non-Tarot books on 'Tarot'

I often find that the information I want for Tarot ideas
may be best found in non-Tarot books. Like numbers,
astrology, anything to do with the alphabet connection.

What are some of your best non-Tarot books 'on Tarot'?

I am ordering The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, which is about the sacred feminine and Mary Magdalene. I am told there is an extensive chapter on how the tarot contains secret symbolism to keep alive goddess worship. It is worth checking out. The author, Margaret Starbird, also wrote a separate book on the subject.

I haven't come across any non tarot books on the tarot. It would be interesting to see which ones people come up with.

Some ideas here:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25472

Phantom Goddess said:

I haven't come across any non tarot books on the tarot. It would be interesting to see which ones people come up with.

Click to expand...

For example, one of the most interesting is The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Elements, as we think of them in Tarot, are under elements, prescientific.
And the difference with books like this is that they have no message
the way so many spiritually oriented books do. But they can offer simple
inroads that can be developed along the lines of divinatory concepts.
Or like studying the daily lives of people during the middle ages,
not the roaring histories and religious furours, but carpentry and
farming, bread baking and weaving cloth. The people who were buying
and reading the cards, the ones who kept a deck around the house.
The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin has a lot about navigation.

Secret Language of Symbols

by David Fontana is interesting for his 'world culture' visual overview.

Interesting that I see a walk through the majors noted in the back, the 22 Trumps illustrated with a Marseilles deck. It's done well.

There's the small pocketbook size and the larger 1994 edition. I like the small pocketbook to carry with some tarots for an extra 'fresh' look at some of the card symbolism. For instance, my Ananda Tarot has a unicorn in one of the court montages. I found many of the elements of the tarot, but not all. For instance, they did not have roses and lilies that you would find in the RWS deck...but they would have suggested international meanings for dogs/cats/buildings.

http://www.edu-books.com/The_Secret...to_Symbols_and_Their_Meanings_0811804623.html

I have been thinking about this question for a while, and find it difficult to actually pin-point particular books which are amongst my 'favourites' which I, in indirect ways, relate to Tarot. Of course, the Bible is one. Not only because of the historical connections between the two, but also because so much of it is so image-rich that much of Tarot may be therein reflected, especially, for myself at least, Genesis, the synoptic Gospels and the Apocalypse.

But if I had to list my favourite, it would probably be a book I have mentioned before in these Forums, namely Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom. Therein numerous aspects come to mind. The development of various faculties, the inherent freedom one has, ethical considerations, and the role of the imaginative faculty in penetrating with understanding what is at hand.