Kitchen Table Tarot

Tea&Temperance

Heard some reviews and I have to say it has peaked my interest. I have been looking for a straightforward book and it looks like this might fit the bill.
 

Nemia

I read the Kindle sample and decided not to buy it. I slowly start to think I'm no longer a beginner. The table of contents looks good.

But I imagine someone who learned to read the cards from that book. She wouldn't be aware of the fact that there was a tarot before the RWS. She would think of Colman Smith as "mother of tarot". She would see the RWS tradition as ancient, classic, the only "real" tradition.

I'm really tired of that RWS monoculture.

She might have written: listen, the tarot has been around since the Renaissance so it's not really very ancient, it's a part of early modern European history. In the last 100 years, RWS tradition has become dominant in the Anglo-Saxon world, and this is the tarot I connect with and the one I'm going to teach.

But no. She lists recommended decks, all of them RWS (except for Swiss 1JJ), and calls them "basic tarot" and judging from the table of contents, she doesn't come back to the question at all. If she really doesn't, this is an incredibly narrow book.

"If you start with a deck that diverts from the Basic, it's difficult to be sure you're getting the proper information about your cards." What does that mean? She uses capital letters for the Basic.

I also can't take a book seriously that recommends giving readings for clients with a book in hand. You can read for friends when you start your tarot journey and use a book, of course, but once you start reading for clients (and she uses the word client), you should be able to do without a book. Well, that's at least my opinion.

I hope she addresses this question more in depth in her later chapters, she has one about the ethics of reading.

Well, nobody learns the tarot from reading just one book, and I gather from the reviews here that the author has many good ideas and valuable advice. But since the market is so full with good tarot books for beginners, I'm not sure I'd recommend this one. I'd still go for Bunning, Greer, Louis, Pollack, Huggens, Moore, Katz/Goodwin/Greene...

This is only my opinion, I hope I haven't stepped on anyone's toes. When I look for reviews, I'm always glad to get the positive with the negative, so I added my two agorot here. And judging only from the sample is not really fair, so don't take my word too seriously.

PS: Her blog is very interesting. So probably I should have kept my mouth after reading only the sample!
 

MystiKay

No I don't think you have stepped on anyone's toes here. That is what a review is for. I for one do say I really enjoyed the book. It, to me is a good beginners book, with the hope that once this one is read, the reader will go out and read other books. But I read it on the kindle and decided I wanted a hard copy for my shelf.

She talks about other decks, but she stresses that the examples in her book are using the RWS so she does mention it a lot, even though she does bring up other types of decks ( though I do agree with you on RWS and like it when authors mention other tarot systems.)

I think her saying that she used the book, even when doing client readings, was to show the progression of her confidence and when she finally put down the book. I did enjoy the no nonsense, less esoteric way the book was written. I am old and crotchety and sometimes get annoyed with overly flowery and esoteric jargon.