lark
Very good advice because we are really just a bunch of salty lipped, maguarita drinkers who never empty our garbage.Ambrosia said:
Learning by The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, AEW.
conversus
Miss Divine said:
I never trashed mine, but it got sent out to the remote storage facility and i turned my attention to Eden Grey. I'm sure that there were faults there, too, but a much friendlier beginning to the process.
CED
Ambrosia
lark said:Very good advice because we are really just a bunch of salty lipped, maguarita drinkers who never empty our garbage.
Mwahahahaha!!!
Well,first two YES! Last one, not so much. Teehee.Grymdycche
The most confusing thing about it to me was that, in the Celtic Cross spread, it reversed positions 4 and 6, where the "already resolved" was to the right of the mini-cross, and "near future" was to the left.
Weird.
Weird.
thorhammer
AEW is known to have been quite proud of his awareness of "esoteric secrets", and he is said to have guarded them jealously, hinting broadly in many of his writings that he knew something the reader didn't, so to them! 
Consequently, if there was a true purpose or any direct usefulness to be conveyed by PKT, it is derailed entirely by Arty winking at you hoping you'll notice he's privy to something really cool, and start hanging on his every word in the hope he'll share it with you.
Sad thing is, now he's dead, and he can't share it with you, and his *legacy* is this confusing piece of twaddle that should have been great.
\m/ Kat
ETA: Pick the Crowley fan in the crowd
to them! Consequently, if there was a true purpose or any direct usefulness to be conveyed by PKT, it is derailed entirely by Arty winking at you hoping you'll notice he's privy to something really cool, and start hanging on his every word in the hope he'll share it with you.
Sad thing is, now he's dead, and he can't share it with you, and his *legacy* is this confusing piece of twaddle that should have been great.
\m/ Kat
ETA: Pick the Crowley fan in the crowd
Freddie
This is a valuable book if one is to consider the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck to be of more use than just as a fortune telling device. It is hard to understand people here claiming that the person who concieved this deck was stupid and a terrible writer lol.....
Freddie
Freddie
Emily
I've never actually owned a copy of this book - I saw one in a used bookstore and had a flick through it, quite a long flick because the bookshop owner was engrossed in a novel he was reading - I decided that it was a little too dry for my liking.
Teheuti
Personally I think it's one of the great books on the tarot. Sure it is pompous and hard to read but it is filled with gems that really need someone to point them out (which is a book I am working on). Waite was trying to write a work for the general public which would also contain a hidden layer for the discerning reader. So there is "hidden" material and tons of subtle references to other works. These things are totally unnecessary for the reading of cards, rather they yield a deeper understanding of what Waite calls "the Secret Tradition" regarding the way to union with the Divine.
However, I'm still surprised when I go back to the book and realize how many things he says that really grasp the essence of a card's meaning. The central card-by-card interpretation section is deceptively simple because it is often deeply profound.
I suggest reading the book through quickly at the beginning (if you primarily use the Rider-Waite-Smith deck) and then return a couple of years later and read it again more carefully, and then, perhaps again in your old age.
However, I'm still surprised when I go back to the book and realize how many things he says that really grasp the essence of a card's meaning. The central card-by-card interpretation section is deceptively simple because it is often deeply profound.
I suggest reading the book through quickly at the beginning (if you primarily use the Rider-Waite-Smith deck) and then return a couple of years later and read it again more carefully, and then, perhaps again in your old age.
northsea
northsea makes note to read Pictorial Key again when Mary's book is available.
Teheuti
I agree with you that it shouldn't be taken as gospel - as some absolute truth. IMHO, the tarot is meant to be read as a picture book. We should be able to lose every book ever written and still recreate a working divinatory system based just on the images on the cards as they relate to the world(s) we experience.rwcarter said:
However, the best books represent the views of a well-educated, well-honed eye that can help us refine our own way of looking and can teach us how to "see" more deeply. They can provide the fruits of many years practice, research and study so we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. They also sometimes are an "oracle" in their own right, in that looking up a card can give us exactly the words we needed to hear at the moment.
