Book Discussion: Discovering Your Self Through the Tarot by Rose Gwain

Hello everyone,

I was wondering if anyone else has read this book, Discovering Your Self Through the Tarot by Rose Gwain.

It combines a few really interesting things that sets up some neat premises. I have some questions to some of these ideas, though.

Question 1 - easiest

Chapter 13 deals with the sephiroth of the Tree of Life and the Levels of Consciousness in connection with the chakra. After a short introduction, there is a Chakra Spread introduced. While most of the spreads in this book make a lot of sense, this one does not.

I took some photos of the actual spread and uploaded them to Imgur here: http://imgur.com/a/eE0lu

I don't understand the steps. Already the first step is too confusing for me, and it's making me frustrated. It's not in a logical presentation at all, and the whole thing is tripping me up. Perhaps that's the idea though... if you don't understand this book, then you're clearly not "advanced enough" yet.

Question 2 - you'll have to have read the book to get this one

Chapter 15 introduces the new suit of the Spirit, something that was sort of brought up previously when we went through the Court Cards (but only about 1 small paragraph per each of the 4 types).

But this chapter just starts talking about this new suit of Spirits as though it was it's own entity, with actual cards (ace-10 and 4 courts), and after a few examples the chapter ends. What in the world is this author going on about?

There's also short descriptions in the following chapters that describe the minor arcana per card, which includes a 'Spirit suit' there as well, with descriptions. But nothing is explained.

Are there tarot decks with an extra suit? Is this when all 4 of one suit appear in a spread? Do I have to make my own cards to add on to my current decks?


Up until this point I was quite enamored with the book. But the fact that it gets quite unclear towards the end makes me feel like this is lazy writing. That, or I'm more of an idiot than I thought.

Any help you guys could give me I would be very welcome towards receiving. Thank you very much!

EDIT: after reading the pages a few more times, and now with trying it out, I think I understand the Chakra spread. But I'm still very much in the dark about the Spirit Suit and how that factors into the main tarot deck.

There are several tarot decks that have a fifth suite to correspond to Spirit. One is the Deva Tarot. I believe the Fifth Tarot has this as well and there may be others.

I haven't read the book but your question made me curious enough to look at t on Amazon. It seems to be written from a Jungian point of view. Jungian theory talks about four different functions of human kind. We all have each function but most people have one or two dominant functions. For example some people are very in their heads and try to analyze everything (thinking function), other people relate to the world through sensation and are very concrete (sensation function). It a possible that the author chose to focus on decks with four suits plus the Majors so that each function could be related to a suit. Does that sound like it fits what you've read in the book?