The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life

Product Information

She has a great hint for one of my own (and most likely many others') problems; that of identifying cards easily and remembering the interpretations. Almost to a fault, I process life through symbols, metaphor, and the patterns/connections they create – as smaller narratives nested within larger narratives, the micro and the macro mirroring each other.

It’s an engaging and accessible read that also challenges us to seek out the artists embodied in the cards and make our own associations. Until recently, I’d never understood that a tarot deck is, more or less, a way to interpret personal stories – a hero’s journey told in cycles and represented through universal archetypes. Author Jessa Crispin takes a similar attitude towards the cards – it’s loose enough so that I doubt you’ll be offended if you ascribe a more empirical and mystical meaning to them, but it’s also accessible to more skeptical souls like myself.The majority of the book is devoted to descriptions of the classic tarot cards; for each one, Crispin explores how its meanings are reflected in the creative struggles of artists, from the famous to the obscure, and provides a short but eclectic list of materials for further exploration, including books, films, paintings, photography, and music. I had a woman in the American South read my cards, but she used a deck of playing cards rather than the tarot. from addition, debt, or abuse from a romantic relationship is… not the best way to look at the situation. I picked this up based on Heidi The Hippie Librarian’s review, as well as on the strength of the title, ‘A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life.

The feminist outlook of the author was also evident, and it added a certain je ne sais quoi to the writing. Black Women’s Faith, Courage, and Moral Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement Have You Got Good Religion? Well, get over yourself and let Crispin enchant you with this beautiful and oftentimes surprising look into the intertwining of tarot and the creative process. Note to our Chicago readers: Jessa Crispin will join Irvine Welsh in conversation on stage at the Chicago Humanities Festival on March 8.The Magician, then, becomes a card about becoming a conduit for divine inspiration (and transmuting material created by others, as Shakespeare did, into something so powerful no one cares about the theft). The concepts are explained in artsy means but I think anyone with a creative mind will find the book useful. After reading a couple of different guidebooks in an effort to absorb card meanings, Crispin's book gave me the big-picture clarity I was looking for. When a star or a planet was positioned just so, certain things would happen in her life or in the world.

Greatest detail centers on unique spreads she created as ways of helping her identify a direction for her creative project. You can imagine Crispin sharing her stories with you personally and get drawn into her unique perspective and personality.The Creative Tarot gives the reader a history of the tarot and the Artists that created the card designs and the meaning behind each one. Imagine my relief to read a book about just the cards themselves and not an arcane “theory of everything. And sometimes, artists seem to have little to no knowledge of the cards, their meanings, or their history beyond just their titles and a vague idea of what someone once put into a card. Exactly who or what is doing the work here—whether fate is choosing the card, or your unconscious, or random chance—doesn’t matter as much as the act of seeing, sensing, and paying attention.