Never forget, when searching for books about the Tarot; what you are actually searching for is a book about a book, because that’s what the Tarot is, a 78-page book, without a spine and with pictures rather than words. This means that the Tarot you own can sometimes be best explained by the Tarot that someone else owns, i.e. by another Tarot Deck! This is why one deck is rarely enough!

But care is required when purchasing decks. Primarily because so much of Tarot nowadays is the ‘artists stuff’, and not strictly speaking much use for anyone else. For example, The Tarot of Addiction (I just made that up) might be useful if you are an addict (recovering or current) but it won’t be much use to anyone else. In fact, it might not be much use to anyone other than the creator of it, who is after all primarily documenting their own personal journey. This is why, back in the day, Tarot newbies were informed of the principles behind each card and encouraged to paint their own deck for themselves. This is a LOT of work, but I am told it is very worthwhile if you can manage it.

The next point of care and concern is the Tarot Community itself. This is a sub-culture, a part of society which operates to its own rules and regulations, many of them unwritten. Having personally spoken before groups of Tarot People across the UK, as well as in California, I can confirm that they are not everyone’s cup of tea. Working with the cards and becoming a member of the Tarot community can go together if you wish, but I am here to say that they don’t have to.

So, for further learning and study here is what I suggest:

BOOKS

The starting point is The Works of Arthur Norris Volume One. The Tarot Craft section, pages 199-257 is essential, containing a distillation of much that is scattered around elsewhere. This contains the basic meanings of the cards, which can also be found reproduced in The Only Little White Book (LWB) You Will Ever Need. You can download and print these out for yourself:

UK/European A4 size here and US Letter size here.

Also, it’s not a book, but be sure to visit the Meditations section elsewhere in the Hub and listen to the 7-part audio collection by Pat Warrington (Arthur’s long standing partner) You Can Master the Tarot. It is a copy of a popular cassette series that did the rounds in the 90’s.

Then we have the following:

Tarot Cards by Isabella Alston & Kathryn Dixon (2014)

Level: Introductory/Beginner.

Style: Historical narrative.

A potted history of the cards, in words (and mostly pictures). An easy to read, light, non-academic short book (95 pages).

The Complete Book of Tarot by Juliet Sharman-Burke (1985)

Level: Introductory/Beginner.

Style: Practical, Explanatory.

A good, basic all-round introduction to the cards. Short on deep wisdom, but with plenty of things for the beginner to get their teeth into.

Tarot Face to Face by Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin (2012)

Level: Intermediate.

Style: Instructional, full of spreads and exercises.

Marcus and Tali are experienced Tarot readers and academics who founded the highly popular Facebook Group Tarot Professionals. Their work is full of the tips and tricks that can only be gleaned from decades of doing actual readings for actual clients. There is a tendency toward intellectualising the cards (Marcus is an NLP expert) but this book is one of their more accessible works.

Tarot Reversals by Mary K Greer (2002)

Level: Intermediate.

Style: Instructional, with spreads and examples.

Mary Greer’s thing is that tarot is, as she calls it, ‘multi-valent’, which is fancy academic speak for ‘has many meanings’. This is true enough, but the risk that we run here, if we install that as a sacred cow, is that ‘many-meanings’ becomes ‘any-meanings’ and then well, what’s the point? Mary just about skirts the right side of the line with this book, which is a good treatment of how to think about the thorny subject of reversed cards.

The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams (1932)

Level: Advanced

Style: A novel

A fiction, a mysterious tale based on the 22 Major Arcana cards, perhaps a warning to us on the dangers of selfishness versus love. Somewhat dated, a bit slow for most modern readers, but an interesting take on matters spiritual. A friend of CS Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) apparently.

The Magical World of the Tarot by Gareth Knight (1991)

Level: Intermediate to Advanced.

Style: Divided into nine ‘lessons’ with Q&A

Anything by Gareth Knight is worth reading. He is very much in the old school English gentleman occultist mould and was working with tarot (and magic) long before it became the popular phenomena it is now. This is the book if you want to go deeper with your study. But just make sure your fundamentals are down first.

The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley (1944)

Level: Advanced.

Style: Difficult and obscure.

The impossible figure of Aleister Crowley wrote this book to accompany the cards of the same name, and in doing so tied the subject even more tightly to numerology, the Kabbalah and Ancient Egypt. Deep stuff, hard to penetrate, but full of gems for those with the eyes to see.

The Tarot Handbook by Angeles Arrien (1987)

Level: Intermediate

Style: Workbook style, like a college textbook.

An excellent and comprehensive book, written with the modern psycho-analytic perspective in mind. It goes into a good amount of depth with each card and ties different cards together to help you make sense of them. Not difficult, but a proper and serious examination of the cards, written by someone who has clearly used them (rather than just theorised about them). Lots to get your teeth into here.

The Key to the Universe & The Key of Destiny, by Harriette and Homer Curtiss (1917, 1919)

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Style: Deep, esoteric, old school.

These books work through each of the 22 Major Arcana from the perspective of card, number and Hebrew letter. As such you are getting proper esoteric knowledge, much of which would be subject to hardcore gatekeeping now (or simply forgotten). I have found many a deep insight in the pages of these books, particularly useful for when one of the Major Arcana seems to be stalking you.

AND ONLINE

Care required here! This can be a rabbit hole out of which you’ll never return! But, even with that (and the usual Facebook problems), you will find many tips, tricks and curiosities in these groups. I am NOT endorsing any of these resources. If I did, I would not feel the need to have my own Hermitage Hub. Nonetheless, wisdom can be found everywhere, even in the most unlikely places.

Tarot Professionals Facebook Group. Founded, but perhaps no longer actively managed by (?), Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin.

Aeclectic Tarot, including the Tarot Forum archive. Enormous database of card images, reviews and the archived forum where almost every aspect of tarot and spirituality was discussed.

IN PERSON

UK Tarot Conference

Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI)

Readers Studio (annual conference in New York, suspended while Covid continues)

There is also an active online crowd-sourcing scene for new Tarot decks, and you will find this if you navigate the above links.

Finally then, one more time because I’m not going to lie, Tarot has a difficult reputation for a reason. Many of the people involved in the scene, and especially some of its leading lights, fail miserably to live up to the standards they preach to others. There is mendacity, hypocrisy, arrogance and partisan bias littered throughout the scene, mixed in with examples of extreme flakiness and naivety. But all this simply means that the people involved are human! I say this not to disparage anyone but to keep you from the disappointment that I experienced when I discovered that Tarot People were not automatically better people. For all this though it remains the case that the cards are endlessly fascinating, revealing and empowering. They are an important part of our cultural history and they can help us, as Mary Greer says, “meet whatever is coming, in the best way possible.”

P.S. Finally, finally, if, having tried your hardest you simply cannot get on with or make any sense of the Tarot then fear not. The point of having the Tarot is as an external reference, a way to receive information from somewhere outside of you. There are then, thankfully, two other ways of doing this; The Runes and the I Ching. There’s cultural dimension here; the Tarot is born of the Italian Renaissance, with heavy French and English influences (it actually goes back further than that to the Classical World, even to the Ancient Egyptians, but not everyone agrees with that). Runes, on the other hand, are Norse, German/Scandivanian, while the I Ching is Chinese. Cultural affiliation might play a part here. You may be drawn or repelled in ways that are hard for you to explain. Unfortunately I cannot guide you in the use of the Runes or the I Ching except to offer a starting point. For the Runes ignore the ever-popular work of Ralph Blum and opt instead for the section in The Key of it All, Book 2 by David Allen Hulse, or the Wisdom of the Runes by Michael Howard. For the I Ching the best way to get going is with The I Ching Workbook by R L Wing. For personal reasons I have always left the Runes well alone, but I have experienced profound insights from the I Ching. But the Tarot is easily to learn, with far more resources available to help you.