With a name like Susan Wands, it was inevitable that I would be drawn to the occult and to the world of tarot cards. In high school, I was drawn to a set of tarot cards, not knowing that this deck, the Ryde Waite deck, was illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. Pamela was the co-creator of the worldās best-selling tarot deck, and I became obsessed with her and her life story. I have written a historical fantasy series, the Arcana Oracle Series, based on Pamelaās life and lectured worldwide on the Golden Dawn, Tarot, and Magical Women.
I read this book this month while traveling to the UK Tarot Conference and loved the resonance of tarot cards and people appearing in your life at the right time. Claire McMillian opens up the world of surrealist painter Remedios Varo by way of Pamelaās Smith Tarot cards as markers and guideposts.
I fell down the rabbit hole researching Varoās artwork after I read it, especially Remediosā painting of the magician or juggler. Her friend, Leonora Carrington, is also in the bookābringing art, tarot, and love to their immense ambition and their drive to live their life in their art and tarot readings. I loved learning about this post-WWII community of magical women and the art they created across Europe and Mexico.
For fans of The Age of Light and Z comes a "beguiling novel of artistic ambition, perseverance, and friendship" (Katy Hays, New York Times bestselling author) based on the true story of the 20th-century painters and tarot devotees Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington.
In this "unforgettable adventure, and one you don't want to miss" (Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author), painter Remedios Varo and her lover, poet Benjamin Peret escape the Nazis by fleeing Paris and arriving at a safe house for artists on the Rivieria.
Along with Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and others, the two anxiously waitā¦
I had never been to The Cloisters here in Manhattan after many decades of living here, but I read Katy Hays's book, and had to visit it afterward. Haysā book was a great pre-cursor to the trip to the Museum of Medieval and Early Renaissance Art.
I kept in mind the world of the fictional underdog, Anne Sitwell, who worked her way up to know there were secrets in the vault at the Cloisters. A Tarot Deck, possibly from the dāEste family in Italy, sets the stage for skullduggery while secrets and murders mount, leading to a plot twist at the end for our hapless Anne. It was interesting talking to the docent at the museum after I took a garden tour, and to spot a copy of this book for sale in the gift shop there.
āFor fans of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Secret Historyā¦The perfect mystery.ā āJenna Bush Hager, Today
In this āsinister, jaw-droppingā (Sarah Penner, author of The Lost Apothecary) debut novel, a circle of researchers uncover a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New Yorkās famed Met Cloisters.
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and gardenā¦
Hayley and the Hot Flashes
by
Jayne Jaudon Ferrer,
Country music diva Hayley Swift has fallen off the charts and into a funk. Desperate to regain her place in the limelight, she agrees to a low-budget tour of Southern venues, starting with her 35th high school reunion.
There, in an unexpected but fortuitous reconnection, The Girls Next Door āwhoā¦
I was intrigued by the magical abilities in the āHandsā of each one of the three protagonists in this book. Tamara uses her hands for tarot readings to tell peopleās futures, while Phyllisās hands have a super-power strength for knife-throwing, and Dev has āSaintās Handsā have a sort of spidey-sense, helping his work as a police spy.
I was intrigued by Tamaraās tarot readings as part of this crime story, with the weaving in of black peopleās stories of trauma, the double-edged sword of passing for white, and Juju assassins. This alternate history is a nebula of magic, criminals, and an exploration of how love heals people.
This book was the 2021 Winner of the World Fantasy Award. It was an unexpected winner, but I can see how Johnsonās gritty writing pulled people in. Trigger warning: if you have nerves about reading about knives as weapons, you may want to proceed cautiously.
The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in this timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, where an assassin tries to fight her fate at the dawn of World War II.
Amid the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she's hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens.
Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything - not just her own past, and Dev, the manā¦
I love this book; it is my all-time favorite nonfiction resource book for female tarot creators during the Victorian Age. I was totally absorbed reading about the art and artists that Mary Greer selected: Maud Gonne, Moina Bergson Mathers, Annie Horniman and Florence Farr.
These are four women who transformed the face of women in power in the occult and magical societies. I especially dote on a book with photographs and illustrations when talking about a historical topic, and there are fantastic images, many one-of-a-kinds, that are well-researched and noted. If you have any interest in tarot, female Magicians, and the struggles of these amazing Suffragettes and artists, this book is for you.
These four remarkable women, core members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, left a lasting imprint on the politics, literature, and theater of 19th-century Europe. Less well-known than the famous men in their lives, including Yeats and Shaw, their stories are now told.
Robin dreamed of attending Yale and using her brain. Kory lived on the streets of Seattle and relied on his brawn. Without the asteroid, they never would have met.
For three years, Robin and her grandfather have been hiding, trusting no one. When a biker gang moves into town, Robinā¦
I like the format of this book, where each chapter is titled after a Tarot card. The involves a manuscript from Cleopatraās time with a seer named Ionna to our modern-day protagonist, Semele, who works in an auction house.
Ionna foresaw a sort of doomsday tarot deck throughout history and in this manuscript, which is now up for sale, named Semele in her prophecy. She has to track down the descendants of Ionna, who may have the key to where this tarot deck is, before the manuscript passes into the wrong hands.
While tarot isnāt the main focus of the book, the background research on tarot is fascinating.
Semele Cavnow appraises antiquities for an exclusive Manhattan auction house, specialising in deciphering ancient texts. And when she discovers a manuscript written in the time of Cleopatra, she knows it will be the find of her career. Its author tells the story of a priceless tarot deck, now lost to history, but as Semele delves further she realises the manuscript is more than it seems. Both a memoir and a prophecy, it appears to be the work of a powerful seer, describing devastating wars and natural disasters in detail thousands of years before they occurred. The more she reads, theā¦
On her return to London, artist and seer Pamela Colman Smith discovers that her nemesis, Aleister Crowley, has returnedāand his sights are set on her. Despite Aleisterās efforts to stop Pamela from further developing her tarot deck and accessing its magic, she carries on casting her High Priestess and Empress muses, Golden Dawn society leader Florence Farr, and popular theatre star Ellen Terry. But when Ellen is poisoned, Pamela realizes that Aleister wonāt stop coming for her.
When Aleister reveals his plot to assassinate Queen Victoria and all female rulers, war breaks out between the Aleisterās Carlists and the Golden Dawn. With so many lives on the lineāthat of the queen and those of her friendsāPamela must access her inner magic to face the battle of her life.
Constance is a wild, stubborn young girl growing up poor in a small industrial town in the late 1800's. Beneath her thread-worn exterior beats the heart of a dreamer and a wordsmith. But at age twelve, sheās orphaned. Running away to join the circusālike kids do in adventure booksāseems likeā¦
Lena thinks she knows her future: in her small village, nothing much has changed for two hundred years. Women farm and fish, plant and harvest: a cooperative, productive, peaceful life. Until the day a soldier rides in, to ask the unthinkable of the women: learn to fight. Invasion is imminent,ā¦