- Your Tarot Guide: Learn to navigate life with the help of the cards
- Author: Melinda Lee Holm
- Illustrator: Rohan Daniel Eason
- Publisher: CICO Books
- Published: 2023 UK/USA
- RRP: £14.99/US$19.99
- ISBN: 978-1-80065-260-6
- Reviewer Name: Alison Clayton-Smith
When I opened the package to see this book I was instantly bowled over. ‘Your Tarot Guide: Learn to navigate life with the help of the cards’ is beautifully illustrated and presented. I’d go so far as to say I would happily own this book just to enjoy looking at the illustrations. Aside from the presentation, which we will come back to, I would say this book is aimed at beginners to tarot. It is very clearly set out, concise and easy to read and understand with good use of white space. As it says on the back cover, it ‘Takes you through all the basics’. This is a book that would make a wonderful gift for someone new to Tarot.
There are five chapters plus the Introduction (although there are actually eight chapters as the Minor Arcana suits are a chapter each, but these aren’t listed as chapters on the contents page, just sub-headings of Chapter Five). Chapter One covers the basics, including a very brief history of Tarot, the parts of a deck, choosing and caring for a deck, tarot journalling and also FAQs around common questions such as ‘do I need to be gifted a deck’? Most of these sections could go into a lot more detail in a more in depth book but feel about right for a beginner’s book. There are also useful tables in this section and exercises.
Chapter Two ‘Reading the Map’ looks at how to do a reading and includes advice on reversals, preparing yourself, and what Tarot is/is not. Chapter Three covers spreads, which are standard ones, so again, suit a beginner.
Chapter Four goes through the Major Arcana, two pages per card, with an overview and then a short piece each on ‘Projection spreads’ (the author refers to tarot on page 29 as being Projection not Prediction ‘advice not answers’), Love & Relationships, Career & Money, Challenges/Reversals and then Astrological associations, the related Hebrew Letter, Crystals, apothecary associations, and finally an affirmation. Certainly enough to get a beginner started with lots to pique their interest for further exploration.
And Chapters Five to Eight cover the Minor Arcana with an overview on each suit heading page, including the related crystals and apothecary associations for the respective suit. Each card gets a page, though due to the space the illustrations take up it is actually only about a third text. Again, enough to give a beginner an introduction to the cards.
As mentioned at the beginning, the book is beautifully illustrated throughout by the illustrator who helped create the author’s two tarot decks, Tarot of Tales and Elemental Power Tarot. And the author uses images of their cards from the two decks throughout. So for example on each card introduction page there are the respective cards from those decks. Each chapter heading page is also beautifully illustrated across two pages. Every page from the title page through to the acknowledgements is illustrated in colour. And the cover even has a fancy shiny title that reflects the light as you move the book around! Have I said how much I love the presentation of this book?
As always, the author brings their own take on tarot to their book and this is where I have some quibbles. Melinda Lee Holm is described as an expert tarot reader and has authored one other book besides the two decks, so brings considerable experience. In a couple of places the author uses the phrase ‘ask the witch behind the counter’, as in speak to the person at your local seller of tarot. Some people who come to tarot for self-development may find the use of ‘witch’ a little off-putting. Also under ‘Caring for your Deck’ the author talks about having a ritual and using certain crystals, then in ‘How to read’ mentions using ‘sage and palo santo’ or cleansing sprays (the author sells her own). All these felt a little prescriptive. Personally I don’t do any cleansing. I open the box, flick through, shuffle and off I go! As this book is probably best for beginners I feel like they might get anxious about not doing it Melinda’s way. I also find the advice on shuffling and holding space somewhat prescriptive. On a side note I was pleased to see Melinda mentions the issues around palo santo in regards to overharvesting and cultural appropriation from Native Americans.
I also found some of the meanings given for the cards didn’t seem to fit with the traditional meanings. This was most evident for me in the Swords suit. The Seven of Swords, for example, is described as being about ‘a portal to a new way of understanding in the world…simply acknowledge that you are capable of comprehending it’. I would say that the suit of Swords is portrayed in a more positive light in this book. The meaning for the Queen of Swords, as another example, does not touch on any of the negative aspects of coldness and detachment that can come with this card. I’m not sure if these differences are as a result of the system Melinda has used to encapsulate each Minor Arcana card. For example, all of the Queen cards are ‘Nurturer of…’ and all the Sevens are ‘Overcoming doubt in…’. Sticking to these meanings across the suits feels like it has restricted what the author can write about the individual cards. More experienced tarot people may, like me, be a little perplexed by some of this. Beginners probably won’t know any different and may find the system helpful as a way of remembering meanings, but then may find it harder to relate the images of other decks to the meanings, e.g. looking at the traditional RWS 7 of Swords and Melinda’s meaning would definitely have me scratching my head. It wouldn’t matter if this book is to be used with the author’s decks only, as presumably they apply this approach to their own decks. It’s just that this book is meant to, as it says on the back cover, be ‘the perfect companion to any tarot deck’, and I guess that is one of the weaknesses of using only their own decks to illustrate the book because they are not clones of the RWS whereas probably most beginners would start with RWS-style decks.
All that said, I still think this is a good book for beginners who are just starting to explore the world of tarot. For the more experienced it would serve as a quick reference guide, a different perspective, and as something beautiful to hold and enjoy. I definitely will enjoy looking through this book again and again.
0 Comments