Books like The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family — picked by fans

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.  

To understand the mystical philosophies that influenced the creators of the Tarot, I had to delve into many historic texts such as the Hermetica and Plato’s Republic and look for their links in Renaissance culture.

Godwin offers an intelligent overview of Western Mysticism, from Hermes Trismegistus to the Rosicrucians and Theosophists. He views this wisdom tradition as the perennial philosophy that runs through Western history like a golden thread.

I not only wanted to understand the symbolism and philosophy of the Tarot, but I have also always been curious about how people in the past before occultists discovered the Tarot, made use of the cards for divination.

Matthews has researched this more than any other author. She points out that rather than creating lists of meanings for the cards that needed to be memorized, they tended to relate directly to the imagery. This approach has influenced my use of the cards for divination.

Court de Gebelin and the comte de Mellet writing in Monde Primitif, in 1781, were the first modern authors to delve into the origins of the Tarot. Their belief that the Tarot originated in ancient Egypt became the spark that led to numerous unfounded occult ascensions. I feel that because of this, these two authors have been maligned and misunderstood.

They were actually conducting a serious investigation at a time when there was no one who could read Egyptian texts and very little known history to go on. The fact that until now their work was badly translated did not help. Vine, an expert on 18th-century French, came to the rescue and provided the first accurate translation of their essays. 

Today’s Tarot decks tend to be clones of one of the three main “models”: The Rider-Waite-Smith, the Marseille, and the Thoth Deck.

Most books on reading Tarot reference the former, the Rider-Waite-Smith. But if you’re going to get serious about reading, it’s useful to have an understanding of the Marseille deck.

When I first picked up a Marseille deck, however, I put it down pretty quickly. No symbols on the Minor Arcana? How was I supposed to read the cards without rote memorization (which I hate)?

But the Marseille style is based on the original Tarot decks from Renaissance Italy, and they’re more typically used in Europe. This deck is important. So when I found this book, despite my misgivings about ever understanding the deck, I decided to give it a read. 

What a revelation. There actually are symbols on the Minor Arcana—they’re just subtle. Using numerology and an explanation… show more.

This truly great, visionary re-conceptualisation of tarot imagery combines profound mystical insight with inspired artistry to render familiar tarot imagery through the transformative lens of alchemy. The Alchemical Tarot deck is one of the most outstandingly beautiful and inspiring decks in existence. Based on my own initiatory experience I can confirm that The Alchemical Tarot is an inspired, true, and faithful transmission of the esoteric current underpinning the notion of an esoteric tarot.

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. 

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.

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.