Meanwhile, Back at the Castle…

For the last couple of decades I’ve been a notorious collector of tarot decks. I think the main reason for this obsession (besides the obvious prettiness of the cards), is that I couldn’t get them where I grew up. As an aspiring wiccan in the early nineties I read books about the cards, marveled at their mysterious (or not so mysterious) origins, and their complex (or not so complex) symbolism. But there were nowhere to buy them in rural Norway at that time, and internet shopping was still not a thing, so I was left gawking at book pages with no chance of getting an actual deck.

I saw a deck once, at a music festival in Oslo. I was fourteen at the time, on vacation with my family – and had already blown my money on other trinkets and bubble gum. I hovered by the stall that had them on display for hours, aching in my little chest because I couldn’t get my paws on the shiny deck. I knew there was no way my mother would allow me to borrow money for something like that, so I had to leave empty handed.

Twenty-five years later it still hurts.

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