Tsundoku Psychohazard reviewed The Creative Tarot by Jessa Crispin
Review of 'The creative tarot' on Goodreads
4 stars
I came to this expecting something that would show how to create compelling narratives from spreads (sort of like is done with the StoryForge deck), and this is not that kind of book (and instead focuses on variations of more traditional readings geared toward long-term creative projects). It presents spreads and card interpretations that push tarot closer to Oblique Strategies rather than closer to StoryForge. (This is OK: tarot is a lot more symbolically potent than Oblique Strategies and the spreads this book presents are good ones.)
Another thing this book did that kind of blew my mind was the organization. Rather than organizing first by suits and then by cards, all minor arcana were organized by number and then by suit, illuminating relationships between (say) the five of cups and the five of wands which I had never considered before. (Perhaps this isn't unique to this book, but I …
I came to this expecting something that would show how to create compelling narratives from spreads (sort of like is done with the StoryForge deck), and this is not that kind of book (and instead focuses on variations of more traditional readings geared toward long-term creative projects). It presents spreads and card interpretations that push tarot closer to Oblique Strategies rather than closer to StoryForge. (This is OK: tarot is a lot more symbolically potent than Oblique Strategies and the spreads this book presents are good ones.)
Another thing this book did that kind of blew my mind was the organization. Rather than organizing first by suits and then by cards, all minor arcana were organized by number and then by suit, illuminating relationships between (say) the five of cups and the five of wands which I had never considered before. (Perhaps this isn't unique to this book, but I haven't read a tarot book that did this before.)
This is a breezy volume: it was almost 300 pages but I finished it in a single sitting without fatigue. I strongly recommend it for people with a casual interest in tarot, even if they aren't professional creatives, because it cuts through the bullshit pretty effectively.
