Review by Solandia
“An Illustrated Tarot Notebook including Tarot Card Meanings and Tarot Spreads”
The Tarot Lovers’ Notebook is beautifully produced, spiral-bound notebook and card journal for Tarot users of all experience levels.
In its third year of publication by Karyn Easton at Paranormality.com, the Notebook is roughly A5 size (20 x 16.5cm). It has sturdy white spiral binding, a solid plastic protective cover for both the full-colour, glossy front and back covers, and 244 pages printed in black and white inside.
The front cover shows three cards – The Sun, The Lovers and Strength - from Karyn’s original tarot deck, which blends symbolism from the Rider-Waite and Marseilles traditions. This deck is also used inside the Notebook, both to illustrate the offered tarot spreads, and individually pictured along with their divinatory meanings.
Inside, there is a contents page and a welcome message, then it’s straight into the actual notebook. It’s not just a blank workbook: the 78 tarot cards are pictured through the book, in order, in a black background sidebar and accompanied by correspondences and divinatory meanings. The tarot cards are original (though sadly, the minor arcana card are not scenic like the Rider-Waite, but decorated pip cards similar to the Marseilles).
Underneath each individual card is:
- The card title in English and French
- Card Number
- Key Number
- Rulership
- Hebrew Letter
- Translation
- Numerical Value
- Divinatory Meaning: Upright and Ill Dignified or Reversed
The divinatory meanings are short sentences and phrases.
At the back of the Notebook are six pages of spreads (which, pleasingly, none of which include the Celtic Cross spread). Instead, there is a nice mix of general and specific medium-sized spreads – a Question and Answer spread, a 7 card horseshoe, a Yes/No spread, three card Past/Present/Future and a seven card infinity spread. All are illustrated with small images from the Tarot Lovers deck and labelled with the number and position of the cards.
The Notebook has a couple of small downsides. Firstly, the otherwise blank pages inside the book – the pages without the card sidebars – have the Paranormality log and website address at the top of each page. It’s not hugely intrusive, but does reduce the amount of space for one’s own notes. Secondly, the card sidebars are not evenly spaced, but instead are placed back-to-back, presumably for ease of printing and collating, so there is a variable amount of space for each card.
Aside from its small quirks, the Tarot Lovers’ Notebook is a beautifully produced product that is ideal for the Tarot reader who wants to start a journal, but isn’t necessarily the creative type and doesn’t want to start completely from scratch. It’s also an excellent Christmas, Midsummer or Yule gift.
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