The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life

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This book doesn’t hold your hand and jumps straight into sometimes academic reflections on art and history (this can also be seen as a pro! Not convinced of any actual 'magical' power in the cards, but interested in its use for semi-random decision-making, self-inquiry, and creativity. And if you’re really tapped in as a creative diviner, your Muses and spirit guides are probably related, if not one and the same. Crispin is the founder and editor at Bookslut and author of the well-received Dead Ladies Project— can make all the difference in how work is received.

And The Creative Tarot was a perfect first book on the topic for me to figure out how the cards can be useful for me. With five original tarot spreads and beautiful illustrations throughout, The Creative Tarot is an accessible, colorful guide that demystifies both the tarot and the creative process.The reader also learns how to do a reading, from setting up the cards, learning about the cards, choosing a deck, and then deciphering the meaning behind the cards. In my many years studying tarot, I’ve found that reading multiple sources with only generalized tarot meanings can be confusing and overwhelming.

So if you find yourself stuck without inspiration, it’s worth picking up a tarot deck for two reasons. There’s bibliomancy, where you open a book to a random page and line, and through that your future is revealed. The content moves quickly so you can read through the book on a Sunday afternoon or study it intently, looking up every work of art mentioned to get a better grasp of what’s being said. But for daily card draws, for creativity questions, things of that nature, it’s pretty easy to read for yourself.The final chapters discuss reading the cards, various ‘spreads’–how to lay the cards out–and how to interpret them. When a star or a planet was positioned just so, certain things would happen in her life or in the world.

This idea is the center of this book so each and every card is compared to storytellers – artists, actors, authors, and so on. That's the feeling of the Tower: the realization that all is lost, and you will have to start over from the beginning. One of the consolations after David Bowie left us was hearing all of these great stories about how immensely curious he was.On paper, this is awesome, and I ended up googling who a lot of these people were and learning quite a bit. com, unless noted otherwise, is free to use elsewhere under a Creative Commons "share and share alike" license, as long as the following credit line is included: "Content from Mark McElroy via TarotTools. He had some interesting thoughts about the tarot card reading qabalists, many of whom wrote books like the ones I've mentioned above. The beauty of tarot as a creative tool is that it’s rich with visual symbols and textual meanings, and it also invites you to listen to your intuition. I found myself reflecting on the real world stories used as examples even without attempting a reading.

Al desentrañar las implicaciones de cada arquetipo, de cada símbolo, de cada lectura general, nos da una perspectiva muy útil para cualquier persona que le interese el arte de contar historias: nos enseña cómo identificar las hebras emocionales más importantes de una narración y cómo hilvanarlas entre sí. Like a lot of teenagers who wore too much black and had an extensive incense collection, I used to fool around with a tarot deck. Written for novices and seasoned readers alike, The Creative Tarotis a unique guidebook that reimagines tarot cards and the ways they can boost the creative process. You will experience the cards differently than I will, because they are based on your own experiences and your own philosophy and values. I hoped for something more from a book about tarot with such a title, but it had the same format as others: a brief history of tarot, a description of each card with a little list of references, and some spread ideas.

Note to our Chicago readers: Jessa Crispin will join Irvine Welsh in conversation on stage at the Chicago Humanities Festival on March 8.