Quinn had not been exaggerating when he had mentioned that the book needed updates. This was the second and last edition to have been published and that had been in 2008; it had initially been published in 2000- more than two decades ago.
Nellie had read through the whole beginning at this point and found herself staring at the title of the first official chapter. There was a cute, little, and simple image of a bubbling cauldron right below the title of this chapter, that read CHAPTER ONE: What is a Witch?. From what she had gleaned from the introduction, this chapter would be all about dispelling common myths about what a witch was while educating about the different kinds of magical practices that could be found all throughout the world.
She found that she was unable to move past the first sentence, though. No matter how much she attempted to will her eyes and mind to work in tandem to be able to understand what was written in the book as they had done only a few minutes ago… they just weren’t willing to come together and work with one another. Whereas her eyes seemed to give their all to transmit images to her mind, her mind just… refused to cooperate. She had words she needed to analyze and understand and her eyes were doing an excellent job of allowing her to see.
But was her mind doing its job? Of course not! Instead, it was focused on reminding her of the existence of the deck that Quinn had helped her pick out; kept quietly but insistently trying to convince her to move away from the book with all of the knowledge she needed to absorb and onto the fascinating new tarot deck.
With a sigh, Nellie glanced away from the book.
To her right, only a few inches away from said book rested the brand-new tarot deck. In all honesty, maybe it hadn’t been her best idea to have left it right there, where it could taunt her silently from the corner of her vision. But it wasn’t like she had ever really had this much trouble focusing on reading something before… well, yes, she had faced some issues when she had been forced to read things for classes that hadn’t interested her. But this was a topic she was invested in. The difficulty in reading didn’t make any sense.
No matter how much she tried to get her mind to focus on the words in the text, all that it seemed interested in was the deck.
With a quick inhale, Nellie put the book down and closed it. Her hand wasted no time moving over to the deck, swiping it up to bring it close to her.
She wasn’t sure how to explain what she felt when she looked upon the deck clasped in her hands. She just knew that it felt… nice. Where the first deck she had gotten had made her hands tingle in a painful manner, this one emitted a warm glow. It was like… getting offered a hug, in a way, but a hug for her hands.
If her parents could see her, they would be well beyond disappointed- they would be livid enough to threaten to disown her, if not full on just kick her out of their lives. If her friends could see her… they would think she was going through something so terrible that she would probably get better use out of a therapist than this set of cards.
Nellie found a small smile worming its way onto her lips as she began to open up the simple carton that housed the deck. Quinn was her friend. And Quinn had not just helped her to get this deck, but he had also given her a book he had believed could help her. Even though most of her friends would think that she may have been going crazy, at least Quinn was on her side.
The deck slid into her hands with no friction whatsoever. It seemed to dance onto her palm, gliding until it was neatly stacked; in a perfect position to be able to utilize. The design on the back was that of two birds in mid-flight, both of them seemingly making a full circle at the very center of the card. They were colored in and had been drawn in a similar cozy illustration style that had been used for the rest of the cards; the background was a simple solid dark blue without any real embellishments. Much like with what she had seen of the deck and its cover, the people that had created this deck had wanted to keep the backgrounds in the cards simple and had instead focused most if not all of the detail work on the characters.
The cards felt smooth in her hands; they slid with much more ease than her first deck. As she looked down at the cards, she felt like she needed to look through them; get to see what this deck contained and what differences may exist between it and the one she had initially gotten her hands on.
And it wasn’t like there was anything that truly stopped her from doing just that.
Yes, she wanted to read up on witchcraft and actually get serious about taking part in it. But she was her own boss; she had the freedom to decide on her own timeline. If she couldn't find the will to read right now, there wasn't really anything forcing her to do so. There was no deadline, after all; no one was expecting her to read her to then be able to discuss all of it.
It was... an odd sense of freedom. Small, ultimately meaningless, and yet... this felt like it was important.
With a small smile beginning to pull at her lips, Nellie made herself a bit more comfortable in her desk chair, propped one foot up on the edge of the chair as she pulled her knee up to her chest, and settled in. Then, card by card, she began to get acquainted with the new deck.
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Witchcraft was supposed to be about listening to yourself, to that quiet voice in the back of your head that you usually dismissed as illogical, instinctual, or plain old annoying. From what she had learned up to this point, Nellie had understood that the way most people practiced the craft was based on intuition- on paying attention to what the inner self deemed necessary to do or not, on listening to the inner knowledge that was so easy to dismiss as simple superstitious thought that had no place in the modern, scientific, oh-so-objective world they now lived in.
Most of her life, Nellie had not allowed herself to listen to that inner voice- at least, not listen to it and actually do what it asked of her. With the way she had been raised, she had been taught that she needed to think about everything she was about to say and do, needed to make sure that the course of action she wanted to embark on was not just right for her, but right for her whole family.
Whenever her ‘inner voice’ had tried to speak to her, she had ignored it because, often times, what it wanted her to do would lead to issues with her family.
Or, at least, that was the conclusion she had eventually landed on.
The worst thing about trying to listen to her intuition was how silly it made her feel. After a lifetime of having to repress these kinds of thoughts, of brushing off every ridiculous, ludicrous thing that came into her head as just that… well… it made her feel like she was giving in to silly, childish impulses that weren’t supposed to be given in to, seeing how she was no longer a child.
Which was precisely the reason why she felt the tiny sparks of the burn she had come to recognize as shame warm her as she sat in the very center of her bed with her new deck in front of her. Her old deck sat at the edge of the bed, in the far-left corner, where it was a part of the occasion but still far from it.
It hadn't felt right to leave the old deck far away from her new one... but she also hadn't wanted to handle it too much; hadn't wanted it too close to her.
Beneath her, she could feel the soft yet faintly scratchy texture of her comforter on her bare feet- a reminder that she needed to wash her bedding at some point in the near future. She wriggled her toes even as they were constrained between her legs and the mattress, and the texture of her soft pants were a subtle contrast against the specific not-quite-soft-but-not-rough-either one of the comforter.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
She had already made her questions to the new deck, just like it had given her its answers. And so, she looked down at these answers, feeling the swirl of conflict begin once again within herself.
Who are you? What are your strengths? Your weaknesses? What’s your name?
Queen of Coins. The Star. Knight of Swords. Queen of Wands.
This time around, she had looked up ‘questions for a new tarot deck’ on the internet before she had attempted to ask it any questions. The articles she had found that all dealt with this kind of topic had all shared a lot of basic questions, which had been the four she had decided to focus on this time around. There had been plenty of other questions she could have focused on, but Nellie had found them to be just a bit too dependent on actually knowing the ins and outs of tarot to be able to answer to really be able to wrap her head around them.
The idea of asking a new deck how it believed that the past was impacting her future seemed just a little daunting when she mostly just knew the most minor distinction between the Major and Minor Arcanas.
But, even with her lack of knowledge and understanding of this branch of witchcraft, Nellie was sure of at least one major thing: handling this deck hadn’t hurt her.
As she had shuffled the cards, she had felt a slight tingling sensation but that had been more akin to a kind warmth when she compared it to the inferno of blazing pain she had become accustomed to when handling her first deck. Whereas there was always pain with the first deck, this time around, she had only really felt an odd sense of calm wash over her as she had shuffled and drawn cards from this new deck.
Nellie pursed her lips as she looked down at the cards. She knew that every single one of these images meant something, even if she wasn’t quite sure what, exactly, they meant.
Even if she didn’t know what these cards were supposed to mean, though, she was certain of one thing: The Queen card felt like it meant something even more. And the fact that the card had been given to answer the question about who the deck was… a visibly strong-willed woman that was knelt on grass, in front of a flowered, strong tree with her hands suspended just above a hole she appeared to have dug. Inside of that hole, Nellie could see the upper edge of something golden- a buried treasure.
The way that the woman’s face was pulled into a determined glower; the roughness of the clothes she wore and the darkness of the background, especially compared to the incredible brightness surrounding her… it was more than obvious what this scene was about. Within a deck titled Runaway Tarot… well, it was more than just obvious what this scene was about: a person in a tough situation now having the monetary power to finally escape it; but, more important than having access to money, it was about a person having the confidence within themselves, the security within their own mind, to finally make a move.
She couldn’t stop but wonder… could this card be representative of where she was? That the deck understood that she had been in a terrible situation and was only now beginning to really start digging her way out?
With a slow rolling of her shoulders, her mind offered an alternate, just as logical explanation behind such a card. The deck was second-hand; this meant that it had very possibly been kept at the shop for a long time. Maybe… just maybe… the deck was telling her that it felt as if it was now free; as if it was the treasure that had been buried and Nellie was the person that had dug it up to orchestrate such an escape.
Nellie wasn’t completely sure where these kinds of thoughts were coming from. They were coming from somewhere inside of her mind, naturally… it was weird to experience. It was hard to explain, even if the person she was attempting to explain it to was herself.
She didn’t know why, she just knew that this interpretation her mind had supplied about what this card could mean… well… it just felt right. And she felt more than just a little silly at just the idea of thinking that, even if for just a moment, she thought that these cards were telling her something.
She couldn’t really understand it, if she was being completely honest with herself. But there was something inside of herself that felt as if these cards truly were talking to her; as if there was a message that they were attempting to give her that she was actually capable of parsing out, even if it was taking her a bit of time to do so.
Maybe she was going insane.
Or maybe… which, compared to something as astronomically unlikely to happen as her going insane… maybe there was truth to this intuition thing.
Maybe there was truth to this witchcraft thing.
More than enough people were on the internet, explaining a lot peculiarities to all kinds of different practices for her to at least know that she wasn’t alone in being curious and confused. There were more than enough blogs, posts, videos, and articles out there to help new witches start to find their way through their craft; to aid them in finding their path.
There were more than enough names out there too, all used to describe the phenomenon of being a new witch, for Nellie to know that she really wasn’t alone in wondering about all of this. She actually wasn’t alone in having these kinds of worries, confusions, and curiosities. Different people that defined themselves as someone just starting out on their witchcraft journey utilized all kinds of terminology to describe just that: baby witch, new witch, foundling, witchling, novice, apprentice, shadow, neophyte, whisps, and on and on it went.
In her research, Nellie had even come to learn that there wasn’t just lack of agreement on a proper term for what a ‘new’ witch should truly be called, but that there was a lack of consensus precisely because of the nature of the craft! It was all so very subjective and personal to each person that, at the end of the day, it wasn’t supposed to matter if the term shadow was considered demeaning by one practicing witch as long as the person that was called a shadow wasn’t them. Each were supposed to be able to define their own voice- and that extended into the language utilized by each of them.
To Nellie, that definitely opened the door to some questionable possibilities. What if someone wanted to be referred to by an insulting term? But, then again, all decided how they went about their way. If one wasn’t interested in having to call someone by a name they didn’t agree with, then they just wouldn’t have to interact with them.
There was a freedom to witchcraft that… well… it scared Nellie.
There were rules that could be followed, yes. One of the first things she had learned was that there was never supposed to be a space allowed for malignant magic. All magic practiced was supposed to be, or, at least, it was understood that it should be, for the overall good of the world. There were many different names for it, but, at the end of the day, much like many religions of the world, witchcraft was supposed to follow the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would wish to be treated.
But witchcraft wasn’t a religion.
It could be religious, seeing how most that practiced witchcraft also practiced their religious beliefs within their craft. But there were secular witches, atheist witches. There were witches that kept their religion fully separate from their witchcraft.
It was all a big mix-and-match belief system that gave every single person the full control of deciding on their own path.
After having been raised in a family where everyone was supposed to follow the Bible in the particular way the different pastors that had come and gone from her life had insisted was the correct way… where there was no variation unless the priest or her parents explicitly said so… where nuance was only for those intelligent enough to analyze through the text and find it, where she had always been far too young to make her own questions valid…
It was scary to have so much freedom. It was confusing.
Nellie looked down at the cards before her once more, focusing on them.
To her, it seemed as if the cards were attempting to tell her that a new beginning was coming. It felt obvious to her, even though she really didn’t know that much about tarot.
Maybe she was going insane.
Or maybe there was more to this witchcraft thing than she had first forced herself to think.
Maybe she had always known there was more to it, deep down inside of her soul.
Maybe she had just been too afraid to admit this to herself and had tried to blunder her way through enough failures to convince herself that she had been right to doubt and refuse all along.
Maybe it was time for a new beginning.