Product Description

Learning the Tarot is a complete course on how to use the tarot cards for personal guidance. The 19 lessons in the course cover the basics and then move gradually into more advanced concepts. Exercises and sample responses for each lesson help you learn and practice. For simplicity, only one easy layout is used throughout the course - the Celtic Cross Spread.

Learning the Tarot focuses in detail on the actual process of discovering meaning in the cards. Lessons cover topics such as how to consider one card by itself, how to look for card pairs, and how to create the "story" of a reading.

A convenient reference section contains two pages of information for each card including a picture from the popular Waite deck, a description, keywords, action phrases and suggestions for cards with similar and opposite meanings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4663 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From the Author
When I first created my Learning the Tarot website in 1995, I never dreamed how much interest in the tarot I would find. People from all over the world began writing to tell me about their experiences with the course and their adventures with the cards. This response was music to my ears! I knew from my own experience that the tarot is a wonderful tool for personal guidance and inner exploration. Now I was finding out that others felt the same way too.

The tarot is a set of 78 intriguing picture cards that tend to trigger personal insights, enhance intuition and deepen awareness. My goal in Learning the Tarot is to give you the basics you need to begin working with the tarot on your own. I try to make this inner process understandable by breaking it up into a series of steps that are simple while still doing justice to the depth and beauty of the cards. I concentrate on the everyday, showing how the tarot makes real, practical sense in the modern world.

The tarot is a living system that adapts creatively to each user. Rather than rules, I offer guidelines. While reading my book, I want you to feel that you have a teacher sitting next to you who is introducing you to this special tool, but also encouraging you to go on to discover your own unique approach to the cards.

About the Author
Joan Bunning received her B.A. in Social Psychology from Cornell University and has worked as a writer, editor and computer programmer. Since 1995, her "Learning the Tarot" website has helped thousands of people worldwide discover the personal value of the tarot. She lives in Virginia with her husband, two sons and two dogs.

Customer Reviews

Learning the tarot
Learning the tarot is a very simple yet informative for the beginner as the name suggests. What is extra about this book is exercises for the interpretation, which I found it to be fairly entertaining. The meaning of the card is well discuss but there is no reversal for this book and thus becomes a drawback of the handbook. Overall, this is a book for a beginner readers who wanted to gain an insight through the simple explanation.

A valuable tool
This is one of the best beginners' guides for Tarot that I have come across. Nowhere else will you find a more comprehensive yet simple approach to putting together the Celtic Cross. Ms. Bunning gives key words for each position, and she looks in detail at the pairs within the Celtic Cross. Her detailed descriptions of both the positions and position pairs is a great way to learn the individual position meanings and how they relate to each other.

Ms. Bunning uses a lesson format, with lessons that slowly build on each other as you learn. It's a very non-pressured approach. The lessons are fairly short, yet comprehensive, and you can work at your own pace. The exercises are helpful as well, and encourage intuitive interpretation rather than rote memorization. For the individual cards, she provides key words that sum up the card, as well as a more detailed look at each card, but as always she encourages you to find meanings that are unique to you.

Another one of the most valuable lessons I took away from this book was "how" to pose a question. She goes way beyond the simple "yes or no" answer, and explains how to use the Tarot as a tool for deeper understanding. The way she encourages you to ask a question opens up the answers for a greater scope of understanding, giving you the opportunity for a broader look at your answer.

My only criticism would be that her organization did not always make sense to me. For example, I feel the Fool's Journey in Appendix A should be read before delving into the interpretations for the Major Arcana, as it gives a good feel for the Majors as a whole. Also, the pairs within the Celtic Cross in Lesson 16 should not be put under a microscope until the Celtic Cross itself is looked at, which is in the back of the book in Section V. However, there's not much to criticize here. These sections, while, I feel, are out of order, are each quite comprehensive.

I have found the Universal Waite deck she uses for illustrations to be an excellent learning and reading deck. The engaging pictures drawn by Pamela Colman Smith encourage creative intuition and profound insight. I would highly recommend buying this deck to use with this book. The backs are a completely reversible indigo and gold star field, so if you decide to move on to reversed cards, this deck will grow with you.

After you have been working with your deck for a while, go back and reread the first half of the book, the fool's journey, and the detailed instructions for the Celtic Cross and its pairs. You will find you get even more insight from it the second time around. I would highly recommend this book as one of the best for beginners.

learning the tarot
The book was very helpful. It explained the cards and their meaning in a very simple and helpful format. I liked the different exercises I had to do, and it helped me gain greater knowledge of the cards and their meaning.