AUTHOR’S NOTE: I appreciate well-written tarot books of all kinds. They keep me sharp and constantly thinking about the state of the diviner’s art. But I’m a seasoned card-reader with five decades of tarot prediction under my belt, and I’ve sifted through reams of BS in the published literature since 1972 so I’m not likely to be misled. I sympathize with the beginner who can’t tell which of the myriad writers to believe. (Despite the modern disdain for the written word in favor of online presentations, there are still a few thoughtful students who prefer to read rather than watch or listen.)

The main problem is one of conflicting information. In trying to put a personal stamp on their work, amateur tarot authors can gin up some fanciful notions that depart radically from the fundamentals of the genre. Because there is no thread of interpretive continuity running through their material, it can resemble a metaphysical free-for-all. (For perspective, look up “New Tarot.”) I’ve bought tarot books that I flat-out cannot read because they are little more than the writer’s personal opinion that immediately demonstrates either a lack of familiarity with their subject or a flagrant disregard for its historical roots. Tarot writing – like tarot-card reading – is obviously viewed as “so simple a caveman could do it,” so we now have a growing number of primitive attempts that substantiate this belief. However, like genetic engineering, just because they can do something doesn’t mean they should. Someone hand these Neanderthals a Magic 8 Ball and tell them to go play fortune-teller!

For the life of me, I can’t fathom how anyone with a love of competent writing (tarot or otherwise) can get more than a few pages into the “New-Age-y” wreck that is Gerd Ziegler’s Thoth-based Mirror of the Soul, or recommend it to neophyte Thothies. Far better to tell novices to puzzle their way through Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth, or even Lon Milo DuQuette’s “Thoth Lite” volume, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot; someday they will thank you. Then there is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surrealistic Tarot de Marseille book, The Way of Tarot, an odd one to be sure although it has enough interesting ideas to make it intermittently valuable (especially if one wades through it twice and weeds out the sillier strangeness), and it does have the steadying hand of co-author Marianne Costa at the helm. Many people like the Tarot de Marseille writing of Camelia Elias, but I found her first book uninspiring (I understand she’s done better); for TdM guidance I’ll take The Open Reading by Yoav Ben-Dov, The Tarot by Joseph Maxwell, or The Unknown Tarot by Caitlin Matthews over Elias any day.

Although I probably shouldn’t talk because I’ve launched five e-books of my own, the self-publishing industry has made it entirely too easy to bring inferior writing to market. I’ve purchased several decent electronic tarot tomes for $5 or $6 but I was familiar with the authors and had a good idea what I was getting. On the other hand, I’ve also spent $15-$20 on Kindle books by lesser-known writers that were total garbage from a practical perspective. I can tolerate spending $5-to-$7 on a throwaway (don’t tell anyone but that’s what most of mine cost), since I doubt the authors’ expectations were high in the first place, but the trick for the buyer is separating the gold from the dross. It’s not so much about the money as it is about the wasted time and effort; I have better things to do than research every new entry in the tarot canon, looking for worthwhile contributions.

In my own case, all of the commercially-published work first appeared for free in this blog; the idea in assembling it into books was to gather six years’ worth of related topics into five compilations. (See the sidebar for information.) There is something for everyone except the total novice: a primer for the esoteric beginner; one for the seasoned occultist; one for the tarot-spread enthusiast; one for the Tarot de Marseille practitioner; and one full of curmudgeonly opinion and attitude for the grumpy tarot maverick like yours-truly. These were offered on Lulu almost two years ago, and I have produced nearly 500 new essays since that time, with no plans on going through that publishing effort again. From what I’ve seen of the traffic in pdf downloads on this blog, some of my readers are doing their own culling and compiling, to which I say “Have at it!”