4.5 out of 5 Stars
This book is an excellent beginner’s guide on how to step up to the plate and start learning how to tackle tarot.
Cynova’s writing style is very straightforward, conversational, and personable. She tells the reader that she started writing this book as a series of blog posts, which is something that totally comes through in her tone. Her reasonable and down to earth perspective was a real strength for this book, in that it puts the reader at ease. If I was a new tarot reader looking for help learning the cards, this book would’ve calmed so much of my anxiety around tarot, and given me a great foundation to build off of. Hell, even as someone who has been reading for a few years now it still did a bit of that.
The initial chapters consist of tips on getting a deck, how to take care of it, basic spreads, intro exercises, grounding yourself, cleansing your deck, and finally how to give a reading for someone else. The bits I personally benefited from the most were Cynova’s discussions and teachings regarding reading for others. There was a good chunk of information in this book about the do’s and don’t of a professional reader. I don’t know if I’ll ever be in the position of reading Tarot full time for a living, but this information and perspective was quite helpful to me as I really enjoy reading for other people (sometimes strangers). Cynova has been reading for 20+ years and has some great anecdotes and personal examples to accompany the points she makes.
The largest chunk of the book (200 pages) consisted of her interpretation of each of the cards in a tarot deck. For a reader just starting out, this would have been incredibly helpful. As someone who has been reading for a little bit, I was slightly hesitant, but intrigued. Yet I found her interpretations to be insightful and the descriptions well thought out.
My one hitch being, Cynova strongly recommends starting out with a deck of the Rider Waite Smith tradition. When I was first starting out, my first deck was the classic Rider Waite Smith, but I found that I couldn’t connect to it. The decks I acquired later, followed the structure of the original deck, but had different art styles that spoke to me more. Each of the card outlines in this book follow the art style and symbolism of a Rider Waite Smith deck.
For me this is a matter of personal preference. I think for someone else just starting out, having someone point out all of the traditional symbolism as a way to help remember a card’s meaning would’ve been really helpful. However, for someone who has never connected to the art of that deck, it doesn’t do much for me.
Otherwise, after I glossed over those parts of the card descriptions, I felt like I was back in familiar territory.
Overall, I think this book is excellent. It’s one that I will eagerly shove into the hands of any beginner reader that comes to me with questions. Not only is it a great primer, but also a reference to keep coming back to and learning from.