So I was thinking about performing magic at a ren faire. Honestly, I prefer to go into a ren faire and blending in a bit. Obviously, a standard bicycle deck is going to be less authentic than performing "sleight of hand" with say tarot cards. Then I got to thinking, perhaps a routine or effect for normal every day performances could use tarot cards which would give magicians the excuse to give a little insight into the history of cards. So my question is,

Does an effect already exist that involves tarot cards? Anyone particularly familiar with tarot cards? And finally, could something like this make an audience feel too uncomfortable? (You through in tarot cards and it's likely to make some more religiously inclined a bit nervous)

i can't help you about tarot cards, but i can say that playing cards already existed many, many centuries ago, so they wouldn't be out of place at a renaissance festival. maybe instead of using the standard bicycle deck you could use some sort of vintage-looking deck like this one:

http://www.penguinmagic.com/specialorde ... hp?ID=9191

or whatever you like.

you could also do some sort of routine on the history of conjuring with playing cards: that would be nice and (as far as i know) original. and i think it would also be a lot of hard work on your side (if you do not want to make up the history)

Card College gives you some good insight into history of cards, but I was more focusing on the tarot cards because it adds a level of mysticism. Also, I was thinking a rainbow deck might not be too hard to set up with a tarot deck, but I can't remember if both sides of the cards needed to be unique.

I've been thinking about the same sort of thing to add to a seance routine. I'm sure you could make a good effect with them. Most are a bit larger than normal cards so you might consider stripping or gaffing a deck in some way...Make the sleight of hand a bit easier.