She offers a comprehensive yet detailed study of the changing imagery in the cards as they emerged from their evolving historical contexts. Engrossing and fascinating-Philip C Almond, University of Queensland Helen Farley takes the reader deep into the diverse worlds of late Renaissance Italy, Enlightenment France, Victorian England and New Age America - and a host of other milieux - in her impressive study of tarot symbolism. No serious work in the history of Western Esotericism will be able to ignore the authors ground-breaking study. Review Quotes Deeply researched and elegantly written, Farleys is by far the most important contemporary contribution to the academic study of the Tarot. Tracing the changing patterns of the decks use, from game to mysterious oracular device, Helen Farley examines tarots emergence in 15th century Milan and discusses its later associations with astrology, kabbalah and the Age of Aquarius. This is the first book to explore the remarkably varied ways in which tarot has influenced culture. It was only much later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, that the deck became associated with esotericism before evolving finally into a diagnostic tool for mind, body and spirit. Yet, as the author shows, originally the tarot were used as recreational playing cards by the Italian nobility in the Renaissance. They are now viewed as arguably the foremost medium of prophesying and foretelling.

From T S Eliot and his wicked pack of cards in The Waste Land to the psychic divination of Solitaire in Ian Flemings Live and Let Die and from the satanic novels of Dennis Wheatley to the decks adoption by New Age practitioners, the cards have in modern times be inseparably connected to the occult. The 21 numbered playing cards of tarot have always exerted strong fascination, way beyond their original purpose, and the multiple resonances of the deck are ubiquitous.

Book Synopsis The enigmatic and richly illustrative tarot deck reveals a host of strange and iconic mages, such as The Tower, The Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man and The Fool: over which loom the terrifying figures of Death and The Devil.

The Devil by Philip C. Almond