Autumn Equinox was yesterday as the seasonal wheel turns towards winter — the perfect time to read books!
To learn more about tarot, study the classics. Seek tarot archetypes hidden in the pages. Could an aspect of THE MAGICIAN lurk in Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray? Or is it THE DEVIL?
THE TOWER seems like the card for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But if you read it, you will see how it’s a classic of Romanticism more suited to THE LOVERS than THE TOWER.
THE HANGED MAN is one tarot card that most people have trouble understanding. The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe explains the many levels of THE HANGED MAN.
To understand the subtle nuances of the minor arcana Water suit of CUPS, read The Diaries Of Anais Nin.
Not one for novels or diaries? Then enjoy short stories! Spend some time with collections of short stories, such as Best Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant. Each of de Maupassant’s stories can relate to a tarot card. Try to match each story with a card.
The modern Italian author Italo Calvino did just that in The Castle of Crossed Destinies. He illustrated the book with two Medieval European tarot decks that create short stories.
To understand the QUEEN OF SWORDS, read Pushkin’s Queen of Spades, perhaps the best short story in world literature, in Alexander Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction. (Stanford U Press translation.)
It’s obvious which tarot archetype lives in Tolstoy’s short story The Three Hermits.
Stick with the classics. Find the hidden archetypes as your read. You learn about life, and learn how to better read your tarot cards.
Good luck!
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