best "The Ultimate Guide to the RWS" book

La Force

"The Ultimate Guide to the RWS" book
By Johannes Fiebig & Evelin Burger

This is a must have book for anyone that uses the RWS deck

This book details the 10 most important symbols on each and every card in the deck complete with hundreds of colored illustrations.

Plus much more.
 

jean bosco

Hi all,
I thought I'd post the "original" german title also, because the title of the english version sounds a bit disproportionate to me. There are just too many excellent books on the tarot, there can't be just the one "ultimate" IMHO...

The title in german is (simply): "Tarot Basics - Waite Tarot" and "Tarot reading the easy way"

But anyway, I also think this book has some value, because card-details can definitely be looked up "the easy way".
 

Richard

Here is a thread about it. Most of the criticism is directed at the English title.
 

-Jenny-

Difference of opinion...

I was VERY disappointed with this book. I felt as a beginner, it wasn't in "layman's" terms. The language used makes it very confusing for someone like me who is just starting out. I wouldn't recommend it at all.
 

Zephyros

I was VERY disappointed with this book. I felt as a beginner, it wasn't in "layman's" terms. The language used makes it very confusing for someone like me who is just starting out. I wouldn't recommend it at all.

Well, that doesn't necessarily make it bad. Not all books are for beginners or laymen.
 

jean bosco

I was VERY disappointed with this book. I felt as a beginner, it wasn't in "layman's" terms. The language used makes it very confusing for someone like me who is just starting out. I wouldn't recommend it at all.

This is no beginners book. After some time you might find some useful info in there, if you like to work with the Rider-Waite-Smith cards. But I can imagine what you mean by "confusing", it has incorporated quite some "interesting" viewpoints, that aren't everybody's thing.
 

Richard

From what I've seen and read about it, I don't think I like this book. Knowing the ten most important symbols in each card is not going to help with understanding the card. Understanding requires that the symbols be coordinated with each other, which is impossible unless the superstructure governing the selection of symbols is understood. I can almost see where it might be useful as a reference, but it seems to be unnecessarily muddied by irrelevant speculation.

Pass.
 

gregory

I have it; I find it impossible to read from one end to the other - it is more useful as a dip into book, IMHO. I don't think it's exactly perfect for beginners though; I think the top ten format does mean that you miss anything that - isn't in the authors' opinion a top ten thing. And I would like it to have explored more of what WAITE thought rather than what the authors thought. There are so many books about this one deck that tell you what one person thinks. Yes I have it - but I expect Teheuti's book to be better; I've seen her discussing JUST ONE CARD - and she does it a LOT better. But it is streets ahead of some others.

And I do really HATE the English title, yes. Were it not for someone in that other thread who really knows her Waite saying it had some useful stuff, I wouldn't have bought it at all because of that. Which goes to show that titles DO MATTER !
 

tarotbear

Any book that self-proclaims it is the 'Ultimate, Bestest, Ding-Dang-Doo Book of Whatever' guarantees I'll never probably buy it.

That acerbic comment aside ~ Waite was a member of a 'secret' society - and died taking his secrets with him - so we may never know what Waite thought, said, or did on the matter. The fact that most of the prominent members of the GD never left any 'reveal' {that has ever been discovered anyway - such as the supposed list of 'blinds' Waite is credited for creating} makes you wonder why you could create all this 'secret' mumbo-jumbo and then guarantee the knowledge will never be passed on ...
 

Zephyros

Except it doesn't quite work like that. Many of Waite's secrets are amply put forth in his voluminous corpus. Mary Greer has spoken of them here in the past, and they are there for anyone to find, provided they are willing to find them scattered across 50+ books. That not many GD members revealed the orders secrets is a testament to how much those who did blab reveal. Between Crowley, Regardie and others, there's not much original GD material that still remains secret, if anything.

As for blinds, the few that are actually in the PKT are easily refuted in GD source material, and so lose their blindness.

When secret societies talk of, well, secrets, they're often referring to things that have to be experienced in order to be understood. The Golden Dawn wasn't a Tarot-making society, it was a semi-Masonic order dedicated to initiation into higher consciousness, magic, etc. I could list attributions and theoretical GD practices from here until the cows come home, but that still doesn't mean I have a grade or anything like that, because I am not a magician and do not spend my days in meditation and ritual. The knowledge has been passed on, but not everyone is willing or able to do the work. They don't call Regardie's book "The Complete Golden Dawn" for nothing. That, finally, is the "secret."

As for the book, from what I have seen it is completely subjective, and does not present anything "ultimate." It seems to be just like any other book about the RWS, except for the format, which is in "listicles," for people who read Buzzfeed.