Actually quite an informative & insightful book.

There is a bit of run-on in the introduction, but once the author got to the actual subject of the Tarot, I was impressed. In fact there was a piece of information I had been searching for, in order to print an hand-out for my class.

Even the history of Tarot was pretty complete. I'll continue to use & recommend this book. ( )

I’ve been reading Tarot books for a good thirty years or more, and rarely found one I could whole-heartedly recommend to both beginners and experienced readers alike. This is certainly it.

The first half of the book is one of the most comprehensive and readable histories of the Tarot ever published. Place, an artist himself, has a profound grasp of visual allegory and symbolic imagery in Western art. In addition to the art history of the deck, he also traces the history of ideas that influenced both Renaissance artists and later occultists who reshaped the cards into the system we know today.

The latter half of the book focuses on divination. His card-by-card descriptions are concise and useful, but I was most impressed by his layouts. No Celtic Cross here, mostly variations on three-card layouts. I regularly use three cards myself, and was delighted to get new insights and ideas. After reading cards for decades, it’s fun to know you can learn a new trick or two.

If you’re not a Tarot or history geek, the opening chapters might be overwhelming. For a beginner, there’d be no harm in beginning at the end and still becoming a competent card reader. But the serious card reader will find the entire book a treasure. ( )