The Tarot: Path to Self Development, Micheline Stuart.

I just picked up this book today at the used bookstore.

It's by Micheline Stuart and was originally published by Shambala in 1977.

What I'm finding so fascinating with it is that the author starts The Fool's Journey with 0 The Fool (yes, we can agree that's where it generally starts).

But the next card to read on the "ladder of development" is XXI The World and goes UP to I The Magician, "the seeker transformed."

Using the Marseilles deck to illustrate the Majors, the author describes what each major symbolizes from a spiritual/personal development perspective, no card meanings referred to at all. This is another point that attracted me to the content of this book.

I'm finding the reverse chronological reading of the majors really fascinating and it's actually informing a lot of the cards I was previously struggling with.

Anybody else a fan of this book?

I think this is a lovely book. It's a collection of little meditations that can be picked up whenever you need some inspiration.

This book was originally published in France, and a second edition came out in 1998. I tried finding some biographical information on Micheline Stuart through Google.fr but came up with nothing.

Going backwards through the major arcana isn't unheard of in France, but it's very unusual. Some of the 18th century French occultists like Antoine Court de Gebelin lined the Hebrew alphabet up with the major arcana in reverse order, assigning Aleph to the World instead of the Magician as most people do. This may be Stuart's source for starting with the World as the lowest form of consciousness and the Magician as the highest level.

Sherryl

I suppose if you go with what Rachel Pollack says about the Tree of Life, going up the tree to reach the heights, as opposed to the heights coming down the tree to manifest as day-to-day reality, then going backwards through the Trumps makes sense.

We'd be bored silly without all these different approaches, wouldn't we?

there are a number of decks that use the reverse system for the minors too, 10 being the beginning and working up to the Ace. Can't name names because my memory is shot

Sherryl said:

This book was originally published in France, and a second edition came out in 1998. I tried finding some biographical information on Micheline Stuart through Google.fr but came up with nothing.

Click to expand...

Where did you get the information that it was originally published in France? No mention of that is made on the copyright page of the 1977 Shambhala edition or in the introduction. In fact, I remember hearing something about how it came to be published, but my memory is so faulty that I don't want to spread any false rumors.

It's a lovely book; I'm definitely a fan. A couple of other writers went through the cards in this order. It's an interesting exercise and gives a really fresh look if you think of the World card as a card of birth - and entering into this universe.

It shows up as Le tarot: chemin du développement personnel and published in France in 1998.

Oddly it doesn't come up on the Shambhala website... only under Random House.

Stuart, Micheline. The Tarot: Path to Self Development. Shambhala, Boulder, 1977. Reprinted in France in 1998 with a foreword by Helene Palmer.

1998 seems to have been the first French one.

There are a couple of books in which Micheline Stuart is listed as one of several translators from the French. At least one of these was published by Shambhala. I believe I heard that she was a personal friend of one of the founders of the bookstore and publishing house in Berkeley.

I just did a search of various French, English and Italian booksellers trying to figure out why I thought the book was originally published in French. I have no idea why I thought that. Here's a list of editions I found:

1977 - Shambala
1978 - German translation published in Frankfurt
1996 - Shambala with an introduction by Helen Palmer
1998 - First French translation
2005 - Second French edition

Sherryl

Interesting book, equally interesting provenance!