A Reference book on the Crowley-Harris Tarot; a book of letters between Lady Freida Harris & Aleister Crowley during WW2, a self-help manual on reading the tarot cards.
You must be logged in to post a review.
Please log in
2
People Reviewed This Item
By str84ever
Apr 29, 2012
Gerald Yorke gave permission to Marlene Packwood to use excerpts from the letters of Lady Frieda Harris to Aleister Crowley. In 1982 she began her research at the Warburg Institute in London where the paintings of Lady Frieda Harris are housed as well as her correspondence. Self publishing is not always easy to get right but after 3 revisions Marlene Packwood has managed to produce an excellent book which sheds light on the production of the Tarot Cards created by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris. Marlene also manages to give an understandable and creditable interpretation of the cards based on the designs. She also assists the student of Tarot by producing spreads and layouts and some instruction too. It was Marlene Packwood's quest to elevate Lady Frieda Harris and her importance to the conception of this Tarot. Through the letters the reader can see the struggle and hard work which was entailed throughout World War 2 to paint and publish the cards. They are there for all to... More > see today but it was an uphill journey to get there.< Less
This book is in serious need of an editor. Many typos, and poor layout in the correspondence section. The unjustified margins make for a sloppy look, and several passages from the letters of Lady Harris are repeated, for no apparent reason. Although it is convenient to have many of these letters in a (somewhat) narrative form, most of the Crowley-Harris correspondence is available elsewhere online, and the author adds little in the way of scholarship, seeming to draw her conclusions solely from the contents of the letters. As a cursory overview of the Crowley-Harris relationship, it works fine, but do not expect a thorough examination of the creation of Lady Harris' original paintings. The book seems to have quite another purpose, and the story of the paintings, told through the letters, is nothing more than a lengthy introduction. The majority of the book is devoted to the author's own interpretation of the Tarot cards, both upright and averse. The explanations for these cards are... More > confined to one page per card, laid out in a jarring typography that capitalizes the beginning of each line, (again unjustified), regardless of where it appears in the sentence. The card interpretations are presumably from the author's own experience with Tarot reading, (a picture of her at the back of the book inexplicably shows her reading with a different deck altogether). The interpretations generally follow a 'mainstream' approach to the meaning of the cards, and seem to be sincerely considered, but generally from a practical and psychological point of view. They can only be judged as to their usefulness by each reader for themselves. That being said, while the author offers a competent analysis of the cards, there are no revelations here, and this ground has been covered in half a dozen books on the Thoth deck.< Less
