My first experience of reading with blended decks

Inspired by SanTarot over on YouTube, I decided to do a reading with three decks blended into one. I used three of the four Chris-Anne decks I own – The Muse Tarot, The Tarot of Curious Creatures and The Light Seer’s Tarot – because I knew colour-, size- and energy-wise they would blend well. They did and WOW!

The logistics of working with blended decks

Before I get into the reading, let me start with the logistics. I have big hands and I shuffle decks every day, and truth be told I managed to hold all three decks in my hand at once, but then I had no idea what to do with them. In the end I laid out the three decks and just randomly grabbed cards from each pile to create one mega pile. I stopped and shuffled my forming pile on a few occasions because it felt like the right thing to do. Surprisingly quickly I ended up with this.

The Spread

Then I fanned out the cards as I usually would and drew cards in my usual manner. I wanted a fairly free-flowing spread that still offered me some structure so I went with my General Spread. But I added the top card, the card that presented on the split, and the bottom card to the left of the spread. The two cards you see on the right were ones I drew to confirm/clarify the messages I was receiving from the row. I was amazed by how well this reading went. Even though the art-styles are wildly different, the reading felt really coherent. Plus, blending the decks encouraged me to look at my overall spread in new ways.

My thoughts on working with blended decks

I wasn’t sure how I would find this approach. It was pure curiosity that caused me to give it a go, but I am glad I did. It provided another way to bring new life into readings and interpretations and I really feel that it has opened up many new opportunities. What they are I am not sure, but I sense they are there. That is an exciting space to be in so a big thank you to San Tarot for inspiring me to work with blended decks, and to Chris-Anne for creating fantastic, easy-to-read-decks.

Ultimately, all I can say is that I recommend giving it a try. In the two readings I have done for others since giving this a try I have had double up cards which really drove home certain messages. I won’t be making this my standard practice but I am keen to try blending some other decks to see what happens. If you do this generally, or if you give it a try, I’d love to hear about your experiences.