Tarot & Books: Reflections on Shelves [VR to  

Using language to describe tarot is so interesting. It's something I've been thinking about since I watched Tarot Shrink's video. If language is art, visual images that communicate, then each image or each deck can say something different. Add something to the foundation that is tarot, add to the conversation. As books can. I see language as spoken, non-verbal, written, music, visual images/art, language is communication. The communication can be with self or others. Books and tarot/oracle both communicate stories, ideas, spark self reflection. Not all in the same way. Tarot creators and book authors each have something to say, something to communicate and each does so in their chosen media. That being said, my tarot and oracle decks get more comments by people invited to my home then my books do. lol

Great discussion. I love how you talked about your books as the evolution of your academic career. Made me wish I still had so many of my texts!! Thanks for sharing. Always so thoughtful. 😊

Really interesting to watch and hear your thoughts. I really like this idea to look at the things that we collect/enjoy/ choose to spend our freetime with and compare them which probably could even lead to finding sth out about ourselves through that process. Thinking about doing a VR to this but with Tarot and Crystals since those are the two big collections/passions in my life.

Oh I really loved this.

This is so interesting to think about! As a regular library patron and Kindle user, my physical bookshelves definitely aren't as reflective of what I'm currently reading.

Hi, Laura! I've always looked at my tarot decks as unbound books. I have a lot of regular books - fiction and nonfiction. I always reread a fiction book that I've enjoyed. Often, many times. I always discover something new. These books are like places that I've visited and enjoyed so much that I must visit them again. It's very much, like my experiences with my tarot decks. I enjoyed your video very much. So thoughtful. I'm not commenting very often because I've having technical difficulties with that. But, I always watch my favorites and that includes you.

An amazing video and very thought-provoking, I really love where you've gone with it! Long rambling comment as you've probably come to expect from me xD I've been thinking a lot about book and tarot shelves recently (and zine shelves too). What a bookshelf or tarot shelf means to me has started to shift as I just got my first full-time position at a library (yay!). I'm a longtime library user, and I've always had this image in my head that my bookshelf is a place where I would collect and maintain books that had a significant impact on me in one way or another. I'd check a book out from the library, and if it felt really impactful or like something I'd want to refer back to a lot, I would purchase a copy (secondhand or otherwise) for myself. But watching this has made me realize that most of the books on my bookshelf are either books I've bought for study, books I got secondhand or at swaps because I thought they looked neat, or books I couldn't easily find at the library (without going through a more complex interlibrary loan process). And I find that books I buy for myself first instead of checking out from the library more often than not end up unread, so my relationship with the bookself is like the relationship I have as a professional librarian with the library's collection--I've become very familiar with it, I've touched and handled every book at some point, I've probably seen the cover and titles and read some basic information about it dozens of times, but I've read a tiny fraction of them. Especially now, with my new full-time position, I spend much more time with the books at the library than my books at home. And I check out tons of library books all the time, often because I figure I may not come across it again, I want to have a record for myself that I am interested in this book, and I want my patron-level interest is reflected in the book's circulation stats. So it's like a to-read list on Goodreads, but I sit and live with the physical book for a little while. (I do often end up reading these library books, but I check out way more than I could ever read). And notably, there have been tons of books that I checked out from the library, read and loved, said I'd buy for myself and then never bought. And in retrospect... do I even want to? Or would I rather just check it out from the library again? I'm remembering when I was a kid and I checked out the same book on ferrets from the library literally every time I was at the library, until I thought to myself "wait, what if someone else wants to read it?" and I forced myself to check it out every other time instead. And I'd say that ferret book had a stronger impact on me than many of the ones on my shelves. The ones on my shelf feel almost random--influenced by my interests and tastes, but not comprehensive or even unified in any way. My tarot collection feels similar, but with the added wrinkle that I can't get decks from libraries. I end up trying to be very deliberate about what I bring in to begin with because it feels like a waste (of space, money, mental effort) if I *don't* end up with a strong connection. Meanwhile, there are tarot decks that have had a big impact on me--such as when doing reading trades with other people--that, like books, I don't have in my own collection! Even mass-market ones that would be easy to get! So I guess I'm not doing the fantasy self thing of having a comprehensive collection only of things I connect with anyway. So I don't know! I really don't know what my book or tarot collection is to me, or what I want them to be. And to be honest it kind of frustrates me because I like having a rhyme and reason to things, and it kinda makes my purchasing decisions and weeding decisions a lot harder. Sometimes it's a struggle to separate out what they are from what I think I want them to be.