review: assorted tarot books x3

This past fall, I decided to get more structured and disciplined with my tarot practice, which has been haphazard and vibes-based for about a decade now. I read (or at least skimmed) a ton of tarot books, many of which are bad, and some of which are good. I'd like to practice writing reviews, so here are writeups for the four I’ve spent the most time with.

The Big Book of Tarot, by Joan Bunning

If asked to recommend one resource to an absolute tarot beginner, and one only, The Big Book of Tarot would be my pick. The style is highly accessible, and the 357-page length is enough to encompass all areas of tarot fundamentals without being an overwhelming doorstopper. This works somewhat against its favour for me personally, who came to the book as an “undisciplined intermediate” tarot practitioner looking to strengthen my basic knowledge; many of the sections were a quick skim for me, as they didn't contain a ton of new info that a more comprehensive or specialized text may offer. 

However, the reason I continue to pull this book off my digital shelf regularly at this stage in my tarot journey is its section on descriptions of the individual cards. The way Bunning structures this section (which is a staple in general-purpose tarot books, for obvious reasons) is my favourite approach I've come across. Each entry contains the following subsections, for each of the 78 cards in a standard deck:

This adds up to a wealth of information on each card, from a variety of interpretive angles. I find this approach strikes a perfect balance between giving enough detail to provide a robust understanding of the card and its application in a reading/to one's life, while staying open-ended and avoiding prescriptivism. 

Another highlight of the book is Bunning's atypical approach to reversals, which she reads not as an “inverse” of the card's upright meaning, but as a waxing or waning of the card's energy within a situation. I don't hew to this approach most or all of the time (and the “waning” approach resonates more than the “waxing” when I do), but this approach to reversals helped me get past the intimidation factor enough to work with them regularly, which I used to avoid on the basis of feeling overwhelmed by needing to “memorize” a whole new set of 78 meanings. 

I also appreciated this book's orientation toward personal reading, rather than professional; it kept the focus on material relevant to me and my practice. I imagine the same would be true for most beginners.

Holistic Tarot, by Benebell Wen

This text was quite hyped, so I went in somewhat skeptically, but Holistic Tarot really is that girl.

At close to 900 pages, this book is incredibly comprehensive. It is without a doubt my “desert island” tarot reference, if I could only keep one with me for the rest of my life. Its approach to theoretical principles and practical techniques is robust, and focuses on building good habits that will, when exercised through consistent practice, form a strong foundation of tarot skills sufficient to read confidently without use of reference materials.

However, I would only recommend this text to a first-timer with caution. The density of content could easily be overwhelming to someone for whom the topic is new, especially if “book learning” is not their area of strength. Wen's recommended approach to practice is quite “slow and steady” and involves homework (I was glad to be jumping in as someone with enough of a background to skip it in good conscience!), and many beginners are too eager to dive in and start reading the cards to bother with all that. Additionally, a not-insignificant portion of the book deals with considerations for reading professionally, which is not relevant to me or to most readers. The book's orientation is towards reading for others rather than for the self, though there was still more than enough general information to make it highly useful and relevant for a reader who primarily reads for personal growth.

The writing style could be considered dry (it amused me to learn the author is a mergers & acquisitions lawyer at her day job), but this is a pro rather than a con to me, having waded through many florid and touchy-feely tarot books without a citation to be found. Holistic Tarot takes its reader seriously. The tone is grounded and never patronizing, and Wen leverages her hefty research to recommend many texts for further reading, with an attitude that assumes any “serious practitioner” (a phrase used many times) will be interested in continuing to deepen their knowledge. 

The philosophical approach is about as non-wooey as it gets for someone with a deep and sincere belief in the potential of tarot as a divinatory tool. I particularly appreciated the historical groundings of divination as a nearly-universal human practice, especially the note that Euro-Christian hostility towards divinatory practices as (perceived) sinister occultism are the exception, rather than the rule. Wen is of Chinese descent and has published several books on Chinese esoterica, and the integration of Daoist concepts to her interpretive model was far and away the most meaningful I've encountered in my tarot studies (as opposed to the highly superficial references to chakras or yin and yang that are in many other works.) I would describe Wen's approach to divination as somewhat reminiscent of “religious but not spiritual.” It resonated with me, but may not for everyone. (She references the concept of cosmic qi throughout the book, for example, which some strictly science-minded people who'd prefer to keep everything in the realm of psychological Rorschach testing may balk at.)

Other highlights include the detailed example readings, which are exceptionally helpful at demonstrating concepts.

My other significant critique is that the book's approach to gender as a rubric of card interpretation is quite traditional, despite at least one of the example readings featuring a queer querent. Relatedly, the suggested interpretations of the court cards are much less engaging or nuanced than the rest of the deck.

Tarot Spreads, by Barbara Moore

I appreciate this book's emphasis on the tarot spread as an entity greater than the sum of its parts. Tarot Spreads provides a thorough grounding in practical skills to aid tarot practitioners with this deceptively simple element of tarot. Anybody can refer to books for individual card meanings; it’s the juxtapositions, correspondences, and visual storytelling that goes on in each unique spread which generates a dynamic response to the question at hand. This book is a reference work containing a variety of creative card spreads, both general and specific in purpose, and also—more usefully in the long run—a breakdown of the mechanics of spread composition in such a way that adapting and composing spreads on the fly becomes intuitive. 

The book’s highly specific focus doesn’t leave room to explore other aspects of tarot, which is fine—that’s not what this text is for—but does mean that, for anyone early in their tarot journey, this is more of a compliment to other texts than a standalone resource.

Queering the Tarot, by Cassandra Snow

This book is an engaging yet frustrating read. It’s a much-needed corrective to the countless tarot texts, even recent ones, that engage with the gendered archetypes of mainline tarot systems uncritically, or with tepid “but it can also mean whatever feels right!” disclaimers at best. Queering the Tarot’s attitude toward cishet paradigms also extends to the cultural Christianity that suffuses Western esoteric thought, even (sometimes especially) when thinkers conceptualize themselves as highly radical and irreligious.

Aside from some introductory and closing material, the bulk of the book is an index of card meanings. Needless to say this is not a “starter” text and it presupposes familiarity with tarot fundamentals. Snow takes us through their “queered” interpretations of each card in the deck in varying levels of detail, often dealing with pips in groupings of two or three cards at a time (groupings which sometimes felt more intuitive than others.) I deeply appreciate the non-traditional readings of certain cards, especially some that are often taken as wholly negative; the section on XV The Devil suggests the card potentially signifies the ways in which giving in to “temptation” can be a positive experience for queer people, which felt fresh and resonant compared to its treatment in any other text I’ve encountered.

Other positives of the book included its sex positivity and frank treatment of topics like kink and non-monogamy. I also found its approach to the court cards, an area where card meaning encyclopedias often fall flat, to be vibrant and engaging.

On a more critical note… I found the book read as quite dated, despite not being very old, and at times a little corny. The author’s own life experiences loomed large, as did some fairly rote assumptions about the life trajectories of queer (particularly white and LGB) North American people from homo/transphobic Christian backgrounds, who move to urban centres to live as their true selves and participate in local activist groups etc. Far be it from me to dispute the fact that is a common experience, as that’s more or less my experience as well, but I wished that there was a greater sense of self-awareness on the behalf of the author that this is not a universal journey. The book is exceptionally USAmerican-centric in ways that felt tiresome.

Some of the cards were treated with more depth than others. I often wished that the suggested card interpretations were more archetypal and less of the “The swords suit can indicate it’s time to get gender-affirming surgery!” sort.

There’s also little to no attention paid to how a reader might incorporate reversals in their analysis, which struck me as odd, since one way I’ve approached card reversals in my own practice is as a “queering” of the card’s traditional upright meaning; not its direct inverse, as many of the concepts or archetypes in tarot don’t lend themselves easily to a binaristic outlook, but an invitation to read the card’s energy as “bent” or “askew” in some way, and not necessarily negatively so.

More broadly, I wished that the book (which is quite short, at 205 pages) had anything to say about how one might queer their tarot practice beyond approaches to individual card meanings. This would require a more conceptual and less literal approach to what “queering” one’s interpretive lenses could look like, and I’m not sure exactly how that would manifest, but this text did leave me hungry for it. In sum, Queering the Tarot left me dissatisfied, despite being a work I return to regularly.

#reviews #tarot #barbaramoore #benebellwen #cassandrasnow