A bad witch's blog: Review: The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Spreads

Friday 8 April 2016

Review: The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Spreads

This is a tarot book I know I am going to use and use. It is called The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Spreads and is by Liz Dean, who is a professional tarot reader at Psychic Sisters in Selfridges, London and has created several tarot decks herself including one of my favourites, The Victorian Steampunk Tarot.

"Ultimate" means "the best of its kind". That is quite a claim, but I do think this book is a good contender for that description because it covers so much material in a way that is clearly explained and suitable for both beginners and experienced tarot readers. It contains lots of colour pictures illustrating the different spreads too.

The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Spreads starts with the basics such as choosing cards, setting up your space and cleansing your deck. From there it goes onto essential reading techniques and then into simple, well-known spreads such as the Celtic Cross. Those who've been using tarot for a while can probably skip those bits, but if you are learning then I don't think you will find a better how-to guide.

After that, chapters cover a huge range of spreads for various questions commonly asked including those about love, money, health, work, crises and spiritual development. From there Liz moves into more advanced techniques, such as using tarot to boost creativity and various ways to ascertain timings. The final two chapters show spreads inspired by today's teachers and those devised by famous occultists ad occult movements of the past, including the Golden Dawn's The Opening of the Key. Some of these later spreads I have to say are quite complicated, but Liz still explains them succinctly with clear diagrams.

Although The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Spreads is, as the title suggests, more about spreads than teaching traditional interpretations of individual cards, an appendix contains quick references to card meanings and symbolism.

Publisher Quorto says on its website:

The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Spreads helps you answer your life questions instantly, while showing you how to read your cards and create your own layouts. This ingenious guide contains spreads used hundreds of years ago by occult scholars such as Nostradamus and modern spreads inspired by today's visionaries. Expert tarot author Liz Dean has also created spreads based on the questions most often asked of professional tarot readers and teachers. The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Spreads gives you over 70 new and classic tarot card layouts for love, money, and success that can help you answer your questions accurately when reading for yourself and others.