Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Great. Just great. *sigh* What Juliet Diaz did for "Witchery," Jessica Wiggan now does for Tarot. There are so many similarities between the two authors that immediately upon my sense came the spectre of heavy marketing machinery. Both ladies run "apothecaries," have large social media and internet presences, including a "school," and both reference and cash in on their magical lineages (Juliet is a third-generation Witch-Healer, which is the romanticized English translation of "curandera", and Jessica references her mother as a "shaman and High Priestess," but of what tradition, she does not say). The Amazon pages of both books kind of look the same, too. The books do not have the same publishers, though...Hay House for the former, Callisto Media for this one. But marketing machinery uses all the same slickened grease and, consequently, they have all the same stench. Anyway, there is nothing new in this book. You can find all this information for free on the internet. The card meanings given are fairly standard, although bent heavily toward psychology and not events (eg. Magician: a reminder of your personal power; High Priestess: listen to and follow your intuition; Empress: you have the ability to attract to yourself what you want and need; Emperor: a call for you to be assertive). The 100-200 previously published books using the Rider-Waite Tarot as a mirror of psychological self-reflection use the same meanings. For each of the cards, Major and Minor, she gives a meaning for Love, Career/Work, Personal/Spiritual, and Reversed. But they are mostly b***s*** psychology interpretations. There is no discussion of how cards work in combination, or of how to read seamlessly. There are no example readings. There are no interesting accounts of how Jessica predicted the future or helped people with her Tarot skills. Nothing. Any 30-something trying to "create a brand" could have taken already published books, summarized them, and put this book together. The prospective purchaser would do better to search out used copies of Eden Gray's books, or The Two Hour Tarot Tutor, or Tarot in 10 Minutes. Even $1.99 for the Kindle version of this book is not worth it. From the Introduction: "The knowledge of these symbols [set forth in the Tarot cards] has stayed pretty consistent through the years and crosses the boundaries of many different traditions and cultures. This knowledge has been protected and passed down to each generation. Now you have the chance to hold these ancient symbols in your hands and see the same things the ancients saw, feel the same inspirations they felt, and hear the same messages they heard." The implication of the statement, I think, is that the book is passing down skills and secrets to you. It is not. But such is the way of glossy marketeers: they entice starving men with nourishment, then feed them with empty spoons.