Shuffling Tarot cards has become an art within itself; there are so many ways to shuffle or otherwise prepare your Tarot deck for a reading.
There are a lot of different ways to shuffle a Tarot deck. Maybe you have never considered how you shuffle your deck, or perhaps you have a very unique way of doing it.
Below I’ll describe some well known and some lesser known ways to shuffle your Tarot deck!
Regular hand shuffling
Regular shuffling is exactly what you’d expect. Holding the cards in your hands, picking up some and distributing them randomly within the deck, just as you would with regular playing cards.
This works for so many reasons; it’s mindless nature adds to the random outcome. When you truly want an answer from somewhere else, random shuffling is the go-to method for preparing your deck.
Make sure you don’t peek at any cards, even by accident. If you do happen to glimpse a card, just keep shuffling until you have no idea where it is.
There is no time limit when shuffling a deck, just keep going until you feel happy to stop.
When you do feel that the deck has been shuffled enough, put it down and draw your cards from the top.
Deck cutting
This is a practice I’ve been doing more and more, and it works well for larger spreads, or when you want to perform multiple spreads.
Deck cutting involves (unsurprisingly!) cutting your deck, and only using a certain number of cards, rather than the whole deck. Truth be told, there are a lot of ways to cut your deck, so I’ll show by example.
Take your deck and cut it in two. It doesn’t have to be even. Put one half aside.
Of the remaining half, you may choose to shuffle them regularly, or use them as-is.
Deal the spread using the cut cards.
This works especially well if you are intending to perform multiple spreads. using a smaller number of cards overall will keep the theme tighter, and you may get a more concise answer.
A benefit of using fewer cards over multiple spreads is that you may see more repetitions. Take the messages from any repeated cards seriously.
Fanning
This is an especially good way to shuffle and present your deck when performing a reading for somebody else.
Holding your deck, lay it on a table. Spread out the deck so that the backs of each card are visible.
Ask your querent to choose a number of tarot cards at random. The number of cards they choose should correspond to the number in the spread you are going to perform.
Fanning cards out adds a level of interaction for the querent, and can make the reading more engaging, rather than being a purely passive affair.
Once they have chosen the cards, discard the rest of the deck and work solely with these cards for the spread.
Do you shuffle your Tarot deck is a specific way? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear!