Favorite books for beginners?

Hello! For any of the other newbies out there, which books do you like best for getting started? And for those of you with experience, any suggestions? I want to purchase a couple of good books, but there are so many out there. Thanks!

hello Mira,
first question would be, what is the deck you use/plan to use ?

I'm a big fan of Thoth and my best book for it would be "understanding aleister crowley's thoth tarot" by Lon Milo Duquette
that's really a nice book, i can't keep my eyes out of it ;-)

for general tarot i suggest a web sites that i found here last week (sorry can't remember who suggest it)
http://tarotstudies.50webs.com
verry very nice one.

Have fun
Omeada

Thank you Omeada! The deck I will be using is the Goddess Tarot. I had posted another topic about that deck, and the book that accompanies it. However, the book wasn't available at the shop where I bought my deck. I plan on ordering the book, but I was curious as to what other good books were out there.

If you're working with something as specific as the Goddess, then definitely the book for that would be the place to start. If it's the one I'm thinking of, the scenes on the minors go with various stories out of classical mythology, so don't necessarily follow the Golden Dawn (Waite, Crowley, and various derivatives) order.

Thank you, that makes perfect sense!

Hi Mira,

I also posted on your other thread about this deck, but here is my take on it (for what it's worth!!). I would definitely try to obtain the book that goes with the Goddess Tarot as the majors are renamed, although still follow the traditional majors. The minors, although they follow the life of Isis, Freyja etc are still based very closely on RWS imagery.

In my opinion I would still recommend books such as "Learning The Tarot" by Joan Bunning, "Tarot for Yourself" by Mary K Greer and "The Complete Tarot Reader" by Teresa Michelsen. I think the accompanying Goddess Tarot book, plus one of these can only enhance your learning experience.

Good luck and have fun with it!

Aha, thank you niteskye, I was looking for some books and authors, I will look around for those that you recommended! And I do think I'll pick up the Goddess Handbook as well.

I'm finding Learning the Tarot by Joan Bunning very helpful. You can read it on the web at www.learntarot.com (I bought it in paper as well, since after being able to find that it was a good book for me on the web, I thought it would be nice to have and I want to encourage people to put their books on the web like that.)

'The Complete Tarot Reader' by Teresa Michelsen: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Ta...ef=sr_1_1/203-6222586-6606341?ie=UTF8&s=books

It's all in there except there are no meanings given for the cards.... It tells you HOW to read but doesn't spoon feed you key words or card meanings for you to learn parrot fashion.

Excellent book.

Another excellent book is 'Tarot Tells the Tale' by James Ricklef: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss...ords=tarot+tells+the+tale&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go
There are really good sections on numerology, the elements and suits in this book as well as 22 three card readings for historical or fictional characters.
This book shows the Tarot at work.

Many beginners are directed to Joan Bunning's book and online course (I was myself) and it was the worst thing possible for me to do.
Whilst I admire Joan Bunning for writing a book and also for making it freely available online... it took me the longest time to forget those keywords when I saw a card.
I think it's much more useful to explain to someone how to get their own meanings than to just give them your own.
I would have liked to have seen the method that Joan Bunning used to get her keywords rather than just being given them to learn... Did she use numerology, elements, the image on the card or something else?

Keywords can be a wonderful 'jumping off point' but they can also be very limiting.

niteskye said:

"Tarot for Yourself" by Mary K Greer

Click to expand...

I second this one, verry good !!!