(reprinted)
see the full issue as pdf at the Tarot Guild of Aotearoa website
T A R O T P A G E S
M a r c h 2 0 1 4 — Issue 116
BOOK REVIEW : TAROT The Open Reading : By Yoav Ben-Dov
If you practice and love tarot, this is a book you must acquire! Buy, beg or borrow the book. But I warn you, if borrowing, you will quickly wish to buy your own copy to read and re-read.
The author is a reader himself and so much of his practice shines through his writing. Many good and interesting tarot books have been written by people who have a lot of information to impart about tarot’s infrastructure, history, or metaphysics. But they aren’t tarot readers. This book writes of tarot’s mythology and philosophy, but above all, gifts us solid and original intelligence about the ‘how-to’ of reading. The combination of tarot theory and practice is most impressive.
Ben-Dov was taught in Paris in the 1980s by Alejandro Jodorowsky who created with Philippe Camoin, the Restored Tarot de Marseille in the 1990s. Camoin comes from the family that inherited Conver’s Printing House, publishers of a well-known version of the Marseille deck – the 1760 Conver.
Ben-Dov has since restored his own version of this deck – the CBD Tarot de Marseille – which our Tarot Pages highlighted in July and August 2013 – when his E-Book was published. Now we have the hard-copy book. The CBD version of the Conver deck is a joy to work with – infused with clean lines and colours that give a modern ‘feel’ to the old images. I enjoy working/playing with these elegant cards very much. Now the book brings them alive!
As an English speaker, I am excited and enthusiastic about this book, partly because its European outlook is refreshing in a sea of American and English commentators. Writings about tarot published in the 21st century have often become stale and horribly commercialised. Many books are regurgitating 20th century ideas that have been repeated over and over for the last 30 or more years. (The rise of the Internet has only enhanced this consumerist, superficial trend).
For some time now the English Waite/Smith deck and its clones seem to have become the ‘norm’ when interpreting tarot. Like an imperialist hangover, the English-speaking world appears to have taken possession of tarot theory and the art of reading. Of course there have been good books here and there, but for me so far, the best and most innovative thing about 21st century tarot has been the beautiful tarot art created and shared world-wide.
There was a real breakthrough when Jean-Michel David’s book Reading the Marseille Tarot was published in 2011. At last the tarot world was given a new look at the older decks, with really great insights about reading from the cultural, historical and metaphysical aspects of the cards. And now Ben-Dov’s book opens and stretches our reading practice further and beyond.
Dr Ben-Dov studied Physics and Philosophy of Science at Tel Aviv University and holds a doctorate on the philosophy of Quantum Mechanics from Paris-13 University. His analysis of the practice of reading the cards is brilliant, and yet he speaks in a clear readable voice that carries us along and through his book. We are given simple – seemingly obvious except none had been written before – techniques to try. I loved for example what he says about shuffling the deck. His information on numbers and colour are productive and helpful. I devoured the chapter on the Majors where he speaks of chaos and order – such original insights and yet useful too! The book’s layout is crisp and clean.
‘Everything is a sign’ he repeats, reminding us that tarot is a visual, symbolic language. The one quibble I have, is his use of the pronoun ‘he’ throughout, despite the explanation the author gives for this usage. Especially as later he discusses how gender is symbolic in the cards. I think about 90% or more of tarot readers and lovers are women, I would have liked a little more thoughtfulness about that masculine pronoun. Language too, is ‘a sign’. The use of ‘man’ to mean ‘human’ doesn’t cut it for me anymore.
I have been reading tarot since the 1970s and teaching tarot since the late ‘80s, and this book is inspiring and exciting me. Sharing some of Dr. Ben-Dov’s insights and wisdom with my students and clients, will be a pleasure and a privilege.
There are many rave reviews of this book on the Amazon website http://www.amazon.com/dp/1492248991
Mary K. Greer has written a review worth reading on her blog http://marygreer.wordpress.com/
Yoan Ben-Dov has generously made his deck and basic interpretations freely available for use for non-commercial purposes via the Creative Commons concept
https://cbdtarot.com/download/
Yoav Ben-Dov’s website is
https://cbdtarot.com
We have the book in the Tarot Guild library!
Fern Mercier
P u b l i s h e d b y T h e T a r o t G u i l d o f A o t e a r o a : E d i t o r U w e T i e t z
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