Herodotus
And I realize now that she really only ever "suggests" that the Minors shouldn't be used, although something about the way she writes made me think her feelings on this and other matters is unnecessarily strong, and that I'd be scolded if she caught me divining with pips.
As I think about it, the reason I feel this way may have been because Gilchrist had a tendency to repeat herself numerous times throughout the book. Repetition is common throughout - we got three separate runs through the entire Major Arcana! It's a great way to make sure we walk away remembering the points, but I found it a little unnecessary at times. For example, she would begin a chapter with a summary of what she'll be discussing in the next couple of chapters, and then would do this again every couple of chapters. This is how I was taught to introduce academic essays, but the otherwise conversational tone of the work left me feeling like this *wasn't* meant to be all that "academic", despite the research that was clearly behind it.
Her opinions on matters like reading for oneself seem so driven because she mentions them almost every time she talks about reading, which comprises a great deal of the book. After a while, I found myself thinking, "ok, I get it, you don't want me to read for myself. But I'm not going to follow that advice, so can we please move on to the actual point?"
I don't know - I feel like I may still be being too harsh - was I maybe in a "mood" while reading this book that I wasn't conscious of? I've disagreed with Tarot books before (like Waite's), but have always either liked or disliked it overall. I cannot say I feel so uniformly about this one, although the scale does tip in the favor of "liked".
As I said a while back, I really want to revisit this book in light of this discussion, but I think it'll have to wait, because I'm not really in a Marseille sort of mood right now.