Modern Tarot: Connecting with Your Higher Self through the Wisdom of the Cards

If you use the "look inside" tool on Amazon, you can read a few pages from this book and get a feel for what a wonderful writer Michelle Tea is. When I read what she has written, it feels like I am having a conversation with a very cool and worldly friend.What I love:Each card is described in multiple ways. It can be a symbol of events, of a person, of your emotional life, and so on - Michelle covers it all. The thing I love the most is how she gives a little anecdote from her life about every card. She tells a story when she was too eagerly and passionately into her progressive thinking and was a complete jerk to other people, playing fast and loose with what it meant to be a feminist - she said this is when she embodied the knight of swords card. Each story she tells puts the card into a context that I can remember and understand.She also makes it clear that the cards are meant to enhance your intuition and be a tool for reflection - while she does think magically, she doesn't impose magical thinking on the reader if that is not their intent.What I don't love:This book only covers the meaning of upright cards. I am a novice in tarot and I don't know if having upright and reverse cards is always necessary or if it complicates things. I would have liked her to describe the reversed meanings of the cards as well, however I can use this book as a guide in my daily practice and intuit my own meanings.Would I recommend this to a friend interested in tarot? Oh yeah! I think this is a great tool and really enjoy the author!

Wise ass interpretation of the tarot with an emphasis on the wise part. Light on speculative metaphysics and heavy and hard on practical things we tend to do that short circuit our sure fire attempts at happiness. A great guide for your own referral and a wonderful read on its own. I can't think of any other books on the Tarot I'd day that about.

I'm so glad I bought this book. As I age it's harder to memorize, and absorbing the meanings of each tarot card has been difficult. This is fun and well written, with a touch of memoir to give examples and a touch of witchiness, with playful spells at the end of each card's description to "either bring the energy of that card into your life or get rid of it."I'll quote an early description that convinced me "Ah, I can remember these!" Michelle Tea writes, "The swords are brainy, mental, quick, tactless, painful and are ruled by the element Air. They're like that brilliant professor you had in grad school, the very one you hoped to be critiqued by, who stepped into your studio wearing an impeccable, avant-garde outfit only he could carry off and proceeded to rip your work to shreds. The worst part - he was right."The descriptions can be used with any deck, but she uses the illustrations on the Rider-Waite, which most other decks start from. There are no lay-outs, just the meaning of each card and encouragement to come up with your own story as you study what comes together, intuition often giving surprisingly true results. Tea often assumes you might choose one card from the deck for work on yourself.

This book has, to me, some of the best card descriptions out there. The author just really personalizes the cards so that you begin to see them come alive in your life and the people you know. She offers vignettes from her own life to illustrate situations that evoke each of the cards. I buy Tarot books a lot and this is, frankly, the first one that has not been something of a disappointment in recent months. So many books regurgitate the same information with only slight variation, but this book is really a cut above. The author has really poured a lot of love and effort into this book. You will feel like you really "know" the cards as you read this book.My only gripe is that the author bases her text on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, but the illustrations in the text are not from that deck. They were created for this book, which makes no sense to me since therefore the author's descriptions of the cards don't always fit the card images in this book. For example, she talks about the 12 stars in the Empress' crown-- but the Empress pictured here has no such crown. It's confusing, or would be for a beginner. I suggest having a RWS deck beside you as you go through this book so that, in those incidences where the card description doesn't match what you see in the book, you can see what she's talking about. Also, you'll need a deck anyway (the pictures in the book aren't available as a deck), so might as well get the RWS.

This is my first book about Tarot and I’m so glad I picked it! It describes each card in a way that makes sense and therefore is easier to remember. She includes examples for each card which helps illustrate how they apply to real life. I’m sure this is a book I will keep coming back to as I learn tarot. Also, as a lesbian I appreciate the LGBTQ references!

This book really helped me in simplifying my card reading. Very sturdy, love the book smell from the pages. It has a clear and concise content list. While I would like to see a bit more color or art to the book, it's still very well done. Book is a bit thick.

I absolutely adore this book. Offering inclusive, contemporary explorations of all 78 cards in the tarot along with recipes, rituals, and ways to connect with each archetype, Modern Tarot is an insightful and thought-provoking read. Michelle's interpretations are modern and intuitive, offering easy-to-understand explanations for beginners alongside more in-depth ideas for experienced practitioners. I devoured this book in one sitting and refer back to it regularly, and it's quickly become one of my favorite tarot books. Highly recommend!Meg // @3am.tarot

Greatly written and has urged me to learn tarot myself and not just to stick to the rules.

Ich finde dieses Buch mal einen erfrischenden Ausblick und einen anderen Schwerpunkt als Rachel Pollack (deren Bücher ich sehr schätze). Ein bisschen Magie spielt auch eine Rolle da nach jeder kartenbeschreibung eine Aufforderung folgt die Person oder Karte "zu sein".Die Autorin streut auch viele eigene Erfahrungen mit den Kräften der entsprechenden Karte. Also ich finde das Buch richtig gut.

There's a ton of witchy goodness in here. I'm not a witch, but I do appreciate a good ritual, and this book is stuffed full of 'em! You could do one or two a week, and make the goodness last a full year! (At my pace of one or two a month, I have years of fun ahead of me. :)The aspect I enjoy most is how relatable she makes each card. When I read the description and (often) the anecdote that accompanies each card, I very often felt like I *got* the energy and themes of the card in a way I'd never managed before ... particularly those slippery court cards!A great book. It will be one I return to again and again, for years, I am quite sure!

Normalmente no me cuesta trabajo acabar libros, pero con este si está dificil, me gusta escuchar la expericnia de la autora con el tarot/las cartas pero siento que talvez lo indicado para mí es encontrar su significado por experiencia y no por medio de un libro. Muy probablemente lo acabe de todos modos pero me voy a tardar seguro.

I really appreciate the non conventional way that the author shares the meanings of the tarot cards, it’s very pleasant for once not to read only keywords but to read it as you would tell a story to a friend. Thanks to the author for making it quiet simple and efficient.