Paul Huson

One of my favourite tarot books. Bought two copies. Pity there is no hardcover edition, or is there?
The book is well researched and gives some invaluable insights into card interpretations, quoting mainly from Picatrix, Eteilla, Mathers, Golden Dawn and Waite. No new-agey stuff, but historically based card information. It is an excellent companion to Paul Huson's Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot (Lo Scarabeo), as well as - in my opinion - to Marseille-style taot decks.

I bought 'The Keepsake' on a spree in a used book store; meaning the bar to make it in the basket was pretty low. Good publishing house, cool cover and it was in. Interesting review blurbs and I'd probably read it. Keepsake was a Warner book (good) published in 1981 (good) with no reviews (bad) and a cheesy description on the back and inside front page (bad).

Long story short, I enjoyed reading what I thought at the time was going to be a throwaway. An evil stone with the outline of a face show more falls from a pile of church ruins and stops at the foot of young US woman filming a documentary on Ireland. Mayhem ensues. show less

How this book can be rated any lower than five stars is quite beyond me- this is the essential guide for anyone who is interested in witchcraft as opposed to the namby-pamby nonsense so often touted as "Wicca" by modern authors. Neither particularly pleasant nor apologetic, this is witchcraft, warts an' all- if you're interested in its practice or indeed just the theory behind it then for heaven's sake find yourself a copy!

The cards are based on Paul Huson's research. The deck has "Marseilles-inspired majors and Etteilla-inspired, fully illustrated minors", which in my view makes it a very interesting and rewarding alternative to RWS- or Thoth-clones. Get Paul Huson`s "Mystical Origins of the Tarot" along with the deck and you have a very extensive and deep "Little White Book" for the deck. This is a historical tarot deck of sorts, in that it draws upon what tarot was before the Golden Dawn while being not as show more different from RWS decks to make reading the cards all too difficult (RWS and Golden Dawn did of course draw lots from earlier tarot wisdom). I always wanted a "Marseilles tarot with illustrated pip cards" and while this deck - due to the deep research it is based on - quite certainly is more that that to me it is just the fulfillment of this wish of mine. The illustrations are quite beautiful, btw, and the material quality of the Lo Scarabeo deck to me seems excellent. Definitely recommended. I got two decks :-) show less