Are Tarot Decks Magick? Options

This is from my submission to Wise Tarot Mag (www.wisetarot.com) and I thought it was a cool enough topic to fire up a poll here.

There is certainly something quite magical about Tarot Decks, from the legendary history (mythical) to the Renaissance history (fun) to more recent years (magickal) and there can be no doubt that some people have embraced the roll of Tarot decks in practical or High Magick.

From a recent poll:
* 23.1% of respondents use Tarot for divination only
* 7.7% don't use decks at all
* 69.3% who use Tarot as either a mini temple, magickal tool or visualizing aid in magickal practice!

Beyond that, a recent syndicated study of the Tarot Publishing Industry (sneak peak at data below!) reveals how magical we think the decks themselves are (versus their readers), with 40.3% believing their actual decks are magick (either 100% or somewhat) and similar numbers believing the deck has a life of its own. Overwhelmingly, respondents believed at least that the decks were either magickal in and of themselves or magickal by virtue of our skills. (I couldn't paste in the charts, sorry).

Tarot as a Mini Temple

Tarot as a Mini Temple is a concept put forth by several occultists, notably by Donald Tyson in Portable Magic: Tarot Is the Only Tool You Need, famous author of many books. Tyson believes that a properly consecrated deck of cards, empowered by the correspondences of the Golden Dawn, become "symbolic tools; there is no need for the physical tools and space required in traditional ceremonial magic."

Tyson demonstrates how to use the archetypes and power of the cards to build mini-alters, circles and triangles, and also how to use the Tarot suits as mini, yet powerful, occult tools in place of an actual sword (or athame), chalice, pentacle.
Tarot & Magic

In Tarot & Magic (Special Topics in Tarot), bestselling occult writer Donald Kraig, author of the perpetual reference book Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts (Llewellyn's High Magick), outlined a different and more "intuitive" approach, using the Tarot archetypes and universal symbols and emblematic of the results — "Your Tarot deck is a powerful magical tool. Use it to create the changes you desire in life."
Tarot Talismans

Well known chief adepts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero, present an even more detailed and quite straight-forward approach to Tarot Talismans: Invoke the Angels of the Tarot. They map out specific combinations of cards, with slightly different meanigns between decks, and their uses in Talismanic and Amuletic work.
78 Little Cards, So Much Magick

So, whether you believe the deck itself is magickal (over 40% of those surveyed did believe this!) or that the magick comes from within and without via the archetypal symbolism of the cards, one thing is very clear. The 78 humble Tarot cards in a $24.95 (list price) deck contains an entire universe of magickal possibilities.

The Tarot is a very restrictive way of doing magic. I don't like it frankly, though it does have some merit. The problem is there is only one deck. Who decided that this one deck was going to be the only way to divine using cards? The card companies try to make it look less lame by having decks with the same cards, but different pretty pictures on the cards, but the fact remains that for hundreds of years pretty much nobody has ever questioned exactly why the major arcana are the way they are. Not to say the deck isn't a good measure of at least the human viewpoint of existence, but I don't like something so blindly trusted and unchanging. Why not have each fortune teller build their own deck of cards? Why not have several cards that you can mix and match into different decks? There's pages of literature on what the 9 of Wands implies for your future, but there's nothing to justify why the 9 of Wands at all, for instance. If you practice Tarot card reading, you must first accept a sort of doctrine, which is "written" in the single Tarot deck that you will use. If you like doctrinal stuff that's fine, but I prefer a more anarchic style of being.

Why not have each fortune teller build their own deck of cards? Why not have several cards that you can mix and match into different decks?

A collectible card game as system of divination?! Brilliant! They've got dozens of cards with names for almost every situation you could think of, though using them all would make it impossible to shuffle without a machine. Maybe it'd even be possible to create Collectible Tarot cards, based on various archetypes? I know I'd like to have some additions to my deck, such as...
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