Paula Dempseyexamines a new critical introduction to Tarot, an expensive but beautiful new Taschen box on the Rider Waite Smith Tarot, and a Lovecraft-inspired deck
A Critical Introduction to Tarot
Examining the Nature of a Belief in Tarot
Simon Kenny
Iff Books 2023
Pb, 248pp, £17.99, ISBN 9781803413921
Lovers. Kenny traces this binary back to Pythagoras and a human tendency to categorise everything by opposites: male/female, dark/light, good/evil.
Subsequent chapters examine the connection tarot has with various magical systems including the Kabbalah, Jung’s mysticism, Satanism, Witchcraft and Freemasonry. There are many digressions, all for good reason, proposing frameworks for using tarot in magical practice and personal reflection.
Multiple perspectives on how the cards work don’t help to answer how and why the cards work, however. More practically, the book needs a decent index. It does provide a refreshingly innovative perspective on tarot and would be of value to tarot readers who wish to extend their understanding and practice, or those with a wider interest in symbolism and magic.
Taschen has produced a beautiful celebration of probably the most popular tarot deck. Originally produced in the 1900s and simply called The Tarot, it is now known by the names of its publisher, Rider, its illustrator, Pamela Colman Smith, and her fellow Golden Dawn member AE Waite. Waite, who oversaw the creation of the deck, wrote The Guide to the Tarotproduced in facsimile in this boxed set, together with a reprint of the deck, both from the 1910 printing and accompanied by a lavishly-illustrated 400-page book.
Essays from the late Rachel Pollack, Mary J Greer and Johannes Fiebig provide potted biographies of Waite and Smith as well as the story of the deck’s creation and continuing popularity. Smith’s inspiration to use pictures on all 78 cards, rather than an abstract design on the minor trumps, may have come from the 15th-century Sola-Busca deck, exhibited at the British Museum in 1907. Her talent as an illustrator and set designer brings a depth to the cards that is highlighted in the largest section of the book, on interpretation. A list of meanings is given for each card and the cards of the minor arcana are linked with others of the same number in the other suits and with the corresponding number in the major arcana.
Kenny ★ ★ ★
The Tarot of AE Waite and P Colman Smith
Johannes Fiebig (ed)
Taschen 2023
Hb, 444pp, £100, ISB
