The Haindl Tarot Deck draws its inspiration from many native cultures and divination methods like Kabbalah (Qabbalah), the Norse Runes, I-Ching, the Holy Grail. This makes The Haindl Tarot Deck of choice for the mystics and is for advanced readers or for working with inner self through meditation. The cards are longer and lerger than usual and is acompanied by two-volume book by Rachel Pollack.

This deck was created by Hermann Haindl.  

Anyone uses this deck?

Abhishek

I started on this deck (Haindl)
I dont use it now but I do still have it and have kept them to use again at some point
Is this the most popular or most available deck?

I've only used the Haindl Tarot Deck once and I loved it. I don't own one though :'(

I think the most popular (or at leased used or known about) is the Rider-waite.
Do you have one of those decks, psy333che?

It sounds like an interesting deck.

I have a copy of the Haindl....

.... I started doing readings for others with this deck after growing up and learning with Crowley's Thoth tarot. The imagery is fantastic, especially the Majors.

The Minors and Courts are a little difficult. I find Haindl's use of Crowley's titles for the cards somewhat annoying, as that is what clients focus on first, unfortunately. With the Minors especially, the imagery is a little esoteric for most. I find the titles OK, but then as I said, I cut my teeth with Crowley, so they are just mnemonics for the 'deeper mysteries' of the cards. But on the outset, for someone with none or little tarot and/or Thelemic knowledge, these words can seem dark and negative.

The courts are wonderful, although I don't necessarily agree with what Haindl did. I know what he was doing with the correspondence of a direction to a culture and suit, but I find that quite limiting; I work with a Medicine Wheel myself, and the directions have different meanings to me - so again, the printed titles and intentions for me detract from my own cosmological map.

It helps also if one is really familiar with the mythologies of the associated court family. Again, Haindl/Pollack's interpretation of these (as appears in the books) I don't agree with somewhat, however I was able to draw a lot on my own understanding/knowledge of these mythological characters in a reading, and there is always something in those stories that is relevent to the client.

It wasn't until much later that I bought a copy of the RWS deck, and began using that a lot for public/professional readings - I'm not really into this deck, but it is a good one to work with clients on interactive readings, because the images are so archetypal that I could get clients involved in what they saw in the cards. Nowadays I mainly use Ciro Marchetti's Gilded for readings (which is based on RWS) and his Tarot of Dreams for myself.

But a couple of weeks ago, I was setting up to do readings in a cafe, and I found my Haindl deck in my bag-o-goodies, and I got the strongest urge to use those cards. I started playing with them myself whilst I waited for clients, and found that this deck was inspiring my intuitive abilities. The Minors in this deck are quite unique in this, because I could actually feel the haunting images and the 'pips' actually conjuring up feelings within and images in my mind - the best way I could describe it was like a lens bringing the 'reading' into focus. It meant that regardless of the spread, I was reading 'freestlye' - more like a psychic reading than a Tarot reading. I have never had that experience with Tarot cards before, even though I do read with other decks 'intuitively' and going with what the 'card says' about the situation even if it doesn't strictly conform to traditional meanings.

Strangely enough, my feelings on readings since that day have been to go back to using my 'normal' deck - but I have definitely re-awoken to the intense spiritual power imbued in Haindl's artwork. These cards are most definitely good for spiritual readings - whereas RWS and its clones I find are better for the more mundane readings that most people want (although, Marchetti's decks do have a strata of deeper imagery that allow one to go deeper into people's psyches...).

I would recommend this deck to anyone who wants to marry psychic readings with Tarot. I haven't tried it myself, but they may be good also for working with Tarot for magical development and meditation.

P