The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards

(Review by RNT's wife, C. A. Taylor) I firstly purchased the Jodorowsky tarot deck which quickly made it plain to me that I needed to brush up on my numerology, symbols and so forth in order to understand this particular deck, so I was compelled to buy the corresponding book for the price of two cheesecakes. A month into my study of the book, I can say that it has impacted my perceptions beyond what words can describe. This inability to describe "that which is beyond us" is precisely why we are given symbols, colors, all elements in their respective places (etc.) on the cards - and I feel that I moved quickly from "novice" to "humble minor expert" without straining my brain one iota. This book would be sufficient for understanding and employing all decks of cards. Jodorowsky approaches the wisdom-seeker as a patient teacher who does not strive to sound omniscient but, rather, presents his insights and information logically and with a respectful eye-to-eye style of delivery. Upon reading The Way of Tarot, the mind opens, receptive as the beak of a birdling, to numbers, orientation, suits, degrees, order, color; the infinite possibilities of card combinations; mind exercises and layouts devoid of that "hocus-pocus" feel. Contrary to the singular negative review, I find this book to be abounding with logic and coherence even in its esoteric obscurities. It seems to make perfect sense once the various pieces are put together. Jodorowsky seems well aware that the more angles from which we study a subject, the greater our understanding: He addresses the Major Arcana and how the cards correspond to one another in various ways. He works the reader up the suits of the Minor Arcana and across by level, which thoroughly ingrains the essence, value and placement of each card. As if that were not enough, he (firstly) divides the individual card into sections: receptive versus active; earth/matter versus air/spirit; and the interplay and perpetual cycle of the suits. He trains the reader to apply common-sense in scrutinizing details such as the direction of leaves and the openness of flowers, and to expand the impressions through the understanding of colors, the direction of gazing eyes, etc.. Everything within the Jodorowsky tarot, right down to the dots, is deliberate and worth study for as broad an interpretation as possible and, in turn, for an invitation to the subconscious mind to awaken and unleash its divining potential. But one of the most valuable pleasant surprises within this book, in my opinion, is its lesson of the practical application of the Tarot in determining one's placement in life for guidance on one's personal path, and it even hints toward how one can analyze the dynamics of relations with others according to where The Fool lands in their lives and their development within their representative suit (actually, one can analyze anything by way of the Tarot). The possibilities are boundless, and now, as each and every card presents its universal wisdom, my mind opens, confidently, expansive as a rainbow, to define a plethora of possibilities within each moment, and to divine that vital truth to resonate deeply within me. I can only assume that, except by plagiarism, there will not, for a long time, be a more worthy, resourceful and helpful book on understanding the Tarot in general than that which was simply yet eloquently presented as Jodorowsky's The Way of Tarot. (I am very grateful to the team of individuals who put this book together. If I were to not yet own this book while knowing what I do of it, I would buy it - right now. It's worth a cheesecake's weight in gold!)

I might have given this book four stars to acknowledge a few significant faults, but the authors are so generous in their conception of the tarot’s use—and are trying so clearly to overcome those faults, or at least let us see that these are faults to overcome—that I can’t help but feel fondly about the result. So five stars. I’ll start with the faults. The authors recognize the potential for sexism in the tarot’s reliance on male-female pairs in the major arcana and the potential harm in assumed norms of gender and sexual orientation. In response, they occasionally show how an interpretation of the cards can work with these “norms” as imagery while avoiding them as constraints on the imagination; and they show in this way how readers of the tarot who don’t fit those “norms” can make the deck useful nonetheless. But these overcoming of the deck’s imaginative limitations is far from thorough. It’s as if the book had already been written when the problem was noticed and the edit that followed was quick and incomplete. Then, too, their thinking did not go far enough in this regard: there are also assumed norms of family in the text, and—most annoyingly—race. Since color imagery is a big part of the authors’ thinking about the cards it’s a real problem that they rely on “flesh-colored” so insistently, not seeing how many readers this excludes and what a homogenous universe it proposes us to be living in. Another fault, noted in many reviews, is inconsistency. Learning how to read two or several cards in relation to each other is the very essence of “tarotology,” and one naturally looks for rules to guide that labor, since not every possible conjunction can be covered in the book’s examples; and one also looks for implicit rules in the examples we do have. So the lack of rules and lack of consistency in the examples (for instance, in what it means for face cards to look in a certain direction, or for numerical sequences to be inverted) is frustrating. But there aren’t any rules set forth, or very few, because the authors believe strongly that interpretation is personal, must involve a reader’s recognition of associations others wouldn’t make, and that the question or issue at stake in a reading will alter the cards’ meanings. Given this conception I can accept the inconsistency, though I do wish there had been greater acknowledgment of it and of its basis from the authors, with more clarity about their overall approach to reading the cards. Interpretation for these authors is more art than science, and, in fact, more like dreaming than art making: it bends to the needs of the reader, like a dream to the dreamer; doesn’t impose its discipline, as art does, bending the artist to their material. If tarotology is an art, then the material isn't the cards but the person. And this is what I love about the book. It transforms the tarot from occult tool for fortune-telling to instrument of self-study (or, for those who read cards for others, counseling—or, as the authors prefer to say, therapy). The book is all about paying attention: to the cards first of all, as images and system and imagination of the universe; and then oneself—one’s feelings, needs, hopes, plans, memories, anxieties, obsessions, blockages, and so on. Doing so transforms the tarot into a mirror; it shows us what is most intimate to us and yet otherwise unseeable, the face we show to everyone and cannot see ourselves without some aid.

After many years of dabbling in the Tarot, always with a Coleman-Waite, or Coleman-Waite inspired, deck, I have recently come to the Tarot de Marseilles. I arrived here through a series of compelling dreams, after a number of years of not using the cards very much at all. It now feels like I have come home. Like so many people in the English-speaking world I had never thought much of the Tarot de Marseille. It felt clumsy and obscure, and it was impossible to find anything decent written about it in English. I couldn't feel more differently now. Jodorowsky's amazing book is based on the idea that the 78 cards are a truly interconnected system. Many writers subscribe to that idea, but no one that I have seen unpacks the system of symbols, colors, numbers etc in a way that is as effective as this. Jodorowsky's system is simple, accessible, and profound. Above all it is utterly conducive to learning to use the Tarot de Marseilles in a powerful and intuitive way. I say simple, even though the book is over 500 pages. The simplicity comes in part because Jodorowsky is a natural teacher, approaching different subjects several times from different perspectives to really help the reader understand the way the cards work as a system. One reviewer accused him of having a retro, sexist perspective. If it's true it's s easy enough to ignore. Jodorowsky even takes the trouble to qualify some of the polarized sexist implications in his explanation of the cards. And anyway aren't we dealing with a system that goes back several centuries to a time of extreme gender polarity? And aren't the cards rooted in several polarities - heaven/earth, man/woman, active/receptive etc. Another reviewer accused him of randomly making things up. Unfortunately that's the nature of the Tarot. There is nothing written on the subject that isn't someone's conjecture and fantasy. Some of the earliest writers being the worst culprits (Eliphas Levy, Papus etc.) The beauty of the Tarot is that it weathers everything that has been written about it so well and still remains a peerless tool to refine your intuitive resources, if you are willing to do the work involved. This book is the best book on the Tarot de Marseilles, and hence the best resource on the Tarot, that I have come across (and yes I am indeed biased). If you want the Camoin-Jodorowsky cards that this book references you will have to order them from Europe or Argentina. But it's worth it. If you are interested in the Tarot de Marseilles, the Camoin cards, like Jodorowsky's book, are a must-have!

If you are remotely interested in going beyond the "basics" in Tarot, this book will be invaluable to you. I have to admit, my approach to Tarot is definitely more academic at this point than spiritual- I use the cards for insight and meditation, but I honestly enjoy *studying* different decks, systems, and approaches to Tarot more than anything else. It's like each deck is its own little art museum and library, in a way, and there so much to unravel and find if you take the time. I just love getting a new deck and taking as long as it takes to go through each image on each card and untangle all the knots. This book is *so* good for that. If you are looking for something just a tiny bit more informative than the Little White Book that comes with decks, this would not be a good book for you. But if you're familiar with the meanings of all the cards, and want to dig deeper, and are open to a slightly unusual approach to Tarot, this book is a gold mine. It took me a while to get familiar enough with tarot to be able to appreciate this book- it was actually the Mary El, Jonasa Jaus, and Margarete Petersen decks and my desire to truly understand them that made me realize how valuable this book is. Even though none of those decks are traditionally Marseilles, this book has been essential in helping me really grasp those approaches to Tarot. A few notes on content: this book is geared towards the old-school Marseilles decks, and the information about the imagery and symbolism is strictly Marseilles. BUT, the general information about the cards can really work with any system. There is tons of information on the majors, and just a paragraph on each minor. But I find even the shortest blurbs on the minor cards really informative and insightful. Sorry for my unfocused and poorly written review, but I just wanted to take the opportunity to share my experience with this book. If any of the content appeals to you, go ahead and add it to your library.

This book is a work of genius. I know, such superlatives get thrown around casually like a cheap confetti these days, delivering little, if any, meaningingful significance, but I reiterate quite sincerely: this book is a work of genius. Jodorowsky details his decades long back-engineering of the structure of the Tarot, yielding many thoughtful observations regarding the multi-layered self-referentiality built into the system of the cards by its original designers. Even if one were uninterested in the Tarot, per se, the example of Jodorowsky's methodology as employed in his quest to deeply comprehend its design would prove useful to anyone seeking to decipher the structure and purpose of an unfamiliar or arcane object. If, however, one is interested in the Tarot, and specifically the Tarot de Marseille, they will most assuredly find themselves happy to have purchased this book. And if they can manage to do so, I would suggest that they also purchase the author's painstaking restoration of the Marseille deck which is also available here on amazon. It is a very useful adjunct to the study of this book.

I've been searching for this book... A book with rich detail explaining it like a formal class on the subject, a deep dive. This isn't a quick reference, this is the backbone of Tarot Textbooks.

This book is a kind of esoteric interpretation of cards. That's mean Jodorowsky tried to correspond the structure of tarot itself with the structure of human psychosynthesis. This is not something new in bibliography. Oswald Wirth does the same thing too. Although I prefer to use Wirth's method of esoteric system or of kabbalistic correspontans with Hebrew letters (Levi's correspontans) and paths, this book is just a different point of view of this method. I like this book because 1. It uses tarot as an independent system (to be honest it's not real but at least he made a good try) 2. It uses TdM without needed of creating a new "esoteric" deck (ok to be honest again, jodorowaky used to imagine dices, sixth fingers or toes and especially eggs in scenary of cards)

I'm still reading this book, just so you know... I'm a professional Tarot Card Reader and I follow and love the Rider-Waite-Smith system. However, of late I’ve become curious about the Thoth and the Marseilles systems of Tarot -- about how the symbolism came about and was interpreted. This book is a great resource for learning this and more! Honestly, I was blown away and surprised beyond my expectation at the depth of information that this book provides. While I was expecting a surface level explanation, I was overjoyed (and even a little overwhelmed) by the wisdom and knowledge contained in this tome. And it is quite a big, fat, juicy tome that has opened my eyes to the beauty of the Marseilles cards -- a completely unexpected result! Of course, a lot of further study still awaits me -- but I totally look forward to it! Meanwhile, if you are, like me, looking to delve into the Marseilles Tarot world, then I will also suggest that you pick up a copy of the Tarot de Marseille by Jodorowsky to go along with it. The book references this deck all the time, and having it on hand is of course useful, but it'll also help you get familiar with the deck so you can do readings with it later on without further issues.