Issue 88     •     7318 Subscribers

Feature

Can Tarot Tell Fortunes?

How Can Randomized Cards Tell Futures? If they could, why aren't all tarot practitioners millionaires? If they can't, why are so many of us devotees who practice daily? How exactly can Tarot cards possibly work? First, a distinction. Tarot divination is NOT fortune-telling. Learn more about the three theories of "predicting the future with tarot cards" here.

Card Profile

Meet The Fool

The Fool more than any other card contains a vast vocabulary of "meanings" that also vary from deck to deck. In most traditions, the major arcana in total is the "Fool's journey" and every other of the 21 "trumps" relate directly to the Fool. This is why he is often assigned a zero or no number at all. (Illustration: Carol Herzer's magnificent hand-painted Fool.) Read the entire feature, complete with:

• Archetypes • Astrology • Numerology • Tree of Life Attribution • I Ching Attribution • Element • Divinatory Interpretations • A Unique Description of this Special Card 

Personality

Pamela Colman Smith

We may love her today as the mother of the modern-day tarot, and she was well-loved in some ways by her close circle of friends — among them Bram Stoker (author of Dracula) and John Butler Yeats — yet she passed away in relative obscurity and poverty in 1951, her few belongings sold off to pay for her anonymous grave. Read the entire feature here, complete with a poem by Pamela.

Book Review

Thoth Tarot

Lon Milo DuQuette again takes the complex and mystical and gives access to all seekers in his Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot. Both the intermediate "beginner" and the advanced Thoth Tarot enthusiast will benefit from this precise, easy-to-use yet informative tool, arguably the best book yet written on the Thoth Tarot.

Review Rating: The Magician.

Read the full review and what our rating means here. 

Deck Review

Waite Smith

Unfairly, in this reviewer's opinion, Pamela Colman Smith (Pixie) was variously described as simple, cartoony or unemotional. In fact, her artwork was none of these things. Even her style was metaphorical. Deceptively simple, yet she cleverly created the "actors against a backdrop" style so often copied since. Her skills as a stage designer clearly influenced her here. You can almost see the edge of the stage, where the main character is standing and the "drop down" backdrop. It's a clever, lovely, and original style that makes this deck utterly charming.

Review Rating: Ace of Wands.

Read the full review and what are rating means here.