In the early 90s I was living in Southern California and experimenting with dark channels. One of these led me to Crowley's
Thoth Tarot. I purchased a pack of cards from a local occult bookshop and brought them home. I opened the pack and turned them upside down with my left hand. But rather than just sliding out of the box and into the palm of my other hand, the cards - which were heavy and slick - instead fell through my hands and onto the floor. To my surprise, what I saw was an unexpected pattern. The cards had all fallen face down to the floor in a concentric pattern, but with one exception. There was one card in the middle that had fallen face up. And it was the extra card that came with the pack on which is a red Unicursal Hexagram on a black background modified with a Rosy Cross in the center that is one of the symbols used in
Thelema. I also recognized it as Crowley's own personal seal. The overall effect was that the cards had fallen in such a way as to give the appearance of a bloodshot eye.
Now I am not suggesting that the odds of the cards all falling that way are as great as they might seem. They were already stacked together facing down with that extra card on the top being the last to slide through my hand. Plus they couldn't have fallen more than three feet or so. Yet, had even one other card been flipped over or the cards scattered a bit less concentrically, the pattern of the arrangement would have seemed a bit more random and I would have probably dismissed it outright and continued my foray into Tarot with the Thoth deck. But instead, it came across to me as a warning that there was risk up ahead.
So I put the cards back in the box and have never used them for anything connected to Tarot itself. I still have them and have once or twice taken them out of the box, but only to look at the paintings of
Lady Frieda Harris. Since then, whenever I have done anything with Tarot, I have also always used the Ryder-Waite deck. But I am curious as to what anyone here would have done under these circumstances. Would you have continued with the Thoth deck dismissing it all as "just a coincidence"? Or would you have seen similar meaning in that pattern of cards that would have caused you to give any further use of this deck serious second thoughts?