My First Time Fumbling With Marseille Cards
Alright, so I got this Marseille tarot deck last Tuesday because YouTube kept showing me videos. Figured why not try? Total newbie here, didn’t know swords from cups. Deck felt weirdly thin and kinda cheap, but whatever. Just opened the box, spread the cards on my kitchen table like a buffet. Immediately felt like I bit off more than I could chew – so many pictures! The Death card stared back at me like some bad omen. Great.
First thing? Didn’t even shuffle properly. Kept dropping cards everywhere like a clumsy idiot. Finally forced myself to pick just one card a day. Monday? Pulled “The Fool.” Dude looked happy skipping off a cliff. My thought? “Wow, that’s totally me diving into tarot with zero clue. Accurate.” Scribbled that messy thought in a cheap notebook. Decided right then to just write whatever stupid thing popped into my head when I saw the image. No deep meaning hunting, just vibes.
Things got hairy fast with the minor suits. Those pips! Just random sticks, coins, swords, cups drawn super basically. Numbers everywhere. No scenes like other decks. My brain fried trying to remember “Swords = Air? Thoughts? Problems?”. Then I saw a trick online: group them by number. Genius.
- Ones (Aces): Pure energy for that suit. Like an explosion of ideas for Swords, mad cash vibes for Coins.
- Twos: Choices, partnerships, kinda balanced but unstable. Crossed swords? Two paths, conflict brewing.
- Threes: Results popping up, things solidifying. Three cups? Celebration time! Three swords? Yeah, heartache arrived.
- Fours: Hard stop. Stability, boundaries. Four solid walls with Cups – feeling trapped emotionally? Four sturdy Coins? Hunkered down, protecting resources.
Started cheating like crazy. Made my own ugly flashcard system. Major Arcana cards on one side, my basic gut feeling on the back:
- The Popess: Secret stuff, intuition vibes. Sitting there with her book.
- Wheel of Fortune: Sudden changes, life spinning wildly. That creepy sphinx.
- The Tower: Boom! Disaster, reality check. People literally falling out.
Honestly? Repetition saved me. Pulling cards daily sucked at first but slowly built recognition. Saw the “Three of Swords” three days in a row. First time, thought “bad luck.” Second time, remembered “heart pain.” Third time, actually felt it about a messy text argument. Lightbulb moment! The picture finally clicked with real life.
Forced myself to do dumb 3-card readings about my day: Morning/Afternoon/Evening. Patterns started screaming. Like, “Eight of Cups” (walking away) + “Chariot” (hard push forward) showing up constantly? Yeah, my subconscious begging me to ditch that dead-end project. Cards confirmed what I already knew but ignored. Stopped trying to “predict” and started listening. The basic images told enough story.
Progress is slow. Definitely NOT memorizing 78 meanings overnight. But connecting one card image to one tiny real feeling? That’s gold. Building meaning brick by messy brick from the ground up. Marseille’s simplicity became its superpower – makes you look closely. Still learning, still fumbling, but actually starting to see.
