Safely Hide Your Tarot Deck From Religious Bigots (Best Method)

Introduction

Welcome back to Tarot Tutor Answers, a series of shortform posts where I respond to real tarot questions put forward by real people. If you would like to submit a question, please add me on discord. My username is tarottutor (all one word and lower case).

Today’s question may seem a little strange; as you can see from the title it is about how to hide your tarot deck. Nonetheless, this is a real question and it is based on a real concern, namely religious persecution. Whilst we in the West have religious freedom by law, many countries in the world do not have such freedom. Additionally, there is often a suspicion of anything “occult”, including tarot decks even in the places where freedom of religion is integrated into the legal system. Think Christian upbringing. So with that in mind, let’s get into the article.

Create A Book Safe

To hide a tarot deck, a book safe will work. A book safe is an old secret compartment which is very simple and cheap to make. All you need is a large, thick book on a boring topic (something no-one is going to open) and a penknife. Then all you need to do is cut out the inside of the book, so that it looks normal when it is closed but leaves a space when you open it. Genius!

You can always buy more high tech booksafes from Amazon but for various reasons that those who need to hide their stuff can think of, this is not a very good idea.

Finally, you do not need to use any glue or other materials, despite what online tutorial writers will often tell you. Literally a penknife (or even a normal knife), perhaps a ruler, and your book of choice, will work.

I say this because I am aware that a global audience will be reading this article and not everyone will be able to go around procuring a bunch of items that are obviously for some sort of “do it yourself” crafts. And I am also aware that this is not a trivial point; these extra items don’t just make the project time-consuming and expensive they also arouse suspicion. And for those of you who need to make something quickly without being noticed either by having strange items or even by leaving your home, that is not something that you can afford regardless of how much cash you may have spare.

As mentioned, a book safe is an example of a secret compartment. For those of you who have the money, you can also buy furniture that is custom made to have secret compartments in. The problem with this furniture is that it will often be obvious to an observant people that the inside dimensions of a drawer (or other item) are off and thus that there is something being stored that the owner does not want people to find. For this very significant reason I would not recommend such furniture.

This also requires you to go online and have it in your browsing history and on your financial accounts (of whatever kind) that you have literally bought a desk or chest of drawers with a hidden compartment. “Hmmm, I wonder what’s inside that”, everyone who finds this out will be thinking. “Maybe I will check when they’re out of the house”. Whether that is the police (working with intelligence services who break into people’s homes undetected), or someone who controls your spending or the person who has access to your search history via it being stored by your ISP (internet service provider) – think the person who controls the wifi password where you live – you don’t want the fact that you have a secret compartment to be known by anyone whom you can’t completely trust.

Conversely, with rows of books it takes both time and a knowledge of book safes for someone to know to search through your entire library. There is also of course the chance that they might flick through your books for some reason however what are the chances of them finding your booksafe if you are an avid reader? Also, they aren’t going to flick through boring books and if you have chosen your book well they probably won’t even notice it. Finally, there is no way whatsoever for someone to spot a book safe from observation alone or for them to know that you have created it because it takes 5 minutes, the paper is easily torn apart and flushed down the toilet, or thrown away inconspicuously the day before the bins are collected, or disposed of in some other easy way, without any trace whatsoever.

Conclusion

I hope this was useful. Stay safe everyone and remember that whilst we enjoy it in much of the West, religious freedom is not open to all.