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.

Damon Albarn's Dr. Dee a dissapointment

This article concerns the music from the opera Dr. Dee, which debuted in Manchester, England in July 2011 to generally good reviews.  I just got my earbuds on the cast album (not the "soundtrack," as musical geeks are quick to point out) and had a few thoughts:

 I've been looking forward to hearing this since 2010, when Damon Albarn (frontman for Blur and Gorillaz) and Alan Moore (mad wizard comic writer) announced they were working on an opera based on the life of John Dee (Elizabethan mathemetician and mage).  As an admirer of all three men's work--as well as opera, musical theater, and Renaissance music--I thought the project sounded like a slam dunk, an irresistible confection that must have been dreamed up in a laboratory by evil pop scientists tuned into my every cultural craving.  Moore was to write the libretto, and Albarn to compose the music.  But the collaboration was fraught from the beginning, with the famously agreeable Moore bailing halfway through after Albarn reportedly flaked on some art he was going to do for Moore's zine Dodgem Logic.

Now, I didn't get a chance to see the stage show--from pictures I've seen, the production design looks amazing. Neither have I read Moore's unfinished libretto (which he rather snarkily published in the occult journal Strange Attractor).  But it appears from the music, and from reviews I've read, that Dr. Dee is a little short on story.  There's not enough exposition here to help along anyone who isn't already familiar with Dee and the angelic magic he undertook with scryer Edward Kelley.  And there isn't enough depth of content to sate the occultist segment of the audience, who would certainly prefer to see the pair's magic treated more thoroughly.  Dee himself is notably absent from the album: The title character doesn't sing at all, and has only a few spoken lines in the play.  Kelley is more of a presence.  (He's played by Christopher Robson, whose haunting countertenor is one redeeming quality of the album.)  Unfortunately, instead of characters, we get tropes:  Dee is a Faustian figure, teetering on the edge of damnation as a result of his hubristic curiosity.  Mrs. Dee is a dutiful wife who is torn by split loyalties.  And Kelley is your typical semi-reluctant medium (too long a mainstay of network TV dramas), alternately exhilarated and tormented by forces he can't fully grasp.  (At least he sounds tormented--it's hard to make out all the lyrics.)

Equally head-scratching is Albarn's decision to sing many of the numbers from a narrative perch, rather than giving them to the cast.  His nasally croon, so perfect for the disaffected millennial groove of Blur and the Gorillaz, is jarring and anachronistic when inserted into an opera populated by traditional operatic voices.  The contrast is original, but it doesn't exactly work.

All of these shortcomings might be forgiven if the music was better.  The production's biggest problem is the lack of standout songs.  Albarn's acoustic numbers such as "Apple Carts" and "A Marvelous Dream" are nice enough balladry, but don't showcase the cast members or truly serve the story.  A high point might be "The Moon Exalted," but it's a slow and nebulous ensemble piece--not exactly a toe-tapping show-stopper.  Too many of the other tracks are tuneless and tepid filler.  Stuck in a rut of moody set-pieces, Dr. Dee fails to plumb the depths and scale the heights of both traditional opera and the Enochian magical working on which the story is based.

In short, based on the impressive pedigree of this album, I wanted to like it better.  I can only hope that the mediocrity of Dr. Dee doesn't discourage other artists' attempts at interpreting the lives of Dee and Kelley--it would be amazing to see a competently produced biography on stage or screen one day.  In the meantime, however, I'll be getting my wizardry fix from yet another community theater production of The Tempest before I reach for this album again.