Is this too much too fast?

FLizarraga said:

Actually, Pollack has a much newer book that is sort of a shorter, sweeter revision of 78 Degrees. It is called The New Tarot Handbook. Personally, I think it works much, much better for a first book, and you can always use 78 Degrees for cross-referencing meanings and stuff like that. Just my two cents.

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really agree with this, her tarot handbook sort of takes you through from the start.
78 degrees of wisdom is a really useful book and I am really glad I own it. When I bought it I noticed really mixed reviews about it and some people thought some of her ideas and trains of thought for some cards were overly complex and in some cases a little crazy. But also some of her writings gives me new insight!

I have never read the book from front to back, I have read chapters and looked up cards and it has given me new ideas but like Nemia says I think you should take things from all authors (and even ideas about cards on here) and write them down in a notebook.

It's really up to you to judge if you are taking on too much and too fast and also there comes to a point where you have to decide on your take of the cards and practice with them, books are just others opinions. I guess I am saying don't take others written views of the cards too seriously, they are just that! but they can be great for helping is form our own ideas about the cards. I do use it as a reference book quite a lot still today

I've found anything I want to learn goes like this
Speed read it the first time
Study it and second time
Read it the third time.

Amazing what can be pulled out of a book given time.

No one should ever worry about book choice, even when it is said to be too advanced. All depends on our own abilities. I haven't checked any English language book about Tarot except translation of "Tarot for Beginners. An Easy Guide to Understanding & Interpreting the Tarot" by P. Scott Hollander. It's a lovely book, and I'm always getting back to it but it's not enough. I'm reading two or three books in the same time - reading like three times about the same thing.

You made me curious about "78 Degrees of Wisdom" and going to check it.

I thought Tarot Wisdom was thought more to be the successor to 78D ...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3328154

Tarot Wisdom by Rachel Pollack was actually my first book on Tarot and found it very helpful and useful. Then I bought Tarot 101 by Kim Huggens. I never read Tarot 101 but the other day I just picked it up and started to really go through it. I can't really say yet how I feel about this one.

3ill.yazi said:

I thought Tarot Wisdom was thought more to be the successor to 78D ...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3328154

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You are right, it is. I bought both this and The New Tarot Handbook at the same time, and tend to mix them up.

However, my advice still stands. Pollack intended The New Tarot Handbook to be a manual, in the tradition of Eden Gray's wonderful little book The Tarot Revealed: compact and simplified, although never simple. It is perfect for starting. It was, in fact, my first... ;-)

Both Tarot Wisdom and 78D are much better for latter.

All that said, your first Tarot book is what it is. If as a beginner you read 78D and enjoyed it, then by all means, that's the book for you. There is a lot of good stuff in it --the whole concept of gate cards, for instance, which I haven't found in any other book, as far as I can remember.