Cleaning & Charging your Tarot Deck

Often, with ritual, you 'feel' your way through it; following the paths that seem most correct. For me, magic is rarely done the same way twice; improvisation seems necessary. This in mind, feel free to modify this incantation to fit your own beliefs and path.

For visualization, gather a black votive candle and a white votive candle, and cast the spell sometime in the days following the full moon. Gather a green taper candle as well.

A bit of ginger root (for potency/power) can be chewed during this ritual and peppermint leaves may also be helpful. If you have any incense (stick incense is easiest and cheapest to come by), use a stick during the ritual. While your favorite incense (or one with which you identify with cleansing) is always a good idea; incenses with such properties to me seem to be pine or frankincense. Get a piece of silk to set your deck upon and wrap it with when you are done.

A pocket watch, hourglass, sundial or other time piece should finish this ritual.

1. Gather your herbs and implements. Get a stone or something that won't burn on which you can set the leaves (if you decide to use them).

2. Set the three candles from left to right with the black votive on your left, green taper in the middle and the white votive to your right. Put the timepiece in front of the green candle. This symbolizes divination and knowledge of the future.

3. Set the Tarot deck on the silk cloth before you.

4. Ground and Center.

5. Establish what protections/requests to the Four Quarters you require.

6. Start by lighting the cleansing incense and breathing in deeply, holding the tarot deck to be cleansed in your lap. Feel it's contours with your hands until you know it's shape in your mind. Overlay this image with another image of the timepiece. Let the symbolism of the two merge to become one. (In other words, concentrate on the symbolic similarities of the deck and time piece and weave the raised energy through that concept.)

7. Light the green candle with the words,
", I light this candle in honor of your cleansing hands."

8. Chew the ginger root (if you like, it's pretty awful tasting) for potency and utilize the energy released from it to charge that which you have already raised.

9. Take the peppermint leaves (if used) and light them in the green candle and let them burn on the stone or inflammable surface you have with the words,
", I release the energy of life to drive off impurity."

10. Pass the tarot deck through the smoke of the leaves (if used) and the incense. Focus the image in your head on the energy and smoke moving through the deck and forcing impurity out.

11. Light the black candle from the green taper, imagining it to represent the impurities in the deck. As it burns, so too are the impurities cleansed away.

12. Inundate the shape in your mind (and project through the deck) with the energy you have raised.

13. Flip through the deck, one card at a time, and picture the impurities drifting up on the smoke away from the card. Be sure to channel the actual energy you've raised into this visualization. If it feels appropriate, you may want to use a chant (such as the Goddess Chant) to focus your thoughts. Place each card back, face-down, on the silk. You don't have to look at each card unless that feels right to you; this shouldn't have to be a very difficult or a huge task ... just a smooth cleansing. It occurs to me that you may want to pass each card once over the timepiece -in effect, charging the card with the 'future'. This is not required and has been added as an afterthought.

14. Once all the cards are face-down on the silk in a stack, snuff the black candle and light the white one with the words,
"by your healing and my will, So Shall it Be."

15. Wrap the cards in the silk for protection and Ground any extra energy.

16. Snuff the candles.

17. Close any circle or protections you have raised.

Last updated: December 31, 1969

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