"Ultimate" RWS book by Fiebig and Burger

JenWt43

This does seem interesting, I might have to add it to my wishlist also.
 

Le Fanu

I hope you are not disappointed. I looked around in the book at amazon.com. Found something I didn't know. The crown of stars on the Empress means taking the stars from heaven and bringing them to fruition on the earth (or something like that). That is the task of the Empress. Hmmm..............
Yes, that kind of thing. I see it is in stock on amazon, and quite cheap. I'm tempted to order...
 

Tibor

I ordered it and received it last week. I like it a lot and I will be using it a lot with my German Jubilee ed deck (that has the gold edges) ;). This book really is packed with lot of useful information and a lot of minute details are highlighted and revealed. It really will give you a fieldwork with the RWS deck. A great buy!
 

Laura Borealis

Is this book based on contemporary conventional tarot wisdom, or is it in fact based on Arthur Edward Waite's intentions for the symbols? Because there's probably quite a difference there.

This is what I'm curious about. From the sneak peek on Amazon, it seems like contemporary conventional tarot wisdom, which isn't a bad thing, but it doesn't seem to be the "interpret AE Waite for me" book that my lazy side would love to have. :p

The insistence on the number 10 is a little weird. Take "the 10 most important symbols" of the Page of Swords, for instance. These are:

The figure's position or pose
Sky/clouds
A leg to stand on/the free leg
The sword is greater than the image
Red boots
Violet clothing
Yellow-green landscape
Flock of birds
Blue mountains
The light blue sky

The insistence on 10 suggests there are going to be things left out (on cards with more than 10 important things) and possibly cards where they have to stretch to get ten, which is less than useful. Maybe they should have left the Top Ten Lists to Letterman. But it still looks like a useful book and probably fantastic for a close RWS study.
 

mejenks

Thanks for the tip! I looked online and will add it to my collection. This seems like it will be a good "quick reference" book, but since it lacks reversal keywords, I still need another resource handy. boo
 

Richard

I think I'll just struggle along without that book. It might be handy for instant gratification, but I would just as soon research the symbols myself. (Getting sidetracked by something like the meaning of pomeganates can be fun and enlightening.) By the way, after poking around in the book at Amazon, I didn't get the impression that the interpretations are necessarily what Waite had in mind, not that it matters particularly.
 

jackdaw*

Funny. I stumbled across a Google Books excerpt today when I was looking for something specific on a particular card for the 78 Weeks study (which I'm doing on the Rider Waite). It looks really interesting, and useful at least in parts. For the most fiddly details, like the knotholes in the post on which the pentacles are hung in the Eight of Pentacles. If I were in a position to buy more Tarot books right now, it'd be one of the first three I'd pick up.

But LRichard is right. Sometimes the trips down the garden path when you're searching for something specific are much more fun than being led by the hand right to it :)
 

Richard

Another thing I looked at in the book was the section on the Five of Pentacles. It seemed very biased in favor of a positive spin on the card, such as the fable about the blind man and the lame man forming an alliance, in which they compensated for each other's disability. Also, the people in the image are passing a nice, warm church, where they can find help and comfort. Here are some others. Let God share your need. Find a solution for your problem (symbolized by the crutches).

I suppose such interpretations are good for fortune tellers to have in their bag of possible meanings, but it strikes me as one-sided and forced, not very objective, too Pollyanna-ish, bordering on yucky.
 

SixDegrees

I suppose such interpretations are good for fortune tellers to have in their bag of possible meanings, but it strikes me as one-sided and forced, not very objective, too Pollyanna-ish, bordering on yucky.

I bought the book not as a definitive guide to the RWS, but as a supplement...mostly because of these positive (or at least less damning) spins. See also the discussion of the Three of Swords. I believe that every card has both positive and negative meanings, and I appreciate Fiebig & Burger's attempts to balance out some of the classic negativity of Waite and others. I agree with you that I wouldn't use these positive meanings exclusively, but they are very helpful when traditionally negative cards pop up as "Advice" (certainly much more useful than telling someone something like "tough through it" or "it can only get better from here").
 

Zephyros

I looked through the previews (on Amazon and Google) and I honestly wasn't impressed at all. Despite what the title says, this book doesn't seem to shed any new light on the deck, being rather just another subjective porridge of barely explained ideas. No reasons are given for why this symbol or color means what they say it does, and the bite-size "ten lists" are a very strange choice to use for a Tarot book.

Looking at it felt like I was Punked; it proclaims itself as one thing, and delivers not something else, but rather the same old gray horse mash. The same kind of "intuitive" interpretations practically all RWS books are stuffed with, but with a far more annoying title, that could, and probably did, actually mislead people.

Sorry, it aroused some powerful feelings in me })