This is my favorite book on tarot. This book was reccomended to me by a friend who is also a gifted reader. She said she never had a need for a tarot book, but when she saw this one, she knew it was dead on. When I read, it comes from intuition, but I love to look up what this book has to offer also, most times I can gain a lot of insight from it's pages. Also, for people who use the Tarot as images for meditation, this book will provide a lot of great imagery and deeper meaning. The author has really come up with a way of taking each card apart, layer by layer until every possible facet has been analyzed and layed out for the reader in a clear and concise way.

This book is one of the best guides to the Tarot that I have read!

It is so much more than just a card-by-card interpretation of the deck, but it provides so much insight into the symbolism and the spiritual side of Tarot.

Everyone is right - this book is The Bible for Tarot!

This is the primary book I advise my students of Tarot to obtain when they develop beyond the basics and want more depth of understanding.

If you are at that point yourself, you want this book.

This is on my "top 5" best books on Tarot in my personal library.

Thank you for writing this book, Rachel Pollack.

I was wary of buying a tarot book online, though I finally did make the decision to buy this book based on the reviews here as compared to the reviews of other tarot books. I've been rather impressed with this book. The author chose, wisely, to use the gold-standard in tarot, the Rider-Waite deck for her demonstrations and detailed study of the tarot symbolism. The Rider-Waite is widely available in both the original as well as other variations (I personally love the Universal Waite deck... same deck with prettier colors).

I've waited for some time to review, but decided now would be as good a time as any since I can see that this is a book I will be working through for some time. I've given it a once-through, and have been using it as a reference since I bought it.

This book emphasises learning and study (which takes years) over quick-fix guides to the tarot which suggest one could effectively read tarot in only minutes. And it is a long process, one I've been working on for over a decade casually, and one which I will continue to work on for years to come, aided by this very good reference.

Seventy-Eight degrees of Wisdom also presents the use of the tarot without excess new-age trappings, focusing on the cards and their symbols themselves, not on extraneous things, particular religious views, or other things which I've read in scanning other tarot books.

I think this book is excellent for intermediate students of the Tarot, and gives a wonderful sense of the complexities of tarot, while keeping it to the basics, focusing on the foundations of learning rather than a host of many spreads to use. May your journey of learning be fruitful.

I own ten or more books on the Tarot and if I had purchased this one first, I would not have needed the others. This book has everything you need to know to study the Tarot for personal growth/enrichment or to teach yourself to read the cards. I disagree with the reviewer who said it was not for beginners. It is written concisely and clearly and was a huge help to me when I was a beginner. I own several of Ms. Pollack's books and she is by far one of my favorite authors on the Tarot.