8/23/13—Coming Clean About My Tarot Addiction

Today's Draw: Seven of Disks from the Tarot of the Holy Light. Do you have something you collect? Do you feel a little...um...addicted to collecting these things? And do you have any intention of stopping anytime soon?

This is my third draw this week from a brand new tarot deck. You might surmise I have an issue. Me likey collecting tarot decks. And you know what the Seven of Disks says? It says it's OK. The things I collect are the rewards of my labor and I deserve them. 

Sweet little Seven of Disks. *stroking card lovingly*

See, I work at home, so I don't buy tons of nice clothes. I don't travel to exotic places. I drive old cars. I eat at home a lot. I live in a modest house. I don't rush out for the latest technology and, in fact, don't buy anything new along those lines until the old one is broken. I don't now, nor have I ever, lived beyond my means. But there *are* a few things I spend money on. Tarot is one of them. And at about $20 a deck (on average), they're not that expensive of a habit.

Of course that doesn't mean I don't still have an issue. I certainly do. I have more decks than I care to admit or even know of. Certainly over 300. Easily. I have never actually counted because I'm afraid of being mortified by the actual number (unlike my friend R. who inventories hers and carries a list with her everywhere she goes. It's nice having friends like R. that you can point at and say "she's sicker than I am.") 

Even though I have all my decks concentrated in six strategic touch points across my home so that I'm never more than two steps away from a deck, I still can't seem to locate some of them and I don't know why (has anyone seen my Fishy Tarot or my Alchemical Renewed?) And sometimes I suffer the secret shame of purchasing a deck that I already own. That's the worst. It doesn't get much lower than that. 

The truly sad part is that I've joined a group called Tarotholics Anonymous. Do you know what they do there? They talk about tarot and how great it is. And then they brag about the latest and greatest deck they just purchased, inciting the rest of us to run off and snatch up a copy for ourselves before they're all gone. So much for support groups.

Then there's something called the Limited Edition, Self-Published deck. Those are made just for people like me. Only maybe 1000 copies exist in the entire world and I must have one of them. They don't cost $20. Not even close. Some cost more than 10x that much. But one day they're going to be worth MUCH more than I paid for them. Maybe. That's, of course, if I could ever part with one. (Tarot addicts around the globe are snorting milk out their noses right now at the ridiculous notion that someone would actually part with a LE HTF OOP deck willingly.) (For the neophytes, that's Limited Edition, Hard To Find, Out Of Print. *exaggerated sigh* *eye roll* Newbies!)

And then there are some decks that sell out within seconds. I do not own a Russian edition of the Victorian Romantic** and it KILLS me. It would go nicely with my LE Gold Victorian Romantic and my two regular HTF OOP editions. Because of this ONE deck, my Baba Prague (the deck creator) collection is incomplete. But what are you going to do? Damn scalpers beat me out every time a small batch of 50 or so were released. Seconds, people! That's how fast these things sold out! That's what I get for not sitting at home and obsessively refreshing my email so I could be first in line. Clearly I didn't want it ENOUGH.

For the casual tarot readers and non-tarot folk reading it, I'm sure all this sounds insane. I could cite a number of my Facebook friends who have similar afflictions for the things they collect. Sure, it's different when it's YOU and your [insert material object here] lust we're talking about. But tarot decks? Whatever. 

My name is Tierney and I'm a tarotholic. Who are you?

*From 11/11/11. **I own one now.