Illustrated with Aquarian Tarot deck

Year Published: 1985

Publisher: Morgan & Morgan, Inc. (recently republished by U.S. Game Systems)

ISBN: 0-87100-240-X

# of Pages: 126

Cover Type: Trade Paperback

Psychic Tarot is book written both to accompany the Aquarian Tarot deck and to introduce the reader to the idea of using psychic skills in Tarot readings. The author, Craig Junjulas, is touted as being a former director of the Foundation for Psychic Development as well as a psychic consultant. So it is obvious where his interests lie. I’m not trying to insinuate that this is a bad thing, however I think covering these two topics in one slim volume was a little over ambitious.

The book presents an overview of Tarot deck structure which is somewhat simplified, but more then adequate for a newer student. Mr. Junjulas talks of the Major Arcana being logically divided into three septenaries with the Fool being separate. The groups he gives are: cards I-VII reveal man’s inner nature, needs, vices and virtues; cards VIII-XIV show the forces of his environment; and cards XV-XXI show the cosmic influences on his life. These themes are very quickly glossed over, and if you are interested in exploring them further, I highly recommend Rachel Pollack’s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom.

The next two sections of the book deal with the development and use of psychic skills. Mr. Junjulas introduces the ideas of Triune Consciousness (subconscious, conscious, and superconscious minds), auras, chakras, and meditations. However, he spends very little time on them beyond providing the very basics. He does spend some time on discussing the problems that could occur when trying psychic readings, such as absorbing the emotions of the person you are reading for. This is quite nice to see, because these problems aren’t often discussed in books relating to Tarot and they can happen to Tarot readers. Mr. Junjulas next spends a very small amount of time on different types of psychic reception, including clairaudience and clairvoyance.

Now the section on Tarot begins. First, the Major Arcana is presented as a spiritual journey, which is yet another retelling of the classic “Fool’s Journey.” It is done very well, with keywords relating to the cards being italicized. The card interpretations consist of one per page for the Major Arcana and two per page for the Minor Arcana. A rather large black and white card image is shown, along with a description of that image, and both upright and reversed meanings. The card descriptions are reasonably good, although in some cases some rather obvious symbolism is not explained.

Mr. Junjulas next discusses how to use one’s intuition in a Tarot reading. He provides three examples, giving a large image of a card and showing how different symbols can be interpreted. This isn’t anything earth-shattering to me, as it is nothing more then letting the images on the card speak to you. Also, his outline on how to perform a psychic reading isn’t anything different from most reading outlines. The only real change is asking the seeker (person you are reading for) to withhold any comments for about 10 minutes, so you can be “open to intuitive information.”

Four spreads are given in the next section. The first is the good, old Ancient Celtic Cross Spread, which isn’t any different then how it is generally presented. The next spread is an interesting five card Yes/No Spread. I actually used this one quite a bit when I first began studying Tarot. The are five card positions for past, present and future. The strength of the “yes” or “no” answer is determine by the number of upright and reversed cards. The third and fourth spreads are similar, one is an astrological spread and the other is a yearly forecast. The 12 card positions are interpreted based on the houses of the Zodiac or months of the year, respectively.

A small appendix contains some reference material — notes of numerology as it relates to Tarot, astrological correspondences of the Major Arcana, the author’s thoughts on the Celtic Cross (mine are: Don’t use it!), and a chart summarizing the positive or negative nature of the cards. It is this last bit that I have the most trouble with. I don’t like it one bit because it falls into the trap of assuming that most reversed cards are negative. Many times, this isn’t the case. (For more thoughts on Tarot reversals, see Mary K. Greer’s book The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals.)

Overall, this is a pretty good book on Tarot, suited best for a newer student. I don’t think enough time was given to the psychic aspect, so if this is what you are most interested in, I would suggest looking elsewhere. If you own a copy of the Aquarian Tarot, then I would recommend picking up this book, if only to better understand some of the symbolism in the cards. However, for a general book about Tarot, there are better, like Anthony Lewis’ Tarot Plain and Simple, or the previously mentioned Rachel Pollack book.

Rating: 3.5 – A good companion book for the Aquarian Tarot, but a bit rushed when it comes to psychic techniques.