- Your Tarot Toolkit – Simple Activities for Your Daily Practice
- Ru-Lee Story
- Llewellyn Publications. UK RRP £23.00
- ISBN 978-0738774114
Your Tarot Toolkit is a book for Tarot ‘improvers’ who have developed a basic understanding of the meaning of each card but aren’t sure where to go next. The book is designed to accompany a daily card pull, providing a ‘toolkit’ for each card; it does not address spreads, reading, or any other aspect of Tarot. The book contains no card images, and is thus ‘agnostic’ with respect to which deck a reader uses, which I think was an excellent decision on the part of the author and book designer.
In a casual and chatty tone, Story provides a couple of paragraphs of meaning and description for each card, three affirmations (‘I AM, ‘I CAN’, and ‘I WILL’), three reflections (personal questions to use as journaling prompts), and three actions, rated by level of effort. These actions can be thought of as ideas for Artist’s Way ‘artist dates’, or fun things to try when you feel ‘stuck’ or directionless.
The court cards get a slightly longer treatment; the court of each suit is addressed as the Court of Wands, Cups, Swords or Pentacles, and its personality, feel and personal dynamics are described, as well as what places might be best suited to engage with them. In addition to meanings, affirmations, reflections and actions, Story assigns each court card a pop culture character (which might work for you if you’re familiar with the character, perhaps not so much if not) – The Little Prince, for example, represents the Page of Cups, and Garnet from ‘Stephen Universe’ represents the Queen of Swords.
As someone who has been working with the cards for four decades, I’m not really the target audience for this book, but I still found a great deal of value in it. Pulling a card as a journal prompt, or as a prompt to take a small (or large) action to shake up your routine, learn something new or deepen your self-knowledge, is a great exercise and certainly worthwhile to try as an experiment. You won’t learn a lot about Tarot from this book, but you might develop some mind-exercising habits, engage in some unexpected fun, have an entirely new experience, or deepen your understanding of yourself.
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