by magikmax » Nov 21st, '07, 10:26
I'd like to add my review to the mix, having received Black Hart's Tarot Made Easy yesterday:
Review: I'm coming to this completely cold, I have no experience of Tarot, or any sort of 'fortune telling'. I've never had a reading, or watched any of those programmes on Living TV, the only experience I have, is listening to the odd (and by that, I usually mean 'Odd') radio 'psychic' phone in on my local radio station.
The Tarot is something I've always been curious about, I'm open to things like Tarot readings, Rune Casting and the likes, but being completely honest, this was sparked by seeing a film a long time ago called Doctor Terror's House of Horrors. The film itself is a bit of harmless Hammer Horror cheese, and jolly good fun at that. Perhaps a bizzar introduction into all of this, but there you go. After reading all your comments on this, I'd thought I'd take the plunge, and see what all the fuss was about.
At this point in time, I have returned to magic, but working full time, I'm slightly limited in which days I can take bookings (really just weekends), and I thought that perhaps Tarot readings would be an interesting way that I could make a few extra bob on a normal evening. I've no illusions of doing this after a few weeks or anything, but it gives me something to work towards.
Anyway, on to Mr Hart's Tarot Made Easy. You receive a small, but very well produced booklet, spiral bound, with some colour pictures of the cards. You also get a lovely set of Mareilles Tarot cards, which are very nicely illustrated, and printed on high quality card stock. Being a complete beginner, I'm unsure of the difference between the different types of Tarot cards, the Mareilles and the Rider-Waite, if it's just a case that this one is easier to learn, or more traditional, the book doesn't explain the difference, so it would be interesting to know what the board's feeelings are on this.
The guide is laid out in a very straight forward way, there's not a large (or esoteric) amount of information, the basic meaning of the cards are laid out, and it is left to you to elaborate on this, based on your feelings on the cards, the reading, and the other cards in the reading.
In all, the guide tells you what you need to know to get going, and doesn't fill your head with esoteric rubbish that may cloud your interpretation of the cards, I like this approach, however, there's a couple of things that I feel are missing:
1. There's only a few spreads shown
2. Other people have mentioned something about different meanings if the cards are reversed? This isn't covered.
3. As a complete beginner in this fascinating allied art, I have NO experience of any sort of reading, other than so called psychic radio readings. Mr Hart gives you a few tips on setting the atmosphere, ie, a darkened room with candles, but doesn't really give you a suggested 'script' as it were, as to what to say, although he does tell you what to avoid saying, so you don't make any Tarot 'etiquette' gaffs.
Now, based on the above, I'm not entirely sure if I would be comfortable giving a reading unless I knew about the reversed cards thing, and also, how on earth I would stretch a reading of 4 or 5 cards out to 20 minutes to half an hour? Would a reader typically have the sitter deal more cards? Also, if this is the case, do the original cards get shuffled back into the Tarot, or left aside, and what if the next set of cards give a completely different answer?
Maybe these things will become clear in time, and with further study, but if anyone can help me, or point out that I've maybe missed something in Keith's booklet, please let me know, also, suggested further reading would be helpful. As Keith himself says, there are hundreds of books on the market, and a lot of them completely different!
Anyway, as a beginner's guide, this is excellent, I'm not sure how much someone who already knows a lot about the Tarot would gain from it, but as a beginner, it's an excellent place to start, I would highly recommend it. 9/10 (misses out on the 10 purely because it's raised a few questions, which is a good thing, but maybe something Keith might like to cover in future additions).
Finally, Black Artifact's service was excellent, and I'll definitely be using them again, and recommend them to anyone.