QUEEN OF WANDS

Cat Willett. The Queen of Wands. The Story of Pamela Colman Smith, the Artist Behind the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck. Running Press, 2022.

The 'Rider-Waite' deck is probably the one most used by tarot practitioners, and has almost become the standard 'divinatory' design. Many of the vast range of contemporary decks are variations and developments of its designs. However now most practitioners understand that it has the wrong name and is more usually referred to as the Waite-Smith tarot.

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CARDS ON THE TABLE

Patrick Maille. The Cards: The Evolution and Power of Tarot. University Press of Mississippi, 2021.

This book provides a history not so much of the tarot cards themselves, as a social history of the way in which they have been used, and the people who have used them for purposes other than their original purpose – a card game.

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TOP DECK

Shaheen Miro. The Lunar Nomad Oracle. Weiser Books. 2018.

Cartomancy probably originated in the eighteenth century, and practitioners originally used the normal 52 playing-card deck, or the smaller 32 card deck used in France and elsewhere for the game of piquet. Later the tarot deck became particularly associated with the practice, but this was originally the standard deck used for tarot card games that were played across the Continent, but which never reached Britain.

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TAROT IN BLACK AND WHITE

   

Emily E. Auger. Cartomancy and Tarot in Film, 1940-2010. Intellect (University of Chicago Press), 2016.

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Rex Van Ryn, Steve Dooley (designers) and Andrew Lechter (author) The English Magic Tarot. Tarot deck and booklet (paperback, 150pp.) Red Wheel-Weiser, 2016.

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Diana Heyne. Tarot by Design Workbook. Weiser Books, Paperback, 2017.

You might wonder why a sceptical pelicanist like your editor is even bothering to review books on such a subject as the tarot. Am I falling into what Carl Sagan called “silent assent about mysticism and superstition” and thereby strengthening the “demon-haunted world”?
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TRACKING THE TAROT

Ronald Decker. The Esoteric Tarot: Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermeticism and Cabala. Quest Books, Theosophical Publishing House. 2013.

Retired art historian Decker has examined Tarot packs in many parts of the world. He has also studied the written and visual material that may have underlain the cards’ designs, and therefore appears to be the ideal person to investigate their esoteric meanings. Nevertheless, his book is not wholly satisfactory.
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THE HISTORICAL TAROT

Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett. A History of the Occult Tarot, 1870-1970. Duckworth Overlook, 2013 (second ed.)

Many people do not realize that the Tarot pack was for centuries used for playing card games before it began to be employed in fortune-telling. Sir Michael Dummett (1925 – 2011), a retired professor of logic from Oxford University, has written the definitive studies of the games played with the cards.
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FIGHTING ZOMBIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Stacey Graham. Zombie Tarot. Deck of 72 cards and instruction booklet. Illustrated by Paul Kepple and Ralph Geroni. Quirk Books, Philadelphia, 2012.

Well it’s nearly Christmas, and the Aztec Apocalypse is next week, so not much else could go wrong. Right? Well you’re forgetting about the Zombie Holocaust that’s probably just around the corner, and will bring about the end of civilization as we, or anybody else, knows it.
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RE-READING THE CARDS

Nicholas Swift replies to Gareth Medway's review of his book, Mirror of the Free

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MISREADING THE CARDS

Nicholas Swift. Mirror of the Free. O-books, 2011.

The author suggests that the imagery of the Tarot pack, specifically the classic Tarot of Marseilles, derives from the religious iconography of ancient Babylon, as depicted on surviving cylindrical seals. This seems plausible, since some of the Tarot trumps (also called the Major Arcana) are roughly identical to illuminations in medieval astrological manuscripts, whose contents were ultimately derived from Babylonia. Nevertheless, his case is not convincingly argued.
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