100 Books Like Everyday Tarot Magic

This is one of the most useful books in my collection, as evidenced by the lines that I’ve color-coded with highlighters and the comments I’ve scribbled in the margins.

The author belongs to a magical order that ascribes different occult associations (i.e. “mysteries”) to all 78 tarot cards, so even the sections for the minor cards can feature extensive magical discussions. For example, Willis explains how the Three of Disks (aka Pentacles) relate to the trade secrets of smithcraft and masonry and then gets into how this relates to using different-shaped altar stones in Earth Magic for crop growth, animal fertility, finding a mate, and monetary gain.

The broad array of both folk magic and ceremonial magic techniques makes this book a magical education in itself.

I define a “spell” as a multi-media affirmation, and as there is no limit to the number of positive affirmations you can recite, there is also no limit to the number of spells you could perform if so inclined. As this book offers a spell for each day of the year, you can use it to add dimension to daily life.

Although these spells can help you work toward important goals, they also guide you to interact with the tarot’s archetypal personalities by imaginatively entering their picture space and moving around in the environments that they inhabit. I also appreciate that Graham provides “connection” rites for each of the 78 cards, as the Minor Arcana are often overlooked, even though they address the sort of daily life issues that dominate our attention. 

Because Donald Michael Kraig sees magic as everyone’s birthright, he is enthusiastic about showing us how to program our subconscious minds to form templates on the astral plane that effect changes on the physical plane—with these generating additional positive changes, not just for yourself, but also for humanity, (as they influence our shared energy fields).  

Each chapter presents different approaches, with Kraig explaining not just how to use tarot spells and talismans but also how to practice astral projection, how to use both the Major and Minor Arcana cards as doorways to the astral plane and navigate the Kabalistic Tree of Life, how to dance the tarot, and even how to mix tarot with sex magic. Of special interest: he also brings in chaos science, using the cards as “strange attractors.” 

As a designer of systems, I find this book intriguing because the author has created his own rather idiosyncratic system of sorcery. (The emphasis being on “sorcery,” written from a practicing sorcerer’s point of view.)  In addition to outlining his theories on rules of magic and providing new perspectives on magical tools, Emerson provides a section of tarot spells with rhyming incantations, unusual layouts, and diverse aims, including concealing a secret, conjuring an omen, seeing from afar, sequestering beyond time, drawing wayward souls, brewing a tempest, and more.

The spell layouts also have fanciful titles like “The Knight’s Vigil,” “The Queen’s Mirror,” “The Prison of Shadows,” and “The Shroud of Unseeing.” One warning, though: this book is not for people who are easily offended by any hint of manipulative magic.

Rachel Pollack’s classic guide to the tarot is a well-loved reference for me and for many.

While it’s a great next step to add depth of insight into the cards for the less experienced, it also continually serves up new insights to someone with more familiarity with the cards as well. She wrote it in the early eighties while living in Amsterdam and teaching tarot at the Kosmos Meditation Center.

Guided Tarot is a how-to book for Tarot readings: how to lay out the cards and get some sense out of them. There’s more to Tarot than just memorizing the card meanings, and this book walks you through the process of developing your own card reading style. If you can’t figure out which spreads to use, or if you’re having trouble trusting your intuition and letting the reading flow, this book will take you through exercises to figure out the answers to those questions so you become a more powerful Tarot reader and can take the training wheels off, so to speak.

For this ambitious 1992 anthology, anthropologist Angeles Arrien and political scientist James Wanless collected twenty-two pathbreaking articles from an assortment of contributors that included two physicists, half a dozen practicing psychologists, a social worker, an ordained minister, and an assortment of writers and artists who had integrated Tarot into their professional and/or creative practices. I’m still fascinated by the different perspectives displayed in this collection and its surprisingly wide range of topics:  parapsychology, dance, relationship therapy, self-transformation, nature symbolism, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, and much more.

Looking back at this book, it seems important in (at least) two ways. For one thing, it’s a snapshot of certain cultural/intellectual trends that were converging in the later 20th century: consciousness research, “new age” philosophies, and cross-cultural and alternative approaches to psychotherapy. For another, it represents the first serious attempt to treat Tarot as a subject matter, bringing together various disciplines and… show more.

Every Tarot library needs a few good books on spreads. Spreads are the backbone of a reading. Liz Dean’s The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Spreads is approachable as it is not overwhelming with an excessive number of spreads, Liz provides numerous quality spreads that do not disappoint. Whether it is love, romance, health, wealth, self-development, rare, or occult – Liz has you covered with all the spread you will need. 

If you journal or want to write, I highly recommend this book.

For journal keepers and writers, this is your next step in learning tarot after reading my Introduction to Tarot. Especially powerful is writing down your first impression of the cards, what Mary calls "Entering A Card" on pages 23 - 25. Fun and revealing about your inner values is "The Court Card Party" on pages 77 - 80. Most powerful for me was the "Turning Points" worksheet on page 128 to see the big picture of your life.

Plus, it contains many different types of tarot spread that can inspire you to create your own tarot magic. Bring your tarot understanding and awareness to the next level with Tarot for Yourself.

Ronald Decker coauthored with Michael Dummett and Thuerry Depaulis A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot.

Although A Wicked Pack of Cards is an important factual history, I feel that Dummett dominated the other authors of this book with his preconception that the Tarot is only a card game that the occultists seized on as a vehicle for their fantasies. He showed little interest in its symbolism. In The Esoteric Tarot, Decker was on his own, and this allowed him to focus on the symbolism and meanings of the cards, rooted in Western mysticism.