Here are 100 books that Unexpected Journeys fans have personally recommended if you like
Unexpected Journeys.
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I started studying the tarot ten years ago with no thought that I would ever write about it. I took an introductory class in the back of a local metaphysical shop and went down a rabbit hole of books and teachings. I also enjoy readings myself - from quick fifteen minute reads at sidewalk fairs, to hour long readings in person with renowned readers, from an hour on Zoom with a famous reader, to a reading in a shop in Salem, Massachusetts during the chaos that is October in that town - I’ve benefited from them all. It has been a delight to include this interest in my latest novel.
Rachel Pollack’s classic guide to the tarot is a well-loved reference for me and for many.
While it’s a great next step to add depth of insight into the cards for the less experienced, it also continually serves up new insights to someone with more familiarity with the cards as well. She wrote it in the early eighties while living in Amsterdam and teaching tarot at the Kosmos Meditation Center.
The bestselling tarot classic in a new edition with a new preface by the author.
“Whenever I have a question about tarot, I reach for 78 Degrees of Wisdom. It is the most in-depth exploration of tarot and my most trusted resource. If you want to learn tarot, you’ll want 78 Degrees on your bookshelf too. It’s the gold standard in tarot.” —Theresa Reed, author of Tarot No Questions Asked
"What is your favorite tarot book? The answer is always 78 Degrees of Wisdom."—Melissa Cynova, author of Kitchen Table Tarot
“Essential reading for the beginner and a classic that tarot…
I started studying the tarot ten years ago with no thought that I would ever write about it. I took an introductory class in the back of a local metaphysical shop and went down a rabbit hole of books and teachings. I also enjoy readings myself - from quick fifteen minute reads at sidewalk fairs, to hour long readings in person with renowned readers, from an hour on Zoom with a famous reader, to a reading in a shop in Salem, Massachusetts during the chaos that is October in that town - I’ve benefited from them all. It has been a delight to include this interest in my latest novel.
Written in 1967 and not published until the early eighties after the anonymous author’s death, this tome of a book (it’s thick) takes a Christian, esoteric view of the tarot.
It’s a deep dive into the principles of hermeticism with the use of the Bible, the Buddha, Plato, and many others to illustrate the points. It covers only the major arcana and each card is presented as a letter to an imaginary friend.
Now in a fully corrected edition, one of the true spiritual classics of the twentieth century.
Published for the first time with an index and Cardinal Hans Urs von Balthasar’s afterword, this new English publication of Meditations on the Tarot is the landmark edition of one of the most important works of esoteric Christianity.
Written anonymously and published posthumously, as was the author’s wish, the intention of this work is for the reader to find a relationship with the author in the spiritual dimensions of existence. The author wanted not to be thought of as a personality who lived from…
I started studying the tarot ten years ago with no thought that I would ever write about it. I took an introductory class in the back of a local metaphysical shop and went down a rabbit hole of books and teachings. I also enjoy readings myself - from quick fifteen minute reads at sidewalk fairs, to hour long readings in person with renowned readers, from an hour on Zoom with a famous reader, to a reading in a shop in Salem, Massachusetts during the chaos that is October in that town - I’ve benefited from them all. It has been a delight to include this interest in my latest novel.
Coming from a psychological view of the cards, Dore incorporates ideas from different psychological schools of thought such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as well as Greek myth, Arthurian legend, folklore, fairy tales, and more.
Dore offers a unique, modern, and very personal approach to the cards and their meanings. A fascinating example for anyone building their own tarot practice and figuring out what tarot means to them on a personal and individual level.
Unlock the transformative power of tarot with this unique investigation into the psychology of its secrets, symbols and stories.
Symbols have been used in modern psychology for generations, from the interpretation of fairy tales to inkblot tests. Although tarot is often thought of as a spiritual tool for divination and fortune-telling, it too contains a set of symbols that can help us better understand our selves and align with our values. In this book, Jessica Dore reveals years of secrets and insights about how to work with tarot to activate your potential.
You'll discover: * the importance of choosing the…
I started studying the tarot ten years ago with no thought that I would ever write about it. I took an introductory class in the back of a local metaphysical shop and went down a rabbit hole of books and teachings. I also enjoy readings myself - from quick fifteen minute reads at sidewalk fairs, to hour long readings in person with renowned readers, from an hour on Zoom with a famous reader, to a reading in a shop in Salem, Massachusetts during the chaos that is October in that town - I’ve benefited from them all. It has been a delight to include this interest in my latest novel.
Carrington’s surrealist masterpiece is a bit lighter than her other well-known novel, Down Below.
She tells the tale of someone not often seen, much less celebrated, in literature - the crone. At age 92, Marion Leatherby is given the gift of a hearing trumpet by her dear friend Carmella. It is only then she can hear that her family is planning on sending her to an institution.
Carrington’s fondness for the tarot (she even painted her own deck) can be found in the archetypal characters Leatherby encounters at the institution including the Abbess, the Snow Queen, and the Queen Bee among others.
An old woman enters into a fantastical world of dreams and nightmares in this surrealist classic admired by Björk and Luis Buñuel.
Leonora Carrington, painter, playwright, and novelist, was a surrealist trickster par excellence, and The Hearing Trumpet is the witty, celebratory key to her anarchic and allusive body of work. The novel begins in the bourgeois comfort of a residential corner of a Mexican city and ends with a man-made apocalypse that promises to usher in the earth’s rebirth. In between we are swept off to a most curious old-age home run by a self-improvement cult and drawn several…
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 world’s 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 Pamela’s 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 Pamela’s Smith Tarot cards as markers and guideposts.
I fell down the rabbit hole researching Varo’s artwork after I read it, especially Remedios’ painting of the magician or juggler. Her friend, Leonora Carrington, is also in the book—bringing 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 wait…
I’m a historian specialising in the French Revolution at the University of Glasgow. During my doctorate, my now wife and I stayed in Ménilmontant in the 20th arrondissement. There grew a knowledge and love of Paris that have never diminished. As part of my research, I explore the places and spaces where events unfolded, trying to understand how these sites have since changed and been overwritten with new meanings and historical memories: I have the worn-out boots to show for it. I’m currently writing a book on Paris in the Belle Époque, from the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 to the outbreak of the First World War.
At first sight, the title evokes a certain Gallic hauteur, but it does not take long to see that this is simply a foretaste of the rich exploration of the myths of Paris – how the great city has been depicted, imagined, and perceived over time. This is the story of Paris as the capital of modernity, art, fashion, revolution, sex, pleasure, science, and crime. With writers, artists, poets, and visitors as witnesses, and lavishly illustrated, this is a colourful meander through the myths and illusions that have shaped the many images of Paris.
Whatever the actual realities beneath these multiple faces, asks Higonnet at one point, ‘who could, in our culturally unanchored world, imagine life without this city?’
In an original and evocative journey through modern Paris from the mid-eighteenth century to World War II, Patrice Higonnet offers a delightful cultural portrait of a multifaceted, continually changing city. He explores Paris as the capital of revolution, science, empire, literature, and art, describing such incarnations as Belle Epoque Paris, the Commune, the surrealists' city, and Paris as viewed through American eyes. He also evokes the more visceral Paris of alienation, crime, material excess, and sensual pleasure.
When I make a snarky remark during a party, chances are one person will catch my eye with the amused look that says, “I saw what you did there.” Everyone else will keep right on talking. But in a book, the reader is right there in the character’s head, which lets your audience catch those subtle humorous comments. In my mystery series, The Accidental Detective, Kate shares witty observations about life with the reader – making Kate funnier than I am. I don’t do as much slapstick and joking (in life or in fiction), but I enjoy writers who pull off those forms of humor well. Humor makes life’s challenges bearable
Alanis moves to a tiny tourist trap town in Arizona after her con-artist mother is murdered, leaving Alanis a New Age gift shop. Alanis doesn't believe in the tarot, but she starts offering readings to learn about her mother's customers, hoping to find out who killed her. The book is darker than the standard cozy, despite a female main character inheriting a shop. It’s not at all gruesome, but it is full of scams and stories of growing up with a terrible parent. The narrator feels unique and authentic, and I loved her snarky voice. The premise is clever, providing a mystery with plenty of complications and twists.
Don’t worry if you don’t like paranormal aspects to your mysteries – Alanis is far too suspicious to believe in anything like that, even if she sometimes gets surprised by the cards’ on-point messages. Steve Hockensmith may be better known for his…
When Alanis McLachlan learns that her mother's been murdered, she's completely unsurprised. Not that Alanis had been given a glimpse into the future. That would be crazy, right? It's just that her con-woman mom, Barbra, was bound to cross the wrong people sooner or later. It's why Alanis was lucky to get out of her childhood alive - and why she hadn't spoken to her mother in decades.But there is a surprise in store for Alanis. Barbra left her something in her will: a New Age shop in the tiny tourist trap town of Berdache, Arizona. The White Magic Five…
I began studying Tarot from a scholarly perspective, and that origin has shaped my interests ever since. But in those early years, I was also drawn into the possibilities of Tarot divination through the unique adventure of full-time Tarot practice. Then, after completing my Ph.D. in interdisciplinary humanities and writing my first Tarot book, I was lucky enough to meet the extraordinary thinkers who transformed our understanding of Tarot in the last quarter of the 20th century. I’ve chosen works from that exciting time, highlighting some deeper levels of Tarot exploration.
This is probably the least-known and most surprising book ever written about Tarot. And yes, the author was pop culture icon Timothy Leary—Harvard psychologist turned apostle of psychedelic experimentation. I discovered this book more than a decade after it was published in 1979 and was amazed to realize it had come out just a year after Volume One of Kaplan’s meticulous Encyclopedia of Tarot. It’s impossible to imagine two more different authors or two more different books!
It’s equally impossible to explain what Leary’s 288-page, large-format book is ”about” since it was deliberately composed as a mix of ideas, themes, and graphic illustrations that would challenge our normal expectations of intellectual order. However, you can get a flavor of Leary’s approach from this chapter title: “Tower portrays your self-actualized brain-control-reality-director neuro-technology.”
Opening this book, I revisit a time when the “counter-culture” movement surfaced wildly exploratory questions, and Tarot was being…
Natural Election occurs at every level of energy exchange. Aesthetic choice determines who bonds with whom.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority…
Since I was a teenager, I have been attracted to astrology, Jungian psychology, synchronicity, symbolism, alchemy, and Jewish esotery. Someone gave me my first Tarot deck as a present. Since then I collect old and new decks from the entire world and created my own Sun and Moon Tarot. I continue to deepen my knowledge of tarot and all the systems associated with it.At times I focus more on the Sefiroth and Kabbalah. Sometimes I’m more interested in different ways of interpreting tarot. I've been illustrating Astrological Learning Cards for a while now, trying to better understand the different astrological archetypes and to make art.
While designing and illustrating my own Sun and Moon Tarot, I followed
the normal order of letters of the Hebrew alphabet and therefore also their
values. And I respected the original Western Hermetic order of the cards on the
paths of the Tree of Life and their corresponding Hebrew letters. This system
is explained in detail in this book.
Rufus C. Camphausen describes in detail how the numbering of the tarot cards has been changed by
different groups of people (Kabbalists, Astrologers, the Hermetic order of the
Golden Dawn & Aleister Crowley, A. E. Waite of the Rider Waite Tarot). The
same is true with the assignment of the planets and zodiac signs and the
assignment of the numbers and the Hebrew letters on the paths of the
Sefiroth (Tree of Life in Kabbalah).
Together with Van Leeuwen he also created ‘The
Kabbalistic Tarot/Tree-of-life Tarot’. This tarot deck…
I’ve always believed a story should be world changing and epic on some level. Perhaps on a personal level, perhaps in the actual sense of world changing. Whether it’s for my readers of a short story, the players in a tabletop role playing game I’m running, or the arc of a novel. Some of these books help form that idea, and others supported it later in my life. I love it when a tale shakes my world—in addition to the world of the characters—and makes me question what I believe. With a doctorate in metaphysics and a love of fantasy and sci-fi, I’m always looking for ways to shake up my worldview!
Another series, and this is because the series covers a single story. The 1980s didn’t like huge books very much, so a story was often split into the much more economical (space-wise and financially) trilogy. This story shows a future that regressed into old, sustainable technology because we learned how to get to the stars and had to conserve our resources. It also follows one man who is sent to a planet to find out which religions god has appeared on that world. It’s an incredible blend of science, society, and character that has become a book I’ve recommended my entire life.
