When you first take up tarot, you hear many strict “rules.” You must cleanse a new deck; no one else may touch your cards; your first deck must be received as a gift; you should sleep with it under your pillow… Hearing them, you feel daunted before you even begin. But are these truly “rules to obey”? Let us go through them honestly, one by one.
First, seeing where such practices come from sets the mind at ease. The wish to “cleanse” or break in a new deck springs from wanting the cards to feel one’s own, a little more special. Leaving it under moonlight, using salt or incense, knocking on the deck — these are small rituals that mark, in the heart, “this deck is mine.” The notion that “your first deck must be a gift” sounds lovely but is in fact a groundless, romantic myth — there is nothing at all wrong with choosing and buying your own.
The honest truth is this. None of these is obligatory. A deck is paper, and its meaning comes not from the cards but from you. “Cleansing” does not change the cards physically. Its value is psychological — like tidying a desk before starting work, a small ritual that settles the mind and helps you focus. So you may simply “enjoy what feels good and skip what does not.”
To add some gentle practical guidance: if a cleansing ritual gathers your mind calmly, enjoy it — riffling the cards once to “reset,” or pausing to call up an intention, is enough. Conversely, if worry over “did I break a rule?” feeds anxiety, it is better to set that rule down, for an anxious mind only hinders good reading. You may buy your own first deck if you like, and if you are comfortable, a friend may touch your cards. As for care, keep the cards somewhere clean and dry and they will last.
So the only real “rule” of tarot is simple — whatever helps you meet the cards with a calm, open heart is good, and whatever stops you from doing so may be set down. As always in FortuneLeaf, this is offered not as a fixed fate or a taboo to keep, but as one small pleasure for looking into yourself more at ease.