloth, two lights, a line of smoke and a deck you look at before you read about it.

How to do the ritual

1. Meet your deck first. Before the first reading, go through all the cards once, face up, slowly. Just look at the pictures.
2. Spread the cloth, light both tealights and the incense. Turn the holders tealight side up and set them at the two top corners of the cloth. Stand the incense in a holder on a heat-proof dish beside it.
3. Shuffle until it feels right. There is no correct way. Hold a question in mind, or simply ask: what should I look at tonight?
4. Draw one card and lay it face up in the middle of the cloth.
5. Look at the picture before you read the booklet. What do you see first? Which colour, which figure, which gesture? What does it remind you of from your own week?
6. Then open the booklet and read what it says about the card. Notice where it matches what you saw and where it does not.
7. Write the card and one sentence about it on a slip of paper and keep it with the deck. Put the card back, let the incense burn out and put out the tealights.

What the ritual gives you

A gentle way into tarot without having to learn 78 meanings at once. One card, one picture, one sentence. Many find that the card gives them a different angle on something they were already thinking about. After a few weeks your slips become a small diary. Nothing here predicts anything.

The deck, the cloth, the holders and the pendulum stay with you. Tealights and incense can be bought again.

Why we put it together

We wanted a first deck that someone can give, as the old saying asks, with everything needed for the first evening. A deck with a booklet, because a beginner needs somewhere to start. A large cloth, because cards on a bare table feel like a game of patience. Two small lights instead of one tall candle, so no shadow falls on the card. All pieces are from Ancient Wisdom and their Ancient Witch range. We left out anything that promises answers.

Safety

• Never leave the tealights or incense burning alone.
• Keep the cloth, the cards and the slips of paper well away from the flames. The cloth is polyester and melts easily.
• Burn the incense in a holder on a heat-proof dish, with a window open. No incense holder comes with this ritual.
• Keep the pendulum and tealights away from small children and pets.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions