Review by Bonnie Cehovet
"Tarot For The Green Witch" is
part of the Green Witchcraft series from author Ann
Moura - a solitary practitioner whose heritage was
passed down from her Mother and Grandmother. She
encourages everyone to take what they will from her writings
- to add whatever they find helpful to their own
personal spiritual journeys. I found this book to come
from a very caring heart - a heart that wants to share
her legacy with all who will listen.
My feeling about
this book is that it was definitely written for the
Green Witch practitioner - exactly as the title states.
I feel that a reader not on the Wiccan path may not
understand this version of Tarot, as Tarot takes second place
to the Craft. There is one teensy thing that occurred
throughout the entire book that irritated me no end. And yes
- it is a foible of mine, but here it is - the word
Tarot is written as tarot - no capital letters. I
realize this is a choice centered issue - but in a book
about Tarot, this was a major irritation for me.
This
book is intended to be a primer on the use of Tarot for
divination. Moura discusses the meaning of the Major Arcana,
and how the cards relate to the reader and to their
lives. She discusses the four suits, their meanings, and
the meanings of the cards within them, how to read the
court cards, how to prepare for and do a reading, and
issues such as multiples of the same card number within a
reading, what to do with reversals and how to read the Aces
as timing. In her presentations on the cards, she
uses black and white scans from five different Tarot
decks: the Nigel Jackson Tarot (Nigel Jackson, Llewellyn
Publications), the Sacred Circle Tarot (Anna Franklin and Paul
Mason, Llewellyn Publications), the Robin Wood Tarot
(Robin Wood and Michael Short, Llewellyn Publications),
the Witches Tarot (Ellen Cannon Reed and Martin
Cannon, Llewellyn Publications) and the Buckland Romani
Tarot (Raymond Buckland, Llewellyn Publications).
In
the introduction, Moura states that she views the
Tarot as a Pagan form of divination. Personally - I see
the Tarot as a form of divination - period. Pagan,
feminist, mythical - there are many overlays on current
Tarot decks - but they are all using Tarot as a form of
divination. She also differs from most Pagan practitioners in
that she assigns the element of Fire to Wands and Air
to Swords, where the Pagan Tarot world usually
assigns Fire to the Swords and Air to the Wands. Neither
way is wrong - as she emphatically states, it is up to
the reader which system that they use, and that they
are better off coming to an understanding of one
system or another and staying with that, regardless of
which deck they are using.
From the book:
"My method
of reading cards draws upon the influence of the
natural theme of Witchcraft, so the archetypes reflect the
seasons of the earth, the Sabbats and mythic pattern of
the story of the Goddess and God of nature. because my
path is Green focused, that is to say, grounded in
Nature and the immanent Divine (not dealing with deities
of law, rulers, priesthoods or warriors), the way
that I read the cards is centered on the energies of
the earth."
Moura encourages the reader to think
about what Tarot reading is to them, and to develop a
Creed before beginning their studies.She does present a
short section on Tarot history, so that the reader has
some idea of how Tarot developed. I cannot agree with
all of the presentation, but it is well researched and
well presented.
Moura also discusses how to consecrate
a new deck, meditations and Pathworking and reader
related issues, such as charging for a reading. She lays
excellent groundwork here for a beginning reader - not
overwhelming them, but giving them a gentle "heads up" as to
issues that they may want to pay attention to in their
studies and practices.
Before I start discussing the card
presentations - I have another small quibble: Moura does not
include astrology, Qaballa or numerology in her
presentation. She does deal to a slight extent with numerology,
in that she discusses multiples of cards, but neither
the mundane nor the esoteric meaning of the numbers is
ever discussed.
Moura also downplays the role of the
Fool's journey in the Tarot. She agrees that the Tarot is
cyclic by nature, but she feels that although the
archetypes that make up the Major Arcana are valid, they
occur in our lives on a random basis. This is of course
true - but how can you know where you are without a
thorough study of the entire journey?
In her presentation
of the Major Arcana, she allots one page to each
card. Included in the presentation is a black and white
scan of the card from one of the five decks being used,
a short general discussion of the card, the upright
and reverse meanings and keywords. There is really no
discussion of the archetypal qualities of any of the cards.
It is also confusing to me that she has renamed the
Major Arcana - but there is no specific deck to go with
the names. They are as follows:
0 The Greenman/The Fool
1 The Witch/The Magician
2 Drawing Down The Moon/The HighPriestess
3 Earth Mother/Empress
4 The Horned God/The Emperor
5 Drawing Down The Sun/The Hierophant
6 The Lady and The Lord Of The Wild Wood/The Lovers
7 The Battle Wagon/The Chariot
8 The Crone/Strength
9 The Holly King/The Hermit
10 The Wheel Of The Year/The Wheel Of Fortune
11 The Standing Stone/Justice
12 The Oak King/The Hanged Man
13 The Lord Of Shadows/Death
14 The Sidhe/Temperance
15 Nature/The Devil
16 The Wild Hunt/The Tower
17 The Star/The Star
18 The Moon/The Moon
19 The Sun/The Sun
20 Harvest/Judgment
21 The World Tree/The World
The presentation of the four suits
is the same as above: one page per card, a black and
white scan, a short discussion of the card, upright and
reversed meanings and keywords. It is interesting to see
the emphasis put on assigning elemental qualities and
their positions on the Wheel Of The Year - the cycles of
of the seasons.
The interpretation for the Aces is
a bit different from the traditional Tarot
interpretation. They are still seen as seasonal, butt he
discussion around them is a bit confusing. Moura also reads
the Aces for timing, as do many readers. She does one
thing a bit different: if the Ace is upright, the timing
is assigned to the first month of the season. If the
Ace is in the reversed position, the timing is for the
second two months of the season indicated by the
suit.
Court cards remain very much the same as in traditional
Tarot: King, Queen, Knight and Page. They may be
interpreted as people in the Seeker's life, or they may
represent qualities or traits inherent in the Seeker.
Moura
does not read reversed cards as such, although she has
included interpretations for them. She encourages the
reader to intuit the meaning of the cards from
surrounding cards. She also has an interesting take on Tarot
spreads - that once the meaning of the position for the
card drawn has been determined, that the spread is not
necessary - that the cards could well be laid in a linear
manner and the reading would be what it should be. My
thoughts on this are that once in a spread, the cards
relate to the other cards in the spread - not just the
ones directly around them. A difference of opinion is
all this is - but it is a strong one!
Moura really
has put a great deal of effort into making this a book
that can be used as a tool for the study of Tarot.
Aside from well done explanations of each card, she has
put together charts with keyword meanings - and blank
charts of the same so that the student can copy them out
and fill them in with their own keywords as they
develop them.
Moura does a great deal of Tarot
interpreting by reading the cards in pairs. To simply show the
student how to do this is one thing, but she has spent an
enormous amount of time on a section devoted to showing how
each card in the deck (Major Arcana, Court Cards and
Pips) relate to every other card in the deck. I do not
believe I have ever seen this done before - it is an
absolutely amazing section of this book.
There is a short
section at the back of the book where several different
spreads are show: the Celtic Cross, Moura's own Tree of
Life spread, the Wheel Of The Year, Mystic and Need A
Change spreads, and a new version of the Elemental Spread
(my personal favorite amongst all spreads) using cards
representing the Elemental energies and cards that represent
hidden influences on these energies.
The very last pages
show how to use numerology in conjunction with the
Major Arcana to reveal certain influences in your
life.
While I may not agree with everything in this book (nor
should I!), I feel that the presentation was well thought
out, that the book was well written and that a
Wiccan/Pagan student of Tarot could learn much here. A
non-Wiccan/Pagan student would also find wisdom here, but might
have a harder time taking it out of the context it is
written in.
A last word ... I really enjoyed seeing the
different cards from the different decks used as examples in
this book. I love the Witches Tarot and the Buckland
Romani Tarot, and got to see scans from decks that I
don't currently own. Moura also makes the suggestion
that the student place the card they are studying from
their deck over the scan on the page - and that works
wonderfully well!
Bonnie Cehovet is Certified Tarot Grand Master, a professional Tarot reader with over ten years experience, a Reiki Master/Teacher and a writer. Bonnie has served in various capacities with the American Tarot Association, is co-founder of the World Tarot Network, and Vice President (as well as Director of Certification) for the American Board For Tarot Certification. She has had articles appear in the 2004 and 2005 Llewellyn Tarot Reader.
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