Talking with the Tarot
Conversations with Your 78 New Best Friends
Samantha Rose Hicks’s spiritual guide Talking with the Tarot takes a fresh approach to learning and interpreting the tarot.
The book traces the long, conflicted history of the tarot and its early association with marginalized populations, including Romani and Jewish groups. This, along with religious prohibitions against “fortune-telling,” shrouded the practice in fear. By the twentieth century, changing times and new perspectives elevated the tarot from a dubious, even sinful position to a means of accessing the subconscious.
Inviting and beginner friendly, the book introduces Hicks’s “Conversational Method” of card reading in which reversed (upside-down) cards and even the dreaded Death, Hanged Man, and Tower cards, are treated more like suggestions for deeper exploration, the consideration of new perspectives, or warnings not to ignore the red flags in a situation, rather than as portents of impending doom. The method eliminates the pressure to memorize the established symbolism and multilayered meanings and to “force false feelings of affinity” with each of the tarot deck’s seventy-eight cards. Instead, students are treated to a simple, personalized process in which engaging stories help to create an emotional bond with the cards. Encouraging thoughts about each card’s persona and meaning, as well as guidance for creating a comfortable space in which to explore the connections between a card and an individual’s life, run throughout. The process culminates in the suggestion to do a reading for a stranger in order to get comfortable with this method’s combination of knowledge and intuition.
The spiritual guide Talking with the Tarot makes learning to interpret the tarot accessible and enjoyable.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
