Best books to study tarot?

Manfeex

Hey everyone!

So I've noticed that everyone has a book to help understand the meaning of the tarots and I would like to know witch one is a good book to read from!

I've got a deck of tarot cards from Liz Deans and she has a booklet explaining the tarot card meaning but it's brief so I like one that's more in depth.
Many thanks
Sam
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Nemia

Learning tarot doesn't only mean, IMO, to know the cards' meanings and how to combine them, but an in-depth understanding of the symbols. It's like learning a language. You can get along with a little booklet with some phrases for a holiday, but you won't be able to hold a real conversation until you learn to use the words, sentences and expressions independently. And this is what happens when you work with tarot. The more you know, the better you'll be able to read it and interact with it.

Obviously, ONE book won't give you that, and I keep distance from every book that promises instant knowledge. You can't make a good healthy meal from adding water to a powder, and you can't learn tarot in an afternoon or a week.

I think a very good start to tarot work is Mary Greer's Tarot for yourself because it gives you an idea of the scope and depth you can reach with tarot, and it puts YOU in the driver's seat. No matter which deck you use, that's a very good book.

I also like Anthony Louis' books; one for beginners and later one with lots of astrology etc. The beginner book is fine, Tarot plain and simple.

I started out[/I] with Spiritual Tarot, 78 paths to personal development, and it gave me a good basic understanding of card meanings. It's also very encouraging and empowering with some nice spreads. When I re-read it now, I still like it.

But Rachel Pollack's 78 Degrees of Wisdom is THE classic about RWS card meanings, and no tarot library is complete without it.

If you want to know more about the actual reading, Tarot Interactions by Deborah Lipp is a good book. It helps you overcome the card-by-card approach and see the reading as a whole. You learn to see patterns.

And if you read Mary Greer's 21 ways to read a tarot card, you get a very good picture what's possible, how much information you can get from one card.

I find the last two books complement each other nicely.

That's a basic, not too one-sided book shelf for beginners, based only on books I read myself. I have often heard books by Kim Huggens and Dusty White recommended, they have a very good reputation, too, but I don't know them.
 

Citrin

There are a lot of different tarot books out there and it's a matter of taste what you will like and dislike... :)

78 Degrees of Wisdom is a classic, but personally I find it too dry and boring and it could never keep my interest up.

My personal favorites are Tarot 101 by Kim Huggens, which is very much a workbook that will make you think and feel, and connect the cards to yourself. Very fun to read and use. Same with Tarot For Yourself by Mary K. Greer.

I also love Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen. It is huge which may seem scary, but you're not supposed to read it from front to back. :) It's great if you just want to look up cards, correspondences, spreads, methods and techniques.

Good luck! Let us know if you find a useful one. :)
 

Manfeex

Thank you!
I'll probably get a few and work from there..
I would more likely pick tarot 101, as it's more what I need think to understand the cards more and holistic tarot for looking spreads and meaning of cards etc

Thank you everyone!
 

Shade

I think that Holistic Tarot is sort of its own introductory course in Tarot.
 

EmpyreanKnight

i'm sorry I don't understand?

I think he means that the Holistic Tarot book by Benebell Wen is so complete, so positively magisterial, so packed with information and yet so easy to understand that reading it feels like you have just undergone an introductory course in Tarot, which sentiment I thoroughly approve of. Only thing is it doesn't explore the Kabbalah, so if you're into the esoteric side of Tarot it might feel incomplete. But at its price, it's a real steal, and in any case it's honestly quite indispensable. Go grab that doorstop now!

Btw Liz Dean also wrote The Ultimate Guide to Tarot, which does cover the Kabbalistic and Astrological associations of even the minor cards, so this is a competent complement to the Holistic Tarot. I truly like Rachel Pollack's Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, even though her Tarot Wisdom is so much more meatier and satisfying. For informative card meanings interspersed with real-life accounts of drawing these cards, I would recommend Paul Fenton-Smith's The Tarot Revealed and his more advanced Mastering The Tarot. For beginner books that are not overly simplistic, I recommend Jane Lyle's The Illustrated Guide To Tarot.
 

Barleywine

. . . his more advanced Mastering The Tarot.

Is his Tarot Masterclass an expansion of this? It has around 100 more pages and is more readily available as "new."
 

EmpyreanKnight

Is his Tarot Masterclass an expansion of this? It has around 100 more pages and is more readily available as "new."

My copy of Mastering the Tarot is a dark blue book published by Simon and Schuster in 2000. Its last page is numbered 249 and there is a one-page index at the end.

I compared the text on the available page of the Tarot Masterclass book vis-a-vis my Mastering the Tarot book and I can say they're pretty different. The Tarot Masterclass 2 of Wands as per the Amazon screenshot has a General Meaning and Reversed, Finances meaning and its Reverse, and Health meaning and its Reverse, while my Mastering the Tarot just has the Card and its Reverse. Tarot Masterclass proceeds per suit (2 of Wands then 3 of Wands then. . . ) while Mastering the Tarot proceeds numerologically (2 of Wands then 2 of Cups then. . . ). The wordings (at least for the 2 of Wands) are decidedly different and definitely not just paraphrased. The text for the same card explore different ideas although there are a few similarities of course.

If you want I can type up the entry for the 2 of Wands in Mastering the Tarot so that you can compare it with your book. It's no hassle really, it's just 3 paragraphs for the card proper and 2 for the Reversed part.
 

Barleywine

My copy of Mastering the Tarot is a dark blue book published by Simon and Schuster in 2000. Its last page is numbered 249 and there is a one-page index at the end.

I compared the text on the available page of the Tarot Masterclass book vis-a-vis my Mastering the Tarot book and I can say they're pretty different. The Tarot Masterclass 2 of Wands as per the Amazon screenshot has a General Meaning and Reversed, Finances meaning and its Reverse, and Health meaning and its Reverse, while my Mastering the Tarot just has the Card and its Reverse. Tarot Masterclass proceeds per suit (2 of Wands then 3 of Wands then. . . ) while Mastering the Tarot proceeds numerologically (2 of Wands then 2 of Cups then. . . ). The wordings (at least for the 2 of Wands) are decidedly different and definitely not just paraphrased. The text for the same card explore different ideas although there are a few similarities of course.

If you want I can type up the entry for the 2 of Wands in Mastering the Tarot so that you can compare it with your book. It's no hassle really, it's just 3 paragraphs for the card proper and 2 for the Reversed part.

No need, but thanks! Tarot Masterclass was published in 2008 and seems to be an evolution of his thinking rather than an updated reissue of the earlier book. Mastering the Tarot is no longer available new from Amazon, so I'll just buy the newer work.