i've had them for awhile. just have used them heavily lately. i have dragon's blood incense and i have sage, but no charcoal to burn it on. is there anything else i can burn the sage with?
Well how well do you know the cards? Sometimes tools develop a sort of personality all their own and that can affect what you choose to do to cleanse them. So you might want to take a moment to clear your mind, hold the cards, and just ask how to cleanse them. The energy of the cards itself may have a suggestion for you.
Failing that, here are some extremely simple sage-free ways to cleanse cards.
* Banishing Ritual - sort of involved and Hermetic, but takes not tools!
* Sunlight and/or Moonlight - don't just leave them sitting outside, but deliberately offer them up into the light of the sun and moon to be purified by the Mother and Father
* Oil - you obviously need to be careful when deciding this since oil could potentially damage the cards. I've had great success though with touching the sides of the deck with oil (so I touch the four edges of every card), though you should certainly stick to lighter oils, not heavy thick ones.
* Other incense, smoke, or wind - Divination, particularly tarot, is an Airy art. It would therefore be totally appropriate to cleanse them in an Air-specific way. You could even generate wind by wafting the cards with a feather or centering, grounding, and cleansing yourself and blowing on them.
* Holy Water - you would likely want to touch the edges of the deck as I did with the oil, but this should work great too.
When left with no supplies, you can mentally burn away any residual energy. Simply meditate while holding your cards and visualize a pure white flame engulfing them. See the energy coming off as a gray smoke and dissipating, while the cards are left untouched by the flames :)
Good suggestion! I imagine you could similarly modify a grounding technique so that you may purge not just your own worn and dirtied energy, but also the cards' through you.
A method I use to cleanse my tarot cards is I knock my cards 3 times and visiualize a puff of smoke coming out of it. After that I hold my cards with both hand and pour my energies to the deck until I feel a rhythme coming out of my cards but before I do all that I like to ground and center first.
I blow on my cards and imagine the grey smoke coming out of it. clean from shadows, seal from negitivity. a quick thank you, and touch to forehead to seal. before and after every use...
