The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life

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Her essay collection, The Dead Ladies Project, was hands-down one of the best books I read last year, so I spoke with Crispin about The Creative Tarot, her relationship with Chicago, and what’s she’s writing next. Personally, I would rather have a tarot book that explains choosing the cards, spreads, and using ones intuition from the images on the card than a memorize everything thing. Every Tarot book author would do well to learn from The Creative Tarot — perhaps less from the book’s contents than from the strategy that guided its release.

VERDICT Crispin's Jungian-like message that the deck is a gateway for personal insight rather than divination opens up the tarot to a broader audience. I thought this description of The Moon was brilliant: “The Moon rules our dreams, and that’s a good way to think about this card.And immensely empathetic and compassionate toward other artists who suffered what he himself suffered. The Creative Tarot is also organized up by card number/rank, rather than suit, which for me added another layer of understanding in noticing patterns in my readings. Written for novices and seasoned readers alike, The Creative Tarot is a unique guidebook that reimagines tarot cards and the ways they can boost the creative process. Many believe that your dreams can tell you your future, if you sleep with certain items under your pillow or drink or eat the right things before bed.

It took me about eight years before I felt comfortable reading for other people for pay, but you might feel like you’ve mastered the cards in a year or two. It is no something learned over night and requires you to take time to learn the card and ways to read them. A hip, accessible, and practical guide for artists and creative people looking to tarot for guidance and inspiration in the tradition of The Secret Language of Birthdays and Steal Like an Artist. And at one point, I read in an old tarot book that the Three of Wands indicated that a family member was going to die and leave me a chateau in his or her will. The Minor Arcana comes in four suits that correspond with the four elements: Cups (water), Wands (fire), Swords (air), and Coins or Pentacles (earth).He had some interesting thoughts about the tarot card reading qabalists, many of whom wrote books like the ones I've mentioned above. She has a nice overview of the structure of the deck: the suits, the major and minor arcana, and their general meanings. Following a brief history of Tarot (that quotes, thank goodness, Robert Place over Eden Grey) and a glimpse of the author’s own Tarot journey, you’ll find an artist-focused card commentary for every card in the RWS deck, plus a small selection of spreads. A story I could move through; a story in which I could see how all of the other characters and situations were operating.