Beginners Guide to Tarot - Cleansing Your Deck

So you’ve got your first deck, now what? It’s time to cleanse those cards!

Cleansing your deck will help with bonding with your deck. This is the most important first step and ensures your deck is ready to use. You should also do regular cleanses of your deck, especially after larger or ‘heavier’ readings. I’m going to share my three favourite ways to cleanse a tarot deck, one of which I use exclusivly when I feel like there is a lot of energy to be taken from the cards.

Cleansing your deck is the best way to ensure you are getting accurate readings, and making sure you’re taking care of the energies within your cards.

Option One - Salt Cleanse

Salt cleansing is my go to for a deeper cleanse. To do this you’ll need an airtight container, salt and your cards.

Place the cards into the container, cover fully in the salt, place on the lid and leave for as long as you feel is necessary. I usually leave mine for anything from 30 minutes to overnight. If you’ve just gotten the deck I would recommend leaving it overnight in the salt just to remove any previous eneergies from the cards. This is also a good method if anyone else has used your cards, or you’ve done a heavy or emotional read either for yurself or someone else.

Option Two - Incense / Smoke Cleansing

So smoke cleansing is a closed practise, so what I mean here is using incense, such as dragons blood, or whichever is your preferred one, and burning this near to your cards.

I knew someone who would take each card and hold either side up to the smoke just to be sure the card was fully cleansed. He decribed it as being similar to flipping a burger to get it cooked right on both sides. I still find this is the best way to describe how to use this method. I would ensure that if you are doing this, that it is done with respect to the cultures that use it and only ever done with incense, and not done as a form of smudging, as that is a closed practise as well.

Option Three - Shuffling

This one seems very obvious, but its the easiest way to cleanse your deck! This is also the best way to cleanse between readings.

Shuffling your deck similar to how you would a deck of cards is all this method means. I tend to take 3-5 minutes to fully shuffle everything so it’s all ready for the next reading. I also tend to do this following either of the above cleansings as like a double cleanse. You do not have to do this, it just works for me!

Now to charge your cards!

Once you have your cards cleansed, its time to charge them. My favourite ways are sunlight, moonlight or crystals.

Leaving your deck on a windowsill either during the day or overnight is the easiest way to use either sunlight or moonlight to charge your cards. I tended to stick with using a full moon for moonlight charges! I would have cleansed them earlier that day to then charge them that night.

Crystals work similarly, in that you place your chosen crystals on your deck and leave them until you feel your deck is ready. I would tend to use crystals similar to the reading I was about to do, so like quartz for a self love reading or selenite for an energy reading.

So now your cards are cleansed, and charged, its time to start learning about what each card means! I’ll be doing seperate posts for the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana as well as each suit within it, which features my ‘cheat sheet’ for reading tarot!

How do you clenase and charge your cards? Comment below and let me know!