Published by Llewellyn, 2005

Reviewed by Serena Brink

The complete tarot reader is an essential book for all beginners and a treasure trove for all tarot enthusiasts! It can be used as a tarot text book that provides accessible guidance for those who wish to make the transition from dabbler to expert tarot reader.  It is also a well written source book for exciting, innovative and creative ways of exploring the tarot and its system of symbolic knowledge. This type of book is long overdue. Too many tarot books concentrate on the interpretation of tarot cards but do not teach the skills that can enable tarot enthusiasts to make full use of the tarot's ability to stimulate intuition, self-knowledge and creative thinking abilities. When you know how to access all the tarot's capabilities it becomes a valued companion on life's journey, rather than just a divinatory tool.

As the title claims, the book starts with information essential to beginners such as how to choose a deck, create a tarot journal, interpret the pips, court cards and major arcana, and read tarot cards for yourself and others. The scope of the book is complete up to an intermediate level that includes more advanced reading techniques such as how to interpret reversals, use the tarot as a timing device, understand card dignities, and do large scale interpretations.

Teresa Michelsen uses a process orientated approach to learning the tarot and includes study goals, exercises and ways of measuring your progress in each chapter. If you don't have access to a tarot teacher, this book will enable you to learn on your own. Early chapters focus on increasing your familarity with the tarot so that you can identify important symbols and develop concepts and keywords for each tarot card using your intuition. Exercises include free association, storytelling and interpretating cards in the context of a spread.

Although tarot reading skills are important, understanding the tarot symbolic system is essential if you want to study the tarot and find out why some claim that it is the key to the universe.  Chapters 3 & 4; 6, 7 & 8 concentrate on the relationship the tarot system has with the medieval elements, numerology and astrology. Knowledge of all these relationships is essential when developing an in-depth understanding of the tarot as a symbolic system.

The chapters on court cards teach you how to use them as significators in readings, choose them to represent aspects of your personality, interpret court cards in readings in a variety of different ways as well as increasing your awareness of the role that clothing, body language and expressions play in the tarot court. By the end of these chapters the somewhat enigmatic court cards will reveal their secrets.

The appendices include a tarot dictionary, lists of correspondences and the medieval game of Tarocchi.

There is enough material in this book to keep a tarot student happy for at least a year. I would recommend keeping a tarot journal to record the results of the many exercises in this book and to mark your progress.