For the Love of Guidebooks: 4 Tarot Enthusiasts Share Their Faves
Hi everyone! I’m super excited to welcome you to this special collaborative post. 🤗💖
Most tarot decks come with a guidebook, offering explanations, interpretations, spreads, and more. While many tarot teachers suggest setting these guidebooks aside as we learn to intuit our own interpretations, I’ve come to realize that these often-overlooked treasures can be a goldmine of wisdom. Not only have I learned so much about tarot itself, but these guidebooks have also deepened my understanding of spiritual traditions, mythology, history, philosophy, psychology, and so much more. So, today, a few friends and I have come together to celebrate the tarot guidebook and share that goodness with you.
I'm thrilled and deeply honored to be joined on this post by these three tarot-writing wonders:
- : A literature and mythology professor, Annie combines intellect and intuition in her tarot practice. In addition to her vibrant Instagram and blog community, Annie writes the hugely popular Substack newsletter: Office Hours with The Tarot Professor where we can all gather to “dig deep, have heart-to-heart conversations, and even drop a few F-bombs.”
- : Gabriel Robartes has been reading tarot for over 40 years, bringing decades of experience to his tarot practice and teachings. He shares his insights through his Substack newsletter, Tarot And The Rest, where he explores the deeper meanings of tarot and its applications in daily life. Gabriel’s work blends personal anecdotes with tarot wisdom, offering readers an always-entertaining and reflective approach to the cards.
- : Writer, tarot reader, and mental health advocate, Miriam brings a unique depth and authenticity to her Substack: Creative Tarot Insights. In her own delightfully witty words, she describes herself as a “tarot reader and writer who has no patience for any woo-woo fake positivity. I talk about raw spirituality without the sugar-coating and am always up for a heavy-duty conversation.” In addition to her Substack, Miriam is also the creator of The Penguin Tarot and author of the book: Overcoming Echoism with Tarot: Using Tarot for Boundary Setting and Stopping People-Pleasing.
Annie Aboulian on The Shining Tribe Tarot Guidebook:
First, an admission: I’ve been guilty of overlooking many a tarot deck guidebook in my day. But I was positively giddy when I saw the 272-page tome that comes with the posthumously published edition of Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe Tarot.
While the Shining Tribe Tarot draws on the Rider-Waite-Smith system, which would normally mean I give the guidebook a quick browse at best, it’s also quite a departure. The names of suits, court cards, and some of the Majors are changed, for starters. The Hierophant becomes Tradition (yes!). Judgement becomes Awakening (brilliant!). And while cards like Temperance and the Star look fairly traditional, other cards lean way into Stone Age pictographs and other tribal art and ancient symbols, making the guidebook essential.
But the true magic of this guidebook isn’t in its help illuminating unfamiliar illustrations. It’s the window it provides into the mind of a brilliant tarot foremother, the one who brought us Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom and A Walk Through the Forest of Souls. A hallmark of Pollack’s tarot writing has always been the way she treats the deck as a system, a whole. For example, Pollack’s entry for what’s possibly my favorite card in the deck - the Six of Rivers - not only discusses its relation to the Five that comes before it, but also offers an unpredictable pairing with the Nine of Trees, revealing a parallel I’m not sure I would have observed on my own.
The Shining Tribe Tarot guidebook is not simply a collection of 83 card meanings (Pollack added five Major Arcana cards to this edition). It's a guided tour through a deep, winding, and rich mythical journey that opens tarot up in ways that will delight even the most advanced tarot practitioner.
Gabriel Robartes on The Little White Book:
What is a Little White Book for? In every case I know of, it’s intended to get the new owner of a tarot deck up and reading as quickly as possible. It tends to get straight to the business of fortune telling - lists of key words and evocative phrases for the pip cards, perhaps an entire paragraph for each of the major arcana and a couple of spreads coupled with basic instructions for carrying out a reading. They don’t tend to deal with in-depth philosophical or spiritual discussions, beyond the odd depth psychology buzzword (take a bow, ‘Shadow’!)
It’s a bit of a stretch but the first ‘Little White Book’ I can find a description of is a single sheet of paper from the mid 1700s discovered around 1990 by Franco Pratesi in the Library of the University of Bologna and described in Decker, Depaulis and Dummett’s A Wicked Pack of Cards - the Origins of the Occult Tarot. The document lists meanings for thirty of the cards, including (translated from the Italian):
Force: Violence
Death: Death
Old Man (Hermit): Old man
Queen of Cups: A married lady
10 of Coins: Money
…and so on. The interpretations do not add a great deal.
In contrast, when the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was first published in 1910, it came as a package with a slim paperback - A.E. Waite’s ‘Key To The Tarot’ (or it’s later edition, ‘The Pictorial Key To The Tarot’). Given the almost immediate and lasting popularity of the RWS, this would have been the first introduction to the Tarot for most early to mid-twentieth century readers. McGregor Mathers published an earlier text but it referred to the standard Marseilles (and ripped off other uncredited luminaries such as Paul Christian or Eliphas Levi). Waite’s book is still, 115 years later, one of the most compact and thorough short books on Tarot ever published. This is possibly because Waite is writing from the point of view of a comprehensive occult system of belief - that of the notorious Victorian magical order, the Golden Dawn. But Waite also provides detailed divinatory meanings and a fairly skeptical few words on the history of the cards, noting that there is no evidence putting them any earlier than the 14th century and that anyone looking for Indian or Egyptian origins is simply making a fool of themselves.
So is it my favourite LWB of all time? Certainly it’s the only one I’ve read cover to cover and no serious taroist can avoid reckoning with it at some point. Every reader needs a copy in their library the way a writer needs Strunk and White’s Elements of Style or Fowler’s Modern English Usage. You might not use it every day but sometimes you need to go back to the basics.
Miriam Rachel on The Tridevia Guidebook:
Calmoura's Tridevia Tarot Deck Guidebook is a fine accompaniment to one of the most unusual tarot decks available. Designed to accompany the vibrant, deeply symbolic Tridevia Tarot Deck, this guidebook offers a treasure of insights for the beginning and experienced tarot reader alike.
The book opens with a brief history of the tarot and an introduction to the special structure of the Tridevia deck, which mixes traditional symbolism from Rider-Waite-Smith with modern themes. This guidebook's distinctive factor is its approachability. Its explanation is clear and concise yet deep into each card's spiritual and psychological layer.
Each card includes a description, keywords, upright and reversed meanings, and reflection questions that are helpful for journaling or meditation practices. The guidebook also introduces new interpretations of the major arcana, aligning them with archetypes from mythology and modern psychology to make this deck feel fresh and relevant.
One of the really strong features of this guidebook is its focus on storytelling. Calmoura invites one to approach tarot not as a mere tool for divination but as a way to create stories that inspire personal growth and creativity. The spreads, such as "The Dream Weaver" and "The Mirror of Intention," are well-designed with consideration for the theme at hand.
The guidebook's aesthetic is equally impressive: full-color illustrations of the cards and a sleek, user-friendly layout. The lack of esoteric details might be a limitation to some, but for others, the strength of this guidebook lies in its practicality and intuition.
Overall, this Tridevia Tarot Deck Guidebook by Calmoura is valuable to the tarot reading experience. Its modern approach and creativity-centered approach make it a must-have for anyone who needs fresh insight into this art.
Affiliate disclaimer: If you would like to purchase the Tridevia Tarot Deck by Calmoura, head over to here. You can get ten percent off as well if you use this code: TAROTMIRIAM10.
Jenna Newell Hiott on The Mary-El Tarot Guidebook:
For my review, I chose the Mary-El Tarot Guidebook. The Mary-El is one of my favorite tarot decks, known for its gorgeous art and visceral symbolism. And the guidebook for this amazing deck does not disappoint. Perhaps the best word to describe this book is: eclectic. Reading the entries for the cards is like taking a walk through an orchard, plucking a piece of fruit from an array of different trees. Here’s a ripe berry from Sumerian mythology, then a juicy fruit from Walt Whitman, and suddenly a citrus from ancient Egypt. The diversity is mind-expanding.
It’s not a book where you can read the entry and immediately have a clear, concise understanding of its meaning. That might sound like a criticism, but if you’re anything like me, and you love to dive deep into research rabbit holes, this book is the perfect catalyst. Take the entry on The Hierophant, for example. It begins with a mysterious single sentence: "To serious musing and to self-reproach." From there, it weaves its way through William Wordsworth’s poem The Naming of Places, followed by an essay about a goddess named Babylon. It then meanders through Oedipus Rex, Norse and Egyptian mythology, and even Plato’s Phaedra, before ending with the iconic garden and the story of Adam and Eve.
The first read-through can feel confusing, but therein lies the genius of this book. It invites you to look again, to dig deeper. On subsequent readings, you discover new nuggets of wisdom, and previous passages begin to click into place. And tucked right in the middle of it all is a single phrase that encapsulates the whole: The Hierophant means ‘revealer of the sacred.’ Rather than simply presenting this truth in a straightforward way, the book surrounds it with a profound richness of understanding. It takes us on a journey from the underworld to the heavens, allowing us to inhabit true wisdom about sacredness.
This guidebook isn’t just a tool for learning—it’s a portal for exploration. It challenges you, pushes you to think critically and expansively, and rewards you with layers of meaning the more you return to it. If you’re ready to embrace a tarot guidebook that offers more than just surface-level interpretations, the Mary-El Tarot Guidebook will take you on an unforgettable intellectual and spiritual journey.
I’ve had such a great time with this exploration and now I want to hear from you! What tarot guidebooks hold special meaning in your life?
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Thank you Jenna for this opportunity
So pleased that all of these are new to me recommendations I truly never would have known about. For me the most helpful LWBs are Rachel True’s guidebook to her most excellent deck. She tells an actual relatable story for every single card in the deck. Brilliant! Let’s not forget Bobby Abate’s guidebook to the Outsider Tarot and Elizabeth Su’s Adventure Tarot guidebook. I do have one deck though - I truly love it - but the LWB is useless to me. So go figure. Anyone else have this experience?