A hip, accessible, and practical guide for artists and creative people looking to tarot for guidance and inspiration in the tradition of The Secret Language of Birthdays and Steal Like an Artist. This book doesn’t hold your hand and jumps straight into sometimes academic reflections on art and history (this can also be seen as a pro!

I also liked this blurb about the Tower: “Remember that scene in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, where Amy throws Jo’s stories into the fire? The final chapters discuss reading the cards, various 'spreads'--how to lay the cards out--and how to interpret them. She has a nice suggestion of drawing a card a day and thinking about it during the day and how the card might be applied to various situations. Written for novices and seasoned readers alike, The Creative Tarot is a unique guidebook that reimagines tarot cards and the ways they can boost the creative process. But for daily card draws, for creativity questions, things of that nature, it’s pretty easy to read for yourself.There are many good tarot guides out there, but whether you’re a beginner looking for a good place to start, or someone who’s been reading tarot for a while and are looking for a fresh perspective, Jessa Crispin’s The Creative Tarot has a bit of something for everyone in it.

Each suit has cards numbering one through ten, and then four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen, and King. On paper, this is awesome, and I ended up googling who a lot of these people were and learning quite a bit. Novice and expert alike will also benefit from the five uncomplicated and mostly original spreads (how the cards are laid out for reading). I’ve had my face read in Chinatown, dragged there by a Malaysian friend who swears it’s an accurate, ancient practice.

La autora entrega sugerencias de obras de arte, libros o películas que resuenan con los distintos arcanos y da luces sobre a qué poner atención para que un proyecto pueda prosperar (ojo con la tirada sobre cómo entregar el proyecto creativo al mundo, super clara y completa). 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. Either the author was cherry-picking parts of the people’s lives to fit the card, or vice versa, but it's obvious straws were being grasped. 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. If we’re supposed to interpret the images and use our intuition to guide us, all on our own, then why does the Ten of Swords have the same meaning from deck to deck?

After noticing the way the cards hook into your intuition and imagination, I realized that they could easily be used to assist in the creative process. To me, this implies heavily that for the sake of her art, Mann couldn’t/shouldn't worry about pedophiles seeing and reacting to pictures of her children. And while that might feel good, it’s going to have a real effect on your creativity if you suddenly decide you know all there is to know.

And the power of your inner connection will be there with you even when you don’t have your cards at hand.