What do you do when you lose a card from the Tarot deck?

On thematic forums dedicated to the Tarot, I have repeatedly seen discussions of a card missing from the deck. One or even several Arcana can easily get lost, especially if the Tarot reader is often on the road and carries his favorite deck with him. It also happens that one card is missing in the purchased Tarot deck, or vice versa, repeated cards are mistakenly put in. Should you be scared if you are missing one card? What does this mean and is it possible to make a proper Tarot spread with such an incomplete deck? Let’s figure it out.

For what reasons do the cards disappear?

As I said, the most common reason for this situation is the banal loss of a card by the Tarot reader himself. He took out cards somewhere, wondered, and then accidentally dropped one. Or he constantly carries his favorite Tarot deck with him (for example, on vacation) and simply did not notice how he dropped a card.

The second reason is typographical error. Yes, yes, this sometimes happens – one card is completely missing in the deck. Personally, I had such a story when ordering Tarot from China. I missed the King of Wands. When the seller sent me another deck, I laughed heartily, because this time the King of Wands was present, but now the Hermit was missing.

The third reason for the loss of cards is completely mystical. It’s believed that the Higher Forces specially take away from you a specific Arcana for a while, in order to give you a certain sign in this way. I also met stories when a card was stolen deliberately by an ill-wisher, who imagined himself to be a great magician and tried to curse the Tarot reader, using the stolen Arcana card for this.

What does the missing card tell?

There is a popular version that the disappeared Arcana card indicates something important, something that needs to be paid attention right now, or those energies that are leaving your life at the moment. Take, for example, the missing High Priestess: we can say that this is either a sign to listen to your own intuition, or an indication that you are now leaving your inner instinct, turning on the wrong path. The Nine of Swords is missing? Perfect! So, this is not the time to be tormented by bad thoughts! The Two of Cups disappeared without a trace? Something is wrong in the field of personal relationships, you need to think and somehow react.

Personally, I’m not that superstitious, so I think that the missing card speaks primarily of the distraction and inaccuracy of the Tarot reader. After work, I always check to see if all the cards have been collected, if any have fallen under the table. I do this anywhere: at home, at a party, on the road (it happened a couple of times to make a Tarot spread during the trip). After fortune-telling, I always put all the cards in boxes or bags and put them in a wooden box (if I guess at home). If I come from somewhere, I recount the cards again, just in case. And I strongly advise you to do the same!

Can you do a Tarot reading with an incomplete deck?

While reading the forums, I have seen multiple advices on this! For example, that a deck without one card must be burned or buried in the ground, and that it is strictly forbidden to guess on it, and if you have already done the Tarot spread, and then noticed the loss, then seven years of misfortune are guaranteed. In fact, I think all this is just stupidity. Of course, you still won’t be able to fully guess on such a deck, but who prevents you from using, for example, some of the Major Arcana (if the lost card, of course, is not one of them)? Indeed, today there are many “Major Arcana” Tarot decks, and these are quite full-fledged decks.

How to replace a lost Tarot card?

In addition to the idea with the Major Arcana, I see the following way out of the situation: take an empty card, if it is in the edition of your deck, and simply endow it with the qualities of the missing Arcana. Yes, the picture on it, of course, will not appear from this, but the shirt will not differ from the rest of the cards, and you should know the meaning anyway.

If there is no empty card, then you can try to find the same deck on sale and simply take the missing card from it. With this option, you will still have 77 spare Arcana, and you will not have to worry about new losses! But there are situations even worse: when the deck was rare or very expensive. There’s nothing you can do about it: either we make 22 out of 78 cards, or fork out for another copy, or just leave this deck alone and work woth another one. Decide for yourself how is best to proceed. By the way, for those who have decided to be puzzled by the search for a similar deck, I recommend searching on eBay, on thematic forums and in Tarot communities on social networks. There are often advertisements for the purchase, sale and exchange of Tarot decks. You may be lucky to find a used copy at a fair price.

If you originally got a deck with a typographical error, it is better to exchange it before it is too late. At least in my case, the seller went forward and returned the full value of the deck without asking to send it back. And when I made the second order from him, I sent him a copy, where another card was missing. But I didn’t grieve too much, I just made one full deck from the two decks, and left the rest of the cards as spare.

Have you ever lost a Tarot card? Answer in the comments under what circumstances this happened. Did you manage to solve this problem? In what way?