Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot by Katz & Goodwin?

Telspepper

I have just ordered this book. I read all the reviews and the Amazon preview pages and I think it deserves me reading it. ;)
 

rwcarter

Started reading this book while in the back seat of a car today on the way up to wine tasting. Interesting info on Pixie and I stopped partway through the Waite chapter when I knew I was going to have to concentrate and we were getting close to Napa.

I found two head scratchers in the book though:

On page 8 in the How to Read the Tarot section, in the end of the third paragraph is
These keywords relate to the forty minor arcana and twelve court cards as they correspond to their equivalent in the map of the Tree of Life.
Shouldn't that be 16 court cards? The book doesn't seem to cover the placement of the courts on the Tree of Life, but I thought all four courts had places on the Tree.

On page 55 in the Pixie section, the third paragraph says
Each suit consists of ten numbered cards, as in the modern playing cards, but there are instead three honours: King or Knight, Queen, Prince or Emperor, Princess or Knave.
Wouldn't that be four honours?

Rodney
 

magpie9

I'm not entirely certain I should trust these people or thier interpretations. Something seems not entirely right.
 

Abrac

It should say '16 court cards' and 'four honours.' I think they were in a hurry to get this book out. Very badly designed and edited. Maybe they'll put out a revised and updated version in the future.

There is a Tree of Life on page 339, but it doesn't show the courts.
 

Zephyros

I'm not entirely certain I should trust these people or thier interpretations. Something seems not entirely right.

Perhaps not, but the book is still important in terms of exploring Waite's work in a scholarly fashion. I wonder, are citations provided for students who would wish to go beyond this book? Do they back up their claims with Waite source material?
 

rwcarter

Perhaps not, but the book is still important in terms of exploring Waite's work in a scholarly fashion. I wonder, are citations provided for students who would wish to go beyond this book? Do they back up their claims with Waite source material?
There are 13 endnotes for the chapter on Waite himself. And many of them appear to come from Waites' own books.
 

Zephyros

There are 13 endnotes for the chapter on Waite himself. And many of them appear to come from Waites' own books.

That's very, very good and already differentiates this book from many others. So you don't have to take their word for it, you can follow their methods and sources and arrive at your own conclusions.
 

SixDegrees

I think they were in a hurry to get this book out. Very badly designed and edited.

I wouldn't be surprised if this were true. I had precisely the same thought about their "Learning Lenormand" book a few years ago.
 

Abrac

There are many endnotes, I'll give them that. But the downside is they're endnotes rather than footnotes, which would be a lot easier to use as you're reading the text.

On the back of the book it says, "Drawing on Waite’s unpublished writings, historic photographs of Smith, and much more..." They don't give references to any of these so-called unpublished writings. They don't even mention what they are in the text, as far as I can see. I suspect the material comes not from anything unpublished (which are in private hands and somewhat difficult to access), but from rare and lesser-known Waite material. The Complete Rosicrucian Initiations of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross might be one example. The rituals in this book have supposedly been floating around the internet but I haven't been able to locate them. One reviewer says, "the description of the [Tarot] Images corresponding to the Paths on the ToL are different to the images used by the G.D." So they must be from Waite's Independent and Rectified Rite or Fellowship of the Rosy Cross.
 

rwcarter

There are many endnotes, I'll give them that. But the downside is they're endnotes rather than footnotes, which would be a lot easier to use as you're reading the text.
I also wish they had used footnotes instead of endnotes as having to thumb through to the back of the book to see what the endnote said broke the flow of reading the text. Once I read the endnote then I had to find where I'd left off on the page before searching for the endnote!

Rodney