Leeza Robertson

Having a deep love of the tarot and always wanting to understand how and why it works drew me to this book. Even after all these many years the power, and more importantly, the how it works intrigues me. This was a fantastic book that I will be studying for a very long time.

This book is broken into looking at the readings in three ways; intentional (based on a theme), intuitive (which is generally what I try and do letting the cards speak to me), and wandering (a combination of the two). It is not something that can be read like a standard book. Instead, the book will be ever-changing depending on the reading or purpose and the cards drawn for that specific reading and or question in which insight was give. It gives meaning to each of the cards from the three readings as well as an overall view of the card. It guides the reader on how to apply that information. There are exercises to try which I found very useful.

I can see this being a constant book that I look at, almost like a meditation ritual. One of the best books I have seen in a very long time and one I will recommend to my local metaphysical bookstore.… (mais)

Leeza Robertson takes a different approach to the court cards than many authors do, by looking at the historic roles that kings, queen, princes, princesses, knights, and pages played, and factoring that into her explanations. This is one of the only tarot books I've read that distinguishes between knights and pages vs. princes and princesses. One (simplified) example: knights could ride forth into adventure, but princes were too valuable and needed to be kept at home. I thought this was an important distinction, and made for interesting interpretive differences, depending on what the court cards in your deck are called. But it threatened to throw my own sense of the cards off, because it felt like I now have potentially 24 court cards to handle, rather than 16. If you're just learning tarot, though, or if you haven't found a satisfactory way to read the court cards, then this may be a great approach for you.

Robertson discusses each rank thoroughly: Pages/Princesses, Knights/Princes, Queens, and Kings. Every card discussed is illustrated with one of the court cards from Llewellyn's Classic Tarot, although Robertson also talks about cards from the Gaian Tarot and the Tarot of the Hidden Realm. (A few cards from these decks are used in the example spreads at the end of the book, but it would've been nice to see those decks throughout the book as well.) Each section ends with a spread and exercises to work further with those cards, and then there's a chapter of exercises and spreads to work with all the ranks together. All in all, it's a thorough exploration of the court cards, and well-suited for beginning tarot readers.… (mais)