Building a Tarot library: Nine essential books to collect and study

Eliphas Levi once claimed that the archetypal power of the Tarot was so great that a person in prison alone with only a tarot deck could eventually reconstruct all of human knowledge and wisdom and attain adepthood. That may be true, but if I were the one locked in that room, these are the nine books I would want to have by my side.

The little white book.  Affectionately known to collectors as the LWB, this is the stapled booklet that comes nestled in the box with the tarot deck itself.  Some tarotists will sneer at the brief and sometimes trite meanings given in the LWB. But I will stand up for the poor derided booklet because, let's face it, everyone has to start somewhere.  And even learning basic, one-phrase meanings for all 78 cards can seem daunting when you're just getting started with the Tarot.  (Not only that, the LWB usually contains helpful notes from the artist and/or deck creator, allowing the reader to unlock the symbolism encoded in that particular deck.) If I were to get amnesia and forget everything I've ever learned about the Tarot, I would be most grateful for the LWB, condensing all that wisdom handily into one ounce of paper.

Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom.  Considered instant classics when they were published around thirty years ago, Pollack's treatises on the Major and Minor Arcana (now combined in a single volume) have held up remarkably well.  I might not agree with all her opinions on the cards, but her imagination and insight are unparalleled.  There's not much I can say about this book that hasn't already been said.  Everyone who's even casually interested in Tarot should read it.  If you want to understand more about the Hebrew mysticism that permeates the Tarot, then add her excellent Kabalah Tree as a companion volume.

Paul Foster Case, The Tarot.  Another foundational text.  Case, who knew more about the Tarot than possibly anyone else ever, was a pivotal figure in the revival of Hermeticism.  He founded the Builders of the Adytum, the oldest and largest organization dedicated to tarot education.  So much wisdom.  So much scholarship.  It's a shame this book isn't better known.

Mary K. Greer, 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card. After you learn the basics of the cards, Greer's expansive view will open you up to their possibilities. Her blog is also how I keep up with publications, conferences, and other happenings in the world of Tarot.

Mary K. Greer, Tarot Reversals.  Mary Greer gets another mention. Ostensibly a niche title about reading reversals, this book is actually a comprehensive dictionary of all the card meanings, reversed and upright. Learning to interpret reversed cards can bring a new level of accuracy and nuance to your readings, and this book will show you that it's not as difficult as it seems.  Even if you're not into reversals, this belongs on your bookshelf.  Her interpretations of the cards are the most astute and accurate ones that I've found. 

Alan Moore, et al. Promethea.  Available in a series of five trade paperbacks, or a three-volume deluxe edition.  This is artist/mage/megagenius Alan Moore's superhero comic cum occult manifesto, lavishly illustrated by the great J. H. Williams III.  The title character's winding trek through the Tree of Life and the Tarot, which left some comics fans squirming, is just pure ambrosia for tarot nerds.  I can't wait for the movie. (Ha ha.  Like that will happen.)

Janina Renee, Tarot: Your Everyday Guide.  Ever stared down a tarot card and thought, "Yes, but what does that mean for me?" This unique book focuses on learning to read each tarot card for practical guidance. It's fun and fluffy, but with more substance than your average book of pep talks.  I use it help interpreting cards in the "advice" position of any spread.  Also great for the practice of a daily one-card draw for inspiration and affirmation. One gripe: I wish I could tear out the card illustrations, which seem ill-chosen and don't really add anything to the text.

Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians.  Certainly not for beginners, but essential for the serious student.  The Book of Thoth (and the accompanying vast and visionary deck) came about in Crowley's old age, the distillation of a lifetime of Tarot study.  Crowley's density can be frustrating, his pomposity infuriating.  But there's no denying the immensity of the man's intellect, and the beauty of those strange, seductive cards.

Lon Milo Duquette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot.  Conceived as a companion volume to The Book of Thoth, Duquette's explication of Crowley is a towering work in its own right.  Each card gets its own illuminating discussion, alongside a handy list of its attributions and correspondences. The book breaks down the Qabalistic and astrological foundations for the deck's structure, which might be beyond my grasp if not for Duquette's patient tutelage.  I also love Duquette's, Book of Ordinary Oracles, which weds hard-hitting divination theory with whimsy and a sense of fun.

Honorable mentions: If you still have money and space on your bookshelf, here's a few more titles to round out your collection.

Robert Place, Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination.  This book narrowly missed making the first tier, due to a somewhat stern tone, and a final section of card meanings that feels a bit padded.  Place engages in some grade-A myth-busting, taking a hard look at the Tarot's true historical origins and all the misinformation that has circulated over the years.  As a bonus, it's peppered with his distinctive woodcut-style illustrations, as seen in the Alchemical Tarot and the new Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery.

Paul Foster Case, The Book of Tokens.  A strange little volume, out of print but worth seeking out.  Akin to a prayer book, Book of Tokens presents the BOTA versions of the Major Arcana (which differ slightly from the Rider-Waite) alongside devotional poems informed by Case's knowledge of Hebrew esotericism.  Even if you're (like me) slightly allergic to gematria, it's hard not to be impressed with the insight and intensity contained in this slim book.

Chic and Tabitha Cicero, Skrying on the Tree of Life.  For the confirmed Qabalah-head.  These guided visualizations, based on the Golden Dawn material, will introduce you to all of the Tarot archetypes in their own natural habitats.

Gareth Knight, The Magical World of the Tarot: Fourfold Mirror of the Universe. An intriguing collage.  There's some art history, some meditation and pathworking, some divination. There's a sprinkling of question-and-answer exchanges with students, which are sometimes helpful, sometimes amusingly random.  But for me, Knight's best contribution is a schematic of the Major Arcana that I've not seen anywhere else, which divides the cards into four "halls" governed by four elemental rulers, which correspond to the four classical Virtues.  An obscure book worth getting for this diagram alone.

Trish Macgregor and Phyllis Vega, Power Tarot.  In the introduction, these two ladies recall honing their tarot skills in the trenches--psychic phone lines, where you have less than a minute to hit on something good before the caller hangs up.  The fruit of their experience is this book of creative and down-to-earth divinatory meanings for all the cards.  Power Tarot is a great resource for divination, especially if you read over the phone, at parties, or other venues where you need to get specific information fast, for querents who could care less about the esoteric side of the Tarot.  The first part of the book provides card meanings for questions related to love, money, health, etc.  The second part contains fun and original spreads to help pull you out of the Celtic Cross rut.

Yes, no, goodbye? Rosemary Ellen Guiley on Oujia

This week I caught an episode of the Paranormal Podcast, featuring Rosemary Ellen Guiley on the topic of Oujia boards.  The interview coincides with the release of Guiley's new book devoted to the history and lore of the Oujia, or "talking board," as the device is generically known.  She breezes through the Oujia's origins as a Spiritualist-era craze and its current status as a pop-culture icon and mainstay of urban legend.  But host Jim Harold keeps the conversation centered around one question:  Does the board really deserve its bad reputation?

 I've always marvelled at the knee-jerk reaction many people have to the very mention of Oujia--and not just people who are unfamiliar with or fearful of the occult.  I remember one time as a preteen, two friends and I pooled our allowance money to buy a Oujia board at the toy store.  It was the closest my liberal and rational-minded parents ever came to an outright prohibition of anything.  Much later, I became active in a paranormal group, where it was accepted as a truism that any pesky house-ghost manifestation could likely be traced back to a naive person playing with a Oujia board.  And of course I've heard plenty of New Age folks say matter-of-factly that Oujia allows "lower vibrations" to manifest, that it attracts "earthbounds," that it "opens a door" to astral cesspools, etc., etc.

So it's become a matter of course to shun the boards and blame them for all kinds of mayhem, from demonic possession to poltergeist activity to streaks of bad luck.  But why?  Why does Oujia occupy a category apart from other tools people use to access psychic information?  Isn't Oujia, based as it (probably) is on the ideomotor response of the body, basically just a form of dowsing?  How does using the board open a person up to unwholesome spiritual influences any more than say, automatic writing?  Is a paper and ink really more "visible" to predatory entities than a mediumistic individual, sans board?  I'm not denying that some people experience truly disturbing events related to Ouija use.  I just want to understand the mechanics here, and why this device is considered to be so especially dangerous.

Which is why I listed to Guiley's opinion with eager curiosity.  Her controversial position: Oujia gets a bad rap.  The board itself isn't evil, and it isn't fundamentally different than other spirit contact devices.  When asked why Oujia is associated with so much bad juju, she offers some different theories.  (I don't have the recording handy, so I'm going to paraphrase.) There's the prevalence of Oujia-related mischief in horror films, she says, which creates the expectation of fear in users.  Then there's also the ease of access for casually interested folks--people who would never go into a metaphysical shop to buy a dowsing rod can pick up a Parker Bros. board at Target.  And there's the internet, which allows fear-mongering and superstition to propagate out of control.  This interview was a treat.  I haven't totally made up my mind about Oujia yet, and I admire Guiley for having the guts to take an unorthodox stance and consider tough questions without spouting off cliches.  It doesn't stop her from rounding out her book with shocking and scintillating Oujia anecdotes--but hey, those make for good reading.

If you're interested in this topic, I recommend picking up a copy of Oujia Gone Wild, with co-author Rick Fisher.  Guiley's been working on the book for the last couple of years, and it's finally available through her website, visionaryliving.com.  (A digital edition is forthcoming.)  Has she been laying low since her sometime co-author, Philip Imbrogno, got busted for fabricating credentials and sources?  No matter.  It's great to see a new book from Guiley, and on such a perennially fascinating topic.

Legendary scryers: Morgaine from The Mists of Avalon

Viviane opened a little bag she wore about her neck and took out a small quanitity of crushed herbs, which wafted a sweetish-musty scent through the chamber.  She sifted only a few grains into the basin of water before saying in a low, neutral voice, "Look into the water, Morgaine.  Make your mind perfectly still, and tell me what you see."

Morgaine came and knelt before the basin of water, looking intently into its clear surface.  The room was very silent, so still that Viviane could hear the small chirping of some insect outside.  The Morgaine said, in a wandering, unfocused voice, "I see a boat.  It is draped with black and there are four women it it...four queens, for they wear crowns...and one of them is you...or is it me?"

"It is the barge of Avalon," Viviane said, low.  "I know what you see."  (The Mists of Avalon (1984), Marion Zimmer Bradley)

There are few pagans and witches of a certain age who don't recall Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon books with a sense of fondness.  The formula of epic Arthurian fantasy percolated through Berkeley neopaganism made for a delicious cuppa--and for those of us without access to a pagan/occult community, it quelled a mighty craving.  I snuck it out of my mom's book pile as a kid, bookmarked all the witchy and sexy bits, and pored over them until the pages got grubby.  I also devoured the inferior prequels (Lady of Avalon, Priestess of Avalon, etc.), until my small-town library figured out they were basically pagan porn and quit buying them.

For the handful of people who don't know, Mists covers the Camelot saga from the viewpoint of Morgaine (better known as Morgan le Fay), King Arthur's half-sister.  As the story begins, Morgaine is the loner at her father's court, a plain and stubborn girl who Nobody Understands.  (Bradley liked this trope--she later repeated it with Cassandra of Troy in her 1986 novel The Firebrand.)  The best part of the book was when Morgaine's cool Aunt Viviane, who just happens to be the Lady of the Lake, comes to visit Morgaine at her father's castle.  She figures out that Morgaine has the Sight.  (The liberal use of capitals is one of the book's hallmarks.)  Right away, she vows to adopt Morgaine away from her politically preoccupied family.  Morgaine gets to escape the repressive court of Camelot and go live on Avalon in the House of Maidens, where she basically gets naked and does magic all the time.  You might call this part of the book my Adolescent Fantasy, or even a Latent Psychic Baby Dyke's Wet Dream.

Morgaine does most of the scrying in the book, but everyone of the Old Blood (King Arthur's mother's side of the family) has the gift to some degree.  The ladies of Avalon prefer to scry in water, outdoors, in a natural pool not shaped by human hands--though in a pinch, a metal wash-basin does the trick.  (What those magic herbs are, nobody knows.) All the mirror gazing in Mists serves two basic plot functions:  It works like a two-way radio that the Avalon can gals use to communicate across vast distances (well, as vast as they have in England).  It's also a handy foreshadowing device--thanks to their mad scrying skills, Avalon's priestesses get to gloomily prophesy the doom of Camelot and the end of the Old Religion on every third page.

If it sounds like I'm snarking on Mists, I only halfway mean it.  I was re-reading parts of the novel recently (the witchy and the sexy parts, like old times).  And it's held up pretty well over the years.  Sure, the 80's Wiccan feminism is heavy-handed in spots, but to characterize the whole thing retro-camp is unfair.  In my opinion, it's still the best retelling of the Arthur story to date.  The film version (with Julianna Margulies as Morgaine) wasn't half bad, either.

Your grandma's crystal gazing books, now available online

There are many in-depth texts about crystal gazing that were published before 1923 and have since passed into the public domain in the United States.  Several are available for download free of charge from various places.  Some of these books contain timeless information that remains helpful for the modern student.  Others are full of quaint and superstitious ideas, but still delightful as historical curiosities.  (Many contain a mixture of both!)  Here are some, in no particular order, for your handy perusal (in case of broken links, try googling the title and author):


Sepharial (pseudonym of Walter Gorn Old).  How to Read the Crystal, or Crystal and Seer. 1922.

Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones).  Crystal Vision Through Crystal Gazing.  1923.  (Also in PDF.)


William Walker Atkinson and L.W. de Laurence. Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing. 1907.

Theodore Besterman. Crystal Gazing: A Study in the History, Distribution, Theory, and Practice of Scrying. 1924.

John Melville. Crystal Gazing and the Wonders of Clairvoyance.  c. 1915.

Catherine Yronwode has compiled a more extensive bibliography, (but no links or texts), which includes descriptions of the original published editions for collectors and book nerds.