Friday 21 January 2022

The Big Book of Tarot Meanings by Sam Magdaleno

The Big Book of Tarot Meanings: The Beginner's Guide to Reading the Cards

Interpreting card meanings is the most exciting aspect of reading tarot. However, it is also the most challenging for beginners. For example, basic tarot interpretation would have you understand that The Lovers card has to do with relationships—but what if your question had to do with career or health? How are you left to interpret the meaning?

The Big Book of Tarot Meanings is an exciting new approach to beginner tarot. Rather than a one-size-fits-all strategy, this comprehensive guide divides each tarot card interpretation into specific meanings for all the most-queried categories. No longer will you have to vaguely extrapolate meaning and insight for diverse questions from the same generic description often given in other beginner tarot books. These carefully chosen categories give you greater scope to use your intuition when interpreting the tarot, and enables you to apply these interpretations to the card positions of any tarot spread, be it the much-loved classic Celtic Cross or one you have created for yourself.

With The Big Book of Tarot Meanings, you’ll never struggle again to know how the cards are answering you.


Tarot is a fascinating subject with a wide range of applications. Meditation, self study, even therapy - you can find tarot everywhere these days. But no one who studies it will tell you it's straight forward and easy. Depending on the system you're using, there are 78 basic, mostly agreed on meanings, and then there's reversals, and then some decks treat things differently...it's tough! It's great because there's always something new to learn, but it can be frustrating, especially as a novice.

This book is carefully planned to help avoid that. Each card has a list of meanings in different spheres of life - wealth, health, love and so on - both upright and reversed, so whatever kind of reader you are, this can be really helpful. Even the notoriously difficult Court Cards are here listed neatly and with all the different meanings. This is a fantastic resource.

As sometimes happens with proof copies, the conversion process has mixed up some blocks of text, so for instance the love reading for four of wands is in the middle of the lists for five of wands. It's not insurmountable, and it won't be a problem in the actual book, but I did have to stop and read more carefully a couple of times.

However I did love that it includes illustrations of all the cards, so that you can start linking the meanings to the details of the illustration straight away! Books like this don't always, so it was a lovely touch, and especially having them in colour was amazing.

I really enjoyed this, it's definitely going to become one of my go to references, and I can't wait to see a physical copy!

The Big Book of Tarot Meanings publishes on the 15th March, 2022. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.

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