Best Book for Beginner?

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Don't forget to read Rachel Pollacks "78 degrees of wisdom"! It is THE classic textbook, a plain and simple fusion of the psychological approach and more esoteric cabbalistic thoughts. It doesnt only give you plausible meanings of the cards, more importantly, it shows you how to work the tarot, how to twist a story out of the cards.

And it prepares you for the heavier textbooks like Paul Foster Case, The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, Aleister Crowley, "Book of Thoth" (difficult but coupled with DuQuettes "Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot" it grows to one of the most important books on the subject ever) and Robert Wang, "The Qabalistic Tarot". All necessary in the long run.

In the meantime, if you want a really, really easy read, I can recommed Juliet Sharman Burkes short book Beginner's Guide to Tarot (comes with an ok deck by the way). I was impressed by the way she manages to keep it simple (no cabbala or gematria here) without becoming superficial.

I just got in my post 78 degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack, and Tarot for Your Self by Mary Greer. I started to read both of them (Just introductions and first chapter) and I know this is going to be amazing journey Beatiful books.

madhavendra said:

I just got in my post 78 degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack, and Tarot for Your Self by Mary Greer. I started to read both of them (Just introductions and first chapter) and I know this is going to be amazing journey Beatiful books.

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You picked some of the best books out there! I also like Spiritual Tarot and read it while using the Morgan Greer, earlier this year. 78 Degrees of Wisdom is amazing and really makes you examine the detail of each card and understand various symbolism. Enjoy it!

You can try Instant Tarot written by Zerner and Farber (I think) if you want something quick and easy. You don't need to memorize your cards and it's instant!

However, I found myself to be too dependent on it afterwards. I wasn't able to read the cards as if I'm reading a story like many other tarot card readers could.

I just picked up The Tarot Bible by Sarah Bartlett yesterday after flipping through almost every Tarot book they had at the Barnes and Nobles.

I hate to admit it, but I like for my books to have pictures and color and a little bit of everything, and this book has just that! It's a hefty medium sized square shaped book with 400 pages, chock full of color illustrations and pictures, and it doesn't seem boring to read.

What I like most about it is that it covers almost everything from A to Z, but most of all, the spreads also give you an example reading to help you interpret cards in that position for yourself. I found this very helpful.

Can anyone suggest other books also similar to this?

I do love the huge and varied spreads in the Tarot Bible. I was a little less pleased with the interpertation part. It split them apart into past, present and future meanings, I don't like when books do that.

A great book on spreads with many to choose from that are listed according to how many cards are in the spread (1,2,5 card spreads etc all they to like 36 card spreads) is "Power Tarot: More Than 100 Spreads That Give Specific Answers to Your Most Important Questions" by Trish Macgregor and Phyllis Vega.

It's a great resource!