AUTHOR’S NOTE: The shuffle-and-cut sequence is a time-honored preliminary to pulling tarot cards for a reading, but there is another technique used by some practitioners that draws the required number of cards from a full-deck “fan” spread out in front of the querent. Here I’m pushing that idea to its logical conclusion.

When a new tarot deck is removed from its packaging, the very first step after assuring that all of the cards are present is to vigorously randomize them so they don’t show up in an out-of-the-box “clump” when beginning to read with the deck. The objective is to thoroughly scramble them “off-line” and then, at the time of the session, realign them to tell the seeker’s story via a final shuffle that brings the “correct” cards to the top of the pack. The “fan” approach eliminates the last step by randomly selecting cards from a “continuum,” which still allows the sitter to actively engage with the deck as I prefer to have happen when reading for others.

In thinking about it a while back, I realized that this alternate method completely removes the need to shuffle the deck, particularly if its randomness is allowed to increase over time by not putting the cards back in their original order after each reading. Suppose we take a fresh, non-randomized deck and fan it out in front of our clients without shuffling, then instruct them to just pick cards from anywhere in the array while concentrating on the topic of interest. Apart from a general awareness of where the divisions lie between the trump and suit cards in a newly-opened deck – something the average querent isn’t likely to understand anyway when pulling cards – a random draw that ranges over the entire population with no predetermined pattern is going to produce a result comparable to starting with a heterogeneous mix and reshuffling the deck to bring specific cards into play for the reading. (I do something similar with my remote clients who don’t own a tarot deck by having them choose a series of random numbers from 1 to 78 with no repeats and then pulling the cards myself following their designated order.)

When considered in this light, the performance of a pre-reading shuffle becomes an exercise in showmanship, part of what I call the “theater of tarot.” Although I would assume that it’s an expected step in the process for most clients who are familiar with cartomancy, for all practical purposes it doesn’t have to be since it is just the outgrowth of three centuries of common usage. As a pragmatist, I could see my way clear to using the “fan” in my professional practice although, to be honest, as a creature of five decades of entrenched habit I probably won’t. Another strike against it is that it doesn’t facilitate reversals unless they are introduced via a separate operation, which unless done with care could disrupt the natural flow of the continuum and defeat the whole purpose of the “non-shuffle” initiative.