At her house the next week, I ask Anya about the deck she reads with most often, the Rider-Waite Tarot. She tells me that it's a rather "traditional" choice. It's not the oldest version of the Tarot (its design dates back to 1909, and best guesses give the Tarot a 600-year history), but it includes what are considered to be conventional symbols for each of the cards, and it's one of the most popular decks in use across the country. Anya owns several other Tarot decks, including a gorgeous Italian-Renaissance set with cards as big as plane tickets and an unusual "women-centered" version sporting color-pencil drawings on round cards that resemble coasters.

But she always finds herself returning to the deck she's spent the most time with. And indeed, when Anya does her readings I can see that the cards in her Rider-Waite pack -- each slightly larger than an ordinary playing card -- are gently curved and worn from frequent use.

"It's almost like the deck has been seasoned," she says, comparing it to a good cast-iron pan that retains the flavors of all the foods cooked in it over the years. Every time she does a reading, the conversations Anya has and the issues people choose to bring up add to the associations that for her are powerfully linked with every individual card.

"So if I'm doing a reading and the 5 of Cups comes up, for example, I'll remember that that meant such-and-such to so-and-so, and it meant something different to someone else, and all those things may color the way I talk about the card with the person I'm reading for at that moment."

It's clear that while there is a canon of fundamental meanings for all the cards -- and although any aspiring Tarot reader must spend long hours memorizing these meanings (one book recommends associating a color, a tune, a scent, a sound, and a sensation with every card, as a mnemonic aid) -- the cards themselves are invitations, rather than instructions.

Any wisdom the Tarot has to offer to its devotees is, at the heart of it, human wisdom. And rather than being some kind of divine intuition, it comes from human experience, compiled over centuries of stories, dreams, quests, and wanderings in the world. Watching Anya shuffle her "seasoned" deck, I follow that train of thought to its happy conclusion: the idea that every person she reads for adds, in some small way, to that store of understanding.