Review by Tabitha Chamberlain
Tarot
and Astrology
Enhance Your Readings with the Wisdom of the Zodiac
By Corrine Kenner
Published
by Llewellyn Publications
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN:
978-0-7387-2964-0
Retail
Price U.S.: $17.95
I wanted to do some more research on how tarot and astrology interact, while I have the basics I admit that my knowledge isn't the best. I being the Virgo that I am, I went searching for a book. (Yes, I relate the best to Hermione in Harry Potter). What I found was a gem!
Tarot and Astrology is a soft cover book that is roughly 300 pages long. The introduction is brief, giving you a glance of what to expect, more importantly a quick list of Majors and astrology assignment. Along with a list of where to find each card in the book. After that the book is set up in three parts:
Part One is three chapters long. Chapter One being the basic knowledge how tarot and astrology work together. Chapter Two, is focused on the Major Arcanas with the planets that they are assigned to. Chapter Three is the Majors and the Zodiac. Each tarot card is shown with a small image of the card itself from the Wizard deck in grayscale, the Planet or Zodiac in bold, with the tarot card associated with it underneath. A page to page and half is dedicated to explaining how the tarot card relates to the astrology assigned to it. She also give some mythological background as to how the Zodiac/Planet's qualities apply to certain cards.
Part Two, is broken into five chapters. The first of these deal with the Aces and their elemental aspect. The next is a very basic, I do mean basic overview of Kabbalah (spelled Qabahlah) and how it relates to the tarot and smaller number cards or pips. Chapter Six, is where you get into the details of how and why tarot and the zodiac are split the way they are. Dealing with not only the element aspect, fixed, cardinal, and mutable qualities of each sign, and why certain planets as used in the minor pips.
Chapter Seven gets down and dirty, each minor is shown with: a small image of the card, card name, astrology assignment, image of where it is on the astrology wheel, the card's Golden Dawn title (this is explained in the book), along with how all of these things combine together. This tells you how the planet interacts with that particular zodiac sign. Sometimes the interaction is great and other times not so much. Minor note here is that the pips are set up by their timing, not by card numbers or elements which is a little confusing if you're unfamiliar with astrology.
The last chapter deals with the Court, same as the minors with the image, card name, the zodiac assigned to it, a title for you to remember the card by and where it is on the astrology chart. I will admit that I was taught that the Pages are the element Earth as everything comes together there, not as she teaches which is that they encompass all of the element they rule like the Aces.
Part Three is three chapters long, explaining the houses, their rulers, and how to take everything you learned from the rest of the book and apply it. With some excellent examples of how to actually relate what you're learning into how it is supposed to be applied in reading a horoscope chart.
The book gives us about 10 unique spreads to help us not only with learning the qualities of the cards and their astrology assignment, but gives us a deeper look into ourselves. Which is what astrology is all about. There is a lot of charts and lists with explanations of what's going on to help you out along the way.
This is an excellent book for those that aren't terribly familiar with astrology, but have a pretty good tarot background. Those with a stronger background in astrology will find that they can use their knowledge to help get a firm grasp on the archetypes of the tarot, but wouldn't be complete.