Active Taro

The cards represent energies, inter alia. If You can find a deck that you wish to work with as talisman then go for it. Even an inexpensive, lightly used second-hand deck could be used.

I don't use plastic. For me plastic just doesn't allow the energy to pass through. Maybe you will be different in that regard. Anyway, take the second-hand cards from their box, wrap in aluminium foil and bury for at least twenty-four hours in your backyard, park or similar. Doesn't work if the soil is contained, as in a flower pot or window-box. Unearth and charge by way of dedication and sacrifice - the setting apart and thereby making sacred.

As the cards represent energies you can tailor-make the energies you wish in your life by selecting a card or cards and placing these between those cheap picture frames made of two pieces of flat glass (or plastic if you can work with it) and help together by metal clips - cheap wood frames with glass. There are various sizes. Then charge your Taro talisman by whatever method you use. When finished with the operation just dismantle frame, store cards and create another Taro talisman.

DON'T use the cards you divine with as talisman. If you do you'll screw up their energies. You'll start picking cards not because you were meant to but because these cards were charged.

The deck to use is one with the requisite symbolism which when charged will attach the energy or energies sought. Lee Bursten's & Antonella Platano's ** @'Gay Tarot'** doesn't cut it for me. Maybe if I were gay it'd be a different story. 'The Baroque Bohemian Cats' Tarot' is also pretty bad – as is the 'Granny Jones Australian Tarot'. What these decks lack is the symbolism required to attract energies – whether from the deep subconscious or externally.

The other element is that you must have a feeling for, an affinity with the art and symbolism of the deck you're using. The Golden Dawn gave birth to the Rider-Waite and Thoth decks. Two different decks: similar energies. These designs have stood the test of time. Nonetheless, if you don't like a particular deck it'll be next to impossible for you to use that deck as talisman. No connection.

A number of Magicians use runes to divine and to create Magick via rune-binds and carved rune script. A number of left-hand path groups employ runes both passively and actively.
Hardly anyone uses Taro as active Magick. Why is that?

Al.