Review: Jessica Hundley (editor and writer), Johannes Fiebig (writer), Marcella Kroll (writer), Thunderwing (designer). Tarot. Library of Esoterica Series. Cologne: Taschen 2020. ISBN: 9783836579872

by Scott Gosnell

Let’s be honest for a moment and admit the real reason why most of us became interested in magic wasn’t the desire for power or a cult of our own, but the weird art: alchemical diagrams, emblem books, ritual circles and seals, recreations of visionary journeys, surreal descriptions of monsters and spirits. The tarot decks, in their many incarnations, embody that weird art aesthetic marvelously.

The tarot’s imagery has been painted, drawn, and photographed by one of the largest groups of artists of any purely artistic subject over the past few hundred years. It’s possible for you to have zero or one tarot decks in your collection, but if you collect more than one, then you probably have a lot. 

The tarot deck is a set of illustrations for a book that has no written story. The story is improvised freshly every time between the Querent and Reader and the cards laid out. The little white books that often accompany the tarot, like the books of tarot commentary, are also derived from the deck in light of previous readings. However, the written or extemporized “meanings” of the cards, once written down, can function as an artist’s “brief” for new interpretations of the cards: new decks are created with the old interpretations in mind. 

Tarot, the beautiful first volume in Taschen’s Library of Esoterica series, sets out to make a world-class collection with an unlimited budget and reach, and it succeeds in this goal. It presents several examples from each of the earliest decks, followed by modern decks grouped by card. This arrangement underlines the interaction among cards and the artists’ briefs for the cards and the artists’ interpretation of the briefs as they read them. The real value of the book to many Paralibrum readers will be this side-by-side interplay of meaning and appearance: Who is the Devil in the trump, for example? Is he all about the dark side of sexuality or unbridled passion? Is he a loveable rogue or a dark stranger or just a pimp? Is the Tower about the downfall of pride, the judgment of God, a clearing of the board, a natural disaster, or a release from prison? What is the image of wholeness chosen to represent the World? 

Tarot is a pop esoterica book in the best sense, the spiritual heir of the groovy Aquarian Age and New Age magic encyclopedias of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. If you like your esoterica to be really, well, esoteric, then this book is probably not one that will thrill you. The essays are good, clearly written, accurate and lively summaries of the history and practice of tarot reading, accessible enough for beginners and meaty enough to function as review articles on the subject for the more advanced reader. If you collect books about interpreting the tarot in various innovative ways; or by Freudian, Marxist, Lacanian, Jungian methods; or according to your closed lineage of restored traditional craft or personal gnosis, then this probably isn’t going to be the book that revolutionizes how you think of Tarot. 

That’s OK. There’s space for both on the bookshelf.