Four Tarot Divination Books That Are Worth The Money

Introduction

It was well known in the tarot community that most books are…not of the highest quality. Apart from the fact that anyone can write a book these days, AI is now regularly misused to write them without necessary human input or oversight to avoid plagiarism and ensure fact-checking. For these reasons, people may lament that there are no tarot books worth buying. But whilst this is all a serious issue in the community, it is also true that there are master tarot diviners who write genuinely useful books.

In order of recommendation, I list four such works. Each of them do have issues and things to understand about where the author is coming from but no person or book is ever perfect.

Four Tarot Divination Book Recommnedations

Book 1: Josephine McCarthy’s Tarot Skills for the 21st Century

Known now for founding Quareia, Josephine McCarthy is at this point an assured master of the Western Esoteric tradition. But importantly for us, she is (by her own account) a natural psychic who grew up hearing and seeing the hidden beings in every rock and flower around. She has been divining with tarot cards since she was a young teenager. In my opinion, McCarthy is one of the better divinatory tarot masters alive today.

As far as her tarot book, Tarot Skills For The 21st Century (2020), it is important to contextualize this book. It is written essentially for students of Quareia, McCarthy’s esoteric school. This in mind, we can put aside McCarthy’s insistence on things pertaining to her students alone such as the card meanings which she gives or ways to safely handle the deck (remember: different things under different conditions) and take what applies, or may be applied, to us.

Things that stood out in this book were;

The spreads. I found at least a few of McCarthy’s layouts to be excellent to the point that I have incorporated modified versions of them into my practice. For example, I have modified her success spread to my liking and made a few small but still conceptually significant modifcations to her directional layout (a spread which is most obviously used for finding lost objects, although it can be used for other things).

The ethics section: McCarthy gives good ethical guidelines in her usual no-nonsense manner, including the sensible advice to not make thing up if you are stuck. I especially like that she pointed this out as I have seen other tarot teachers show their students how to wiggle their way out of “going blank” in a reading, usually by babbling on about the imagery on the cards. This is certainly harmless if you’re an entertainment reader. But if you are a divinatory reader then it is nothing less than charlatanry. When you look at the cards you should know what to say. If you don’t, then there is no reading for you to give. Does this mean that commercial reading is now unlikely to make you money? Yes. And does the universe give a shit that you’re trying to make money off of reading the occult weather? Of course not, it’s the fucking universe.

The baby booties example. To illustrate the tarot cards as representing every thing you can think of in just 78 emblems, McCarthy uses the example of baby booties, or small shoes for newborns. She masterfully shows how a simple term like ‘baby booties’ can mean so many different things in different contexts. I like this example because it shows a creative use of the cards without the over-reliance on meanings that still plagues some dogmatists today (cough cough, Deborah Lipp, cough cough).

Fate vs Free will. I particularly like McCarthy’s sophisticated understanding of how fate (and sometimes even definite predictions) exist in spite of free will. It is very common in the outer tarot divination community to see people say things like “tarot does not predict the future”. Taken literally, no-one can disagree with this sensible statement; it is humans who predict the future, not the cards! But many mean it to push the dogma that you ought not to predict the future with tarot because it is disempowering against our ability to make choices that change it. Such people should try telling weather forecasters that they need to stop giving evacuation warnings because because it’s “disempowering” to the residents! Or maybe you wish to tell them that weather machines are like tarot cards because do not predict the future?

Spiritual Context: McCarthy has learnt from her lengthy tarot divination experience that she should understand not just the outcomes of a situation but why it happened and any spiritual lesson or insight that might be gained from looking at it. This knowledge allows the querent to avoid making the same mistake in future and progress on their spiritual journey.

For example, merely telling people that something will or will not happen does not do this, so instead of some over-simplfiied technique for a yes/no question, McCarthy’s spread uses more than 5 cards to answer it, allowing yes/no questions to be read with wisdom. This is as opposed to techniques from people like Eden Grey, who pull cards for a literal “yes” or “no” answer. I much prefer McCarthy’s approach.

Book 2: Paul Fenton-Smith’s Advanced Tarot

Like McCarthy, Paul Fenton-Smith is a psychic. Except he reads more for corporate clients (or claims to). If McCarthy has read for corporate clients then she hasn’t humble-bragged about it for marketing purposes. Fenton-Smith is also a bit of a performer and I wouldn’t know enough about him to determine his legitimacy.

However, I like his book, Advanced Tarot for it’s frequent use of example readings. For aspiring professionals, it’s like having a personal mentor to guide you. In particular, Fenton-Smith demonstrates how to deal in an empathetic but professionally detached manner with all manner of personal issues that people might face and gives a very useful insight into what it’s like to work with members of the public for your living. Those who have not worked with the public before will find this information useful in the sense of ‘forewarned is forearmed’.

Book 3: Dusty White’s Advanced Tarot Secrets

Dusty White is a tarot teacher and black magician. Like McCarthy, he is knowledgeable in the Western Esoteric tradition.

I recommend his second tarot book, Advanced Tarot Secrets (the sections on spreads, anyway), with the proviso that you peruse it with particular caution and care to avoid being sucked in by ideas like manifestating whatever you like with tarot cards or half-truths, designed with guile to guide you through his marketing funnel. Statements like “get 3-5 more information out of spreads” are exaggerations at best. Also, some concepts which he considered “advanced”, like the idea of “spreads within spreads” are simply his way of teaching how to read card combinations (what most tarot teachers would call connecting and linking cards) and should not be taken as some sort of original invention or divine revelation oracle’d by Dusty White himself.

With warnings out of the way, Mr White does share some good information in the book. Some things that I like are;

His emphasis on preparation. Techniques which he gives, such as the “pre-spread mental walkthrough”, are essentially about defining your reading conditions. However, I like that he mentioned it as it shows that he really is an advanced reader. I haven’t heard other readers talk about this.

His emphasis on service and professionalism. Whilst I find some of his techniques morally questionable (such as looking at things from the subjective perspective of a boss to get a raise), I like his insistence upon non-judgement. I especially like his example of someone cheating on their partner. Obviously, this is morally wrong. But as tarot diviners we must read without letting our moral codes get in the way of the interpretation. That being said,

His emphasis on curiosity. Apart from resulting in greater accuracy, curiosity is how to become a truly masterful practitioner of any craft, not just tarot divination. It also makes learning fun. It is clear that Mr White has a genuine curiosity for the art of tarot and it is his curiosity, not his 35+ years of professional reading experience, that makes me consider him a genuinely masterful reader.

After all, I have met plenty of readers who have decades of experience but do not know actually what they are talking about. These readers invariably rest on their experience as if it automatically makes them divinatory tarot Masters. Be warned! Only the constantly curious practitioner has put their time to good use.

What I did not like:

Black magic and lies: White gives instructions for manifesting with tarot cards for selfish purposes. I usually say “mundane things for mundane means” and am always reminding neophytes to use common sense (which isn’t so common) when looking for any magical result. Too many occultists I know are (apparently) functional, but nevertheless insane. Seriously. I’m no spiritual teacher but when I eventually become one, logic will be mandatory learning.

Onto lies. As I said earlier, White exaggerates and claims unoriginal concepts as his own by painting them in neologisms. I’m not a fan of such things. They call it communication but I call it that icky feeling like when your friend recommends Herbalife because they don’t know what a pyramid scheme is. Of course, many in Herbalife believe in the dream but those who work for it and learn about pyramid schemes eventually come to realize that they have been promoting something that will never actually work for people. They realize that they have been useful idiots for evil.

Book 4: Deborah Lipp’s Tarot Card Interactions

This recent book is a good overview of various ways in which symbols and esoteric correspondences may be used to add depth and insight into a divinatory tarot reading.

Things I like:

Mathematical breakdown: Lipp does some calculations to show what arrangements we would ordinarily expect. I like this largely for the originality of the idea. I do think that it could have been expanded upon and the logic of Lipp’s conclusions tested against her own beliefs about how tarot works etc.

Other simple breakdowns of complex topics: For example, Lipp’s version of the celtic cross. I think it was explained well.

Things I didn’t like:

Factual errors: Lipp oversimplifies several things and fails to mention when she is doing this, thus misleading her readers. For example, she stuck to the original celtic cross spread basically perfectly except for swapping positions 7 and 8, with her position 8 being a psychologized form of the original position. This baffles me. Also, why swap these positions but keep everything else the same? Lipp also claimed incorrectly that the Rider Waite Smith deck was the first to use illustrated pips. This is wrong, as Katz has pointed out in Tarosophy Squared.

Faulty logic: Lipp’s logical and reasoning skills are either not very good or were not demonstrated in the book. Her conclusions about things are usually, among other things; speculative, contradictory and based on straw-man arguments. It’s a shame. A big example of this is Lipp saying that those who charge become better readers. This is only true if you use money as a motivation to take your craft seriously. Anyone interested in mastery for it’s own sake - in any skill - knows that you can reach true proficiency without gaining money from something. I find this idea particularly vexing because what Lipp basically does when discussing money is suggest that you should charge but in such a subtle way that, on first reading, you might take her to not care either way. I find bullshit writing like this dishonest and offensive (it’s offensive because it’s condescending, she literally said “be an amateur forever if you like”).

Conclusion

That’s it except for one last thing. If you can only afford one book from the list, get McCarthy’s Tarot Skills for the 21st Century.