Books like Tarot Symbolism — picked by fans

When I started a serious study of Tarot, there were very few substantive books on the topic—and barely anything had been written about the history and scope of Tarot art. But, that changed dramatically when collector and publisher Stuart Kaplan began the Encyclopedia of Tarot; over the years between 1978 and 2005, the series grew to four volumes and 1,584 pages, documenting every Tarot deck he could find out about.

However, the first volume stands alone as a turning point in the modern history of Tarot. In almost 400 oversized pages, it discusses artifacts that range from 15th-century museum pieces to esoteric decks designed by 19th-century enthusiasts to hand-made creations of adventurous 20th-century artists. Most of the book’s pages display black-and-white photographs of cards from various decks, but there are also scholarly essays illuminating the many aspects of Tarot history and art.

Kaplan’s Encyclopedia encouraged me to take Tarot seriously,… show more.

This is probably the least-known and most surprising book ever written about Tarot. And yes, the author was pop culture icon Timothy Leary—Harvard psychologist turned apostle of psychedelic experimentation. I discovered this book more than a decade after it was published in 1979 and was amazed to realize it had come out just a year after Volume One of Kaplan’s meticulous Encyclopedia of Tarot. It’s impossible to imagine two more different authors or two more different books!  

It’s equally impossible to explain what Leary’s 288-page, large-format book is ”about” since it was deliberately composed as a mix of ideas, themes, and graphic illustrations that would challenge our normal expectations of intellectual order. However, you can get a flavor of Leary’s approach from this chapter title: “Tower portrays your self-actualized brain-control-reality-director neuro-technology.”

Opening this book, I revisit a time when the “counter-culture” movement surfaced wildly exploratory questions, and Tarot was being… show more.

When this book was published in 1979, mythologist Joseph Campbell was not yet a media celebrity—just a noted scholar. But poets and artists had already begun to engage with his exploration of the “hero’s journey.” As a student of archetypal psychology, I was initially excited to discover that Campbell had written about the Tarot.

I say “initially” because I was soon put off by the fact that Campbell had placed the origin of Tarot around 1350—a hundred years too early. But since then, I’ve become enthusiastic about his commentary, which draws associations between Tarot and Dante Alighieri’s 1332 epic poem, the Divina Commedia. Although 1450 (the probable timeframe of the earliest Tarot) was a transitional space between the periods designated as the “Middle Ages” and “Renaissance,” my research and experience suggest that Tarot is most closely tied to a medieval worldview and best understood in that context.

The other… show more.

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.

Robert Place is my favorite Tarot historian and artist.

What I love about this book is that he writes it in such a way that his discussion of the history of the cards makes it easier to understand and remember their symbolism (always useful when you’re trying to read Tarot). It also has detailed descriptions of different spreads.

But to my mind, it’s just a fun, interesting read, and a book I’ve turned to many a time for research and reading purposes.

It’s said that court cards can be the trickiest for Tarot readers to interpret. This was certainly true for me when I was starting out, so Understanding the Tarot Court became invaluable to me. 

Mary K. Greer is another Tarot classicist and has spent decades delving into the history and usage of Tarot. The book goes deep into the symbolism and meanings of various cards—both upright and reversed—even going so far as to equate them to Myers-Briggs personality types.

Perhaps more importantly, it also has excellent explanations of how to read these quirky cards. 

Witches everywhere are rejoicing the fact that Pamela Coleman Smith is finally being celebrated. If you don’t know (but I’m sure you do,) Coleman Smith illustrated the most iconic tarot deck that exists, which used to be referred to only as the Rider-Waite deck (Waite directed the project and Ryder was the company that published it). Now the decks are being renamed after their creator, a fascinating woman who went by “Pixie” and hung out with Bram Stoker and William Butler Yates. This book is the most beautiful tribute, thick with her illustrations and writings. A deep dive into the life of an important and most magical witch. 

Writer, photographer, and journalist William Cook Haigwood selected his own photos to create Journeying the Sixties: A Counterculture Tarot. The book helped me understand the context for my early childhood when my parents had an apartment in the Haight. Haigwood practically offers a graduate-level course in the Sixties by examining the major players, the opposing forces, and the gifts and wages of the unbridled idealism and enthusiasm characteristic for the times (love, religion, art, music, politics, law enforcement, war, drugs, feminism, poetry, revolution, and more). The Eight of Cups chapter looks at People’s Park in Berkeley; Mick Jagger represents the King of Pentacles; the Death card discussion explores Martin Luther King, Jr., Kennedy, and Vietnam. Haigwood’s interpretations make tarot’s archetypal energies relevant to the lessons of an entire generation. 

As a poet, I love the Poet Tarot, for which Two Sylvias Press matched Major Arcana and Court Cards with deceased British and American poets. The Guidebook offers a mini history lesson about each poet’s strengths and weaknesses, including psychological wellbeing, journey to publication, and sources of inspiration. Each chapter ends with suggested actions: “Remember and honor the inspirational women in your life,” (Gwendolyn Brooks as the Queen of Muses / Cups) and prompts: “Is there a project I’ve been afraid to undertake—why?” (ee cummings as The Fool). Taken collectively, the prompts provide a roadmap for a rich self-reflective inventory and the chance to write new poems based on the themes of each poet’s work. I love to use the exercises in the poetry workshops I teach.

The famed filmmaker and esotericist, Alejandro Jodorowsky, has poured decades of profound spiritual and divinatory understanding into this text to create one of the most significant systems for using the cards as a divinatory tool. Based on the Tarot d’Marseilles - arguably the stylistic form that constitutes the tarot’s most fundamental iconography - the text includes a comprehensive training system that can be used to provide a foundation for professional divinatory work.