Today’s Tarot Reading suggestion is a book by Paul Huson called Mystical Origins of the Tarot: From Ancient Roots to Modern Usage. It was published back in 2004 by Destiny Books/Inner Traditions/Bear.
5 Points About This Book:
- History: As the title suggests, this book is focused on the history of Tarot… or more specifically, the history of the use of Tarot for divination and the meanings assigned to each card.
- Major Arcana: After revealing his theory on the provenance of the whole series, Huson goes through each of the Major Arcana card by card, attempting to identify the origins of each image … Spoiler Alert: Huson believes that Tarot’s Major Arcana began as a representation of the ancient Mystery, Miracle, and Morality plays. He makes a compelling case.
- Minor Arcana: For the Minors, Huson goes suit by suit, and card by card comparing the interpretations of historical Tarot heavyweights: Ettellia, Mathers, the Golden Dawn, and Waite.
- Spreads: Mystical Origins includes a whole chapter on historical Tarot spreads. Some of them are straight forward, some very, very complicated, but I found all of them quite interesting. Huson includes a sample reading as well.
- Tarot Reading Advice: Though this book isn’t so much a Tarot learning guide as it is an historical dissertation (with lots of illustrations), I think it could be quite helpful to new and seasoned readers alike. There’s some excellent advice on doing readings (though, obviously, everyone has their own style), and of course, as already described, there are detailed descriptions of each card, as well as some Tarot spreads to try … if a new or practiced reader is interested in learning the context from which Tarot evolved, as well as how it works, and general instructions on how to use it, this is a great book.
Overall, I very much enjoyed reading Mystical Origins of the Tarot. Don’t know why it took so long for me to get to it, but I’m glad I finally did.