Interviewing a Tarot Deck

November 5, 2023

I love Tarot. You probably already know this if you’ve found this blog from any of my other social channels, but it’s true! It’s helped me so much. However… there’s something I need to admit.

Although I love buying new decks, I rarely use them. They’re often so beautiful and intriguing, with such enticing artwork or photography, that I want to hoard them like a dragon. Mine! Mine!

But, once purchased, they sit there, collecting dust, for… an embarrassingly long time. For the last few months, I’ve held off on buying more (an exercise in self-restraint that I am proud of, considering my usual tendency to have a bazillion types of everything I like). This summer, however, I was drawn to a new deck called the Anima Mundi. I used it a few times that night and occasionally in the next week, but I always use the classic Rider-Waite-Smith. I couldn’t figure out how to fit this one in, even though I still felt drawn to it whenever I saw it on my shelf.

A few weeks ago, a friend mentioned the concept of interviewing a deck to get a feel for it, but I only sat down to try it the night before the Full Moon in Pisces on August 29th. The moon has been part of my process of self-discovery (something else I should blog about, hm), but I usually feel tired on the Full Moon, even though I love the sight of them and the idea of doing lunar magic. I rarely do anything except admire the moon and consider how special it is. But on the 28th, a Tarot spread to interview my lovely Anima Mundi seemed to pop into my head out of nowhere, so I followed my intuition.

Could I find the original message from my friend? No, and I still haven’t found it, so I don’t know exactly which spread she was referring to! I know I can be tripped up this way — spending so long looking for “the right thing” that I give up entirely — so I quickly searched and found a spread on a website, Little Red Tarot. I hadn’t even been to this blog before, and the author’s overall process is far more in-depth than I have patience for. However, I liked how the author walked through their interview results. The spread seemed a little bigger than I’d planned, at six cards, but again, I didn’t want to be pulled into an hour of Googling, so I grabbed my journal and tried it.

I recommend checking out Little Red Tarot to see their explanation of this spread (I’ll be returning to that site, I think!), but I enjoyed it enough that I’m eventually going to do it for my other decks, too (except my RWS, which already seems freakishly on-point).

When I finished the interview, I was puzzled and curious about the results. After thinking about it for two days, I decided to change my Tarot routine and use Anima Mundi for the entire month of September. I only did not use it on one spread at the end of the month since I was doing a live stream over on YouTube (another impulsive decision on my part) and wanted to use RWS to show the deck I use when reading for clients.

After using a new deck for a month, I feel pretty qualified to give it a moderately in-depth review. This blog post about the interviewing process has suddenly grown into a bigger project! I’m posting this one first as I finish up my review content.

Anima Mundi Project Posts

Part 1: Interviewing the Deck (you are here)

Part 2: Tarot Journaling to Learn the Deck

Part 3: Anima Mundi Deck Review

On To the Interview

Anima Mundi uses no humans in any of the artwork. I’ll discuss that more in the deck review because it’s a major difference from the traditional deck that really stretched my brain at times. The deck is otherwise divided into the conventional suits and contains the standard number of Major cards, 22. The Majors and Courts also have typical names, e.g., Kings and Queens, although animals are used to depict them.

(Brief side note: If you’re super new to Tarot, welcome! The deck is made up of Major Arcana, usually 22 of them; Minor Arcana, also known as Pips; and Court Cards. There are usually four suits, and the Minors and Courts are of those suits. If you have seen a deck of playing cards with hearts, diamonds, etc., that is a “suit” of cards. Traditionally, a deck has Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles or Coins. A deck can deviate pretty wildly in all of these ways. Court cards refer to a Page, Knight, Queen, and King for each suit.)

Here’s the description of the deck from the artist’s website:

The Anima Mundi deck is a complete 78-card deck with accompanying guidebook. It’s based off of the Rider-Waite tradition, and inspired by my deep fascination for the natural world, which I’ve cultivated since childhood. “Anima Mundi” is a Latin term which translates to “the world’s soul.” Originally coined by Plato, it is the belief that all living things on this planet are connected as a single spiritual entity. Loosely inspired by medieval iconography and Renaissance art, this deck is a tribute to the incredible biodiversity of this planet. The cards were created in 2017, individually hand-painted with acrylic paints by me. This project was brought to life in October 2017 via Kickstarter, with the help of my wonderful supporters.

https://www.thecreepingmoon.co/tarot.html

After impulsively deciding to do this, I grabbed my usual journal, put some Washi tape on top (boy, I love that stuff), and soldiered on. Here’s a picture of the first page. It took me several pages to go through this process.

Here are the questions I used — I didn’t deviate from the example on Little Red Tarot.

1. Tell me about yourself. What is your most important characteristic?
2. What are your strengths as a deck?
3. What are your limits as a deck?
4. What are you here to teach me?
5. How can I best learn and collaborate with you?
6. What is the potential outcome of our working relationship?

Unlike the example on LRT, I had NO Major cards show up. I had so many Cups! This would prove to be an ongoing theme for September. I began making a new list of items on the next page (that comment about the booklet was added after the fact). Item 0 on that list pointed out that I have never drawn so many Cups!

Actually, let me back up for a moment. How did I shuffle and draw these cards? I had shuffled the deck several times already since I’d done a few single-card pulls immediately after I bought it. I didn’t do any special shuffle for this interview, although you certainly can. When drawing the cards, I ask each question and pull a card from the spot in the deck where I feel compelled to do it. I place it face down and move to the next question. Cards are rarely drawn sequentially (I almost always pick a different place in the deck for the next draw), so the shuffle itself isn’t to blame for why I have so many Cups! I turned them all over at the same time.

The following is a transcription of my journal, with a few words added for clarity. Some of this is from the instructional booklet, and some is from my previous experience. When writing about each card, I also included a brief description to point out the visual elements that seemed important to me. Finally, note that I also included reversals in this spread (placing the card upside-down if it was drawn that way). This is also optional, but it is my typical practice, so I included it here.

All images used here are originally from The Creeping Moon’s product page for this deck.

0. Suit.

Almost entirely Cups – a first for me.

Water, inner emotions, happy sigh more than an exuberant shout, the heart, the creative and intuitive within. Create with the Universe. Psychic awareness. Dive in!

1. What is your most important characteristic? Queen of Cups, Reversed

Solitary great blue whale swimming through deep ocean, leaving a stream of bubbles that are reminiscent of stars.

Mother archetype: Connectedness, caretaking, receptiveness, influence, facilitation, nurturing, quiet influence or command/leadership

Reversed: To be less alone, more community-minded, connected rather than the great, lonely whale — to spread the bubble stars for myself as well as others – given the dreamy and romantic tendency of Cups, this reversal may suggest the deck will find a solid ground even when introverted. Fantastic ideas are taking over.

2. What are your strengths as a deck? 2 of Cups

Seahorses pressing gently together, as if staring into each other – one anchors the other at the ocean’s floor.

Meaningful connection, partnership, duality, mutual cooperation in the pursuit of a goal. Still, tranquil

Maybe this deck will help me find the calm, empowered, mutual understanding shown here when my ocean feels turbulent

3. What are your limits as a deck? Knight of Cups

Courage, will, ambition, energy, focus. Young adult energy, prone to more extreme feelings than the King. Excess vs moderation

As a card for limits, this can go multiple ways. Too driven? Too much action? Impulsive? Or not enough? This orca is alone in the evening and leaping ahead. The limits here may be on examining my solitary inner world vs. my influence from others. My intuition may lead me to act rashly, and this may support it without considering the “splashdown” when the whale lands.

4. What are you here to teach me? 8 of Cups Reversed

An albatross flying toward a rocky divide above the water, facing away, moving on.

An 8 is for action, accomplishment; here we are reversed, indecisive?

Here to teach me when to move on — when to leave some things behind — when to pursue the distant lands afar — to teach me about my indecision, when it is coming from my intuition.

5. How can I best learn and collaborate with you? Page of Cups Reversed

An otter stares up as he floats in water — the perspective is odd, making sure to show plants and flowers poking into frame almost like he is floating in space. Adding to the dreamy nature of the Cups — but he is reversed.

I must be able to draw on my depth of experience to learn from this; I have to hear my intuition and let it out like the water that rushes into every crack, but the floating, lackadaisical otter may miss the important nuances.

6. What is the potential outcome of our working relationship? 4 of Wands

My only non-Cup!

4s are material completion, manifesting desires into the physical world — I can attract my desires but the work is just beginning — foundations are being laid.

This relationship can help me build and prepare to act (Wands) over imagining (Cups). It will help me channel my intuitive, nurturing energy into something tangible & useful as a stepping stone of continued development.

Interview Postmortem

I have to say, looking back on this, I was already experiencing some of the confusion that would carry through with a few of the cards. While the Cups mostly include animals in the artwork, the Wands are almost entirely just the wands shown with little else around them, which forced me to lean back on my numerology several times throughout the month. It did help me learn some of this—such as the fours mentioned in card #6—but there seemed to be more Wands without animals than with them, so I ended up feeling like those were a bit of a struggle.

Overall, I found this spread to be intriguing and enticing. Despite what I just wrote about the Wands, the deck’s artwork left me feeling drawn in and wanting to use the cards more often. I found myself wanting to test the results of this interview!

Hindsight also allows me to consider the interview itself to be surprisingly prescient. I drew more Cups than usual throughout the month and spent much of my Tarot journaling time thinking about this suit, my intuition, and my creativity.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I’ll also be sharing a review of the deck itself. For now, let me leave you with a wholehearted endorsement of this interviewing approach. By sitting down with specific questions about the Deck itself, I framed my Tarot practice in a way I never had before. I thought about the artwork and themes of each suit in ways I had not previously considered. If nothing else, this was a successful spread simply to expand my own perspective. You can customize the six questions if you like — and I’ll post more about this process if I do that later on — but these seem to cover the most important points.