Reading list - Inspiration For Your Practice

Listed alphabetically:


♣ Angels In America by Tony Kushner
Kushner has built an elaborate personal cosmology that gives each of his characters visions of heaven and hell, on earth and beyond. While there are no clear references to Tarot, its unique appraisal of millennial life from several religions and lifestyles offers many handy parallels. The movie is fantastic also!


♣ Arc D'X by Steve Erickson
Not for the squeamish, this novel eviscerates American and European history, exploding themes of slavery, sex and amnesia across several parallel universes. As the characters search for order in chaos, divination emerges as a half-understood common language. Erickson's characters and mythos reoccur in his other novels as well, it's hard to get out once you're sucked in.


♣ The Book of Urizen by William Blake
This is Blake's gnostic creation myth. It depicts the immortal Urizen's descent from chaos into order, a fall from grace that is results in the creation of the material world and all of human suffering. Blake's illustrations and vivid symbolic language make this a must-read for Tarot enthusiasts; the commentary in the Shambhala/Random House edition is almost as enlightening as the poem itself.


♣ Cosmos by Carl Sagan
Okay, I'm willing to admit that this book has nothing to do with Tarot. In fact, Sagan openly rails against religion and all forms of spirituality-- and I'm fine with that. His rhapsodic descriptions of our universe and the other worlds we can see (as well as the ones we can't) lift the mind out of its lowly earthbound concerns and pose challenging questions to our sense of self-- which is the same feeling a good Tarot reading should give. Read and take note on his style of storytelling, which is awfully warm for a subject as chilly and technical as space exploration.


♣ The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick
The second book in Dick's Valis trilogy (the final books of his career) is a wacky space soap-opera that enfolds all of Judeo-Christian mythology. A heartbreaking look into the relationship between humans and gods, as well as between God and himself (or herself). Tarot aficianados will enjoy the references to Jewish mysticism.


♣ Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
In case you need one more excuse to finally read this (I admit, very dense) masterpiece, its plot is structured to parallel the cards of the Major Arcana.


♣ Little Nemo 1905-1914 by Winsor McCay
I defy anyone to spend time curled up with McCay's enormous candy-colored Sunday comics and not emerge with a new appreciation for the imagery and language of dreams. Most people have heard of Little Nemo, but few have looked closely enough to see how mesmerizingly enormous his world is. If ever there was an artist who should have created his own deck, it's McCay.


♣ The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
While most of Winterson's novels share the Tarot's mysterious storybook qualities, the playing-card imagery and the bizarre transformations of its characters makes this tale itself seem like the product of divination.


♣ The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
It's been a while since I read this, but Gaarder's ability to breathe life into flat characters (playing-cards, no less) until they think they're real will have you poring over your own life for signs of your inescapable destiny (which you may have overlooked).


♣ Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Another often-started, rarely-finished book that deserves better. A rigorous history of philosophy in the form of a dreamy novel, this book's last few chapters will have you kicking yourself for feeling bored during the chapter on Freud.


♣ The Two Character Play by Tennessee Williams
This little-read, little-performed play chronicles a full-blown identity crisis in slow-motion. Are the characters merely actors, or are they crying out to us for help? Williams' examination of denial, dementia and fear provokes a troubling question: is it harder for a person to offer help, or to ask for it?