Christiana Gaudet

Although largely unsurprising, this is a great little Tarot book. It’s also available free with a KindleUnlimited subscription. It’s certainly not scholarly and over-thought like a Tarot-and-psychoanalysis book: —Baby Hermes, why do skeptics not like Tarot? —Because they don’t like it, Mommy. —Exactly, I like it because I like it, and they don’t like it because they don’t like it. Let’s synthesize these views to come up with the one correct view: which is mine. —Just tell them you like it, mommy. Then get me some cake. —I don’t like cake. —I wasn’t talking about cake for YOU, Momms.

Aside from the useful refresher (or intro) on the cards, I found the brief idea given of Tarot magic to be great. A lot of my Tarot in the past has been, you know: —I need to calm down. —Great. I agree. Calm down. —So…. What do I do now? —Um…. Well, let’s see: right now you’re losing your shit….

Even if you just visualize a card that’s useful for your purposes, that’s a start. Also, the cards—including the Major Arcana—have elemental associations, which is another great thing to know about the story of Tarot.

…. I think I’m going to re-do my vision board (basically a visualization tool) with Tarot images, as I think this will work better than with my literal images. I look at my literal vision board and I think, ‘Yup, things I want’, but I don’t feel it, and feeling is the point. Tarot images are more emotional to me though. Literal images are less powerful. I look at a car lot, it’s hard to feel ‘selling cars for a living’, the way that the Chariot would symbolize ‘transportation/cars/power’, you know. (Actually a photo of a car lot just makes me think of asphalt, which most people come across quite regularly, often without making modern metropolis money, if you will.) Even the most literal one, though, and the best one on what I have, the pretty girl from “Success” magazine, is effective because she isn’t ~really~ the pretty girl from “Success” magazine. Obviously! (Think about it.) She’s, The Pretty Girl. She won’t really look like that, which is why the High Priestess or the Empress would actually be more appropriate. Those archetypes also, although they necessarily lack specificity, have more depth about certain psychic qualities possessed, and not just appearance. A girl profiled in a magazine has (often for one’s purposes, irrelevant) specificity, and certain literal facts attached to her life, her actions, her resume, but often her psyche on a deeper level—which card she’d be—is more of a mystery, whereas I’ve more of an idea of what the cards mean to me and what having that energy in my life would be like, you know.

…. It was very cool to learn elemental associations for the Major Arcana and to learn more about the four elements and their role in Tarot.… (més)