Tarology (Divination)

Bear with me for a moment while I tell you a very quick story. More than a decade ago, I strolled into the Whitney art museum near my old home in NYC. They had a new installation, and I thought to see it. Upon arriving at the correct floor, here's what I saw: rows of seating that were facing a roped-off area in which a 20-something young lady in workout gear was on a yoga mat doing yoga. I was puzzled. There were a number of people sitting and watching intently, so I sat down to watch as well. After a few moments (and I swear to God I'm not making this up) the gentleman next to me leaned towards me and whispered "Powerful, isn't it?" To which I confusingly replied "But... what is it?" He whispered back, "It's by [some big name modern artist I've long-since forgotten]." I whispered back, again, "But... what is it trying to say?" The previously-chatty gentleman was suddenly far too intensely draw into the performance (?) to reply. I got up and moved on.There are things in this world that are pointless, nonsensical crap that, due to the person producing them, are celebrated. Paintings of a single flat color, if you will. If you're the guy I sat next at the Whitney museum, you're going to love this book. If you're anyone else, you're going to be thoroughly annoyed with yourself for purchasing this wildly ridiculous book.For certain, someone can say "It's deep and an artistic look, and you just don't get it." Okay. I will say, the same as one of the other reviewers of this book that gave it one star, I enjoyed other works by Mr. Enriquez. "Invisible Readings" was wonderful. So, obviously, I didn't go into this book remotely thinking it'd be a book on practical reading. I knew--or rather, I thought I knew--what I'd be getting into. But, yeah... this book is a whole other level of "Um... what?"If you need to find out a way to predict the temperature with a deck of cards, this book is for you. If you need to find out a way to take a non-complete tarot deck, assign letters to the 26 cards, and use the result to play a Boggle-like game where you take the letters and try to make a poem, this (in fact, most of, as a bulk of it centers around this type of approach) book is for you. If you think the two aforementioned ideas sound amazing, and would only be further excited if the explanations for them were written in a purposefully confusing, disjointed way, interrupted mid-sentence by random pearls of wisdom like "it is not so much that one must feel shame of being naked, but that nakedness has become obsolete"... then, oh boy, is this book for you.

What I like the most about this book is that it shows an unorthodox and creative way to read/use Tarot cards. There is a tremendous amount of thought behind this book. It is clear that the author studied the cards for a long time and played with them in many imaginative and poetic ways. At the same time there abundance of humor and the idea is not to take things too seriously. Part of the idea of this book is to encourage the reader to see solutions in unexpected places. This "seeing" is more like imagining solutions. I find great value in this approach and I think it can be fun and very useful.If you are looking for a book with clear-cut definitions for Tarot cards look elsewhere. If you are looking for a book that will open your mind and help you see things that you never imagined where there, this is probably a good book.I was hesitant to buy this book at first, it felt either silly or too intellectual (maybe because of the title), I am very happy that I decided to finally read it. This book added a new dimension to my understanding of Tarot cards. I look forward to other books by this author! Great stuff!

Who knows how many books come out every year on the Tarot. The vast majority of them seem to be the same book paraphrased over and over again-penned perhaps by robots sitting in La Maison Dieu. There are exceptions, of course. Alejandro Jodorowsky's book being one that comes to mind.None but this one, as far as I know, propose such exquisite and impossible ideas as this: "Our aim is not to arrive at an ultimate truth, but to stop, albeit briefly, at an exception made true." or "Instead of using a sequence of cards to arrive at some form of meaning, meaning-making will be the means through which we arrive at a sequence of cards, in a process that would have the Marseille Tarot shuffling itself."For those of us nourished by the milk of dada, surrealism, and all that followed, and all that came before .. for those of us who incline towards the artist's, or the poet's sensibility, this book is a delight. It is not, as another reviewer has said, a crib or an introduction to the Tarot. But it would be a great second book to read on the Tarot, wherever you may have begun.Thank you Enrique for your humor, irony, playfulness and brilliance!

I greatly enjoyed this book but I understand why others might find it puzzling or frustrating. Tarology is actually a book of poetry about the Tarot and vice versa. There are a couple of short essays within which EE expounds on his thoughts on the Tarot that contain some real bright gems but most of the text is absurdist Tarot inspired poetry. One could argue that the absurdist poems are actually highly instructive as they require the same creative listening skills needed to be a good poetical reader. Regardless, this book is a precious work of art and a fascinating cultural artifact but I can see how it might really confuse someone looking for a standard guidebook on Tarot.

EyeCorner Press has collected and published a healthy collection of EE's pataphysical tarot experiments and examples of his performance based poetic readings. TAROLOGY is a book to inspire and confound tarot readers.Unlike umpteen tarot-how-tos or recipe books on basic card reading and manipulation of the cards, TAROLOGY (ISBN 978-87-92633-12-5) is for the truly adept tarotist or tarososophist, struck by symbol glut or associationist salad into a state of occult ennui.If your readings seem staid to the point of boredom, a bit of serious perusal of Enrique Enriquez's TAROLOGY may nudge one out of subconscious doldrums into a wondrous state of poetic afflatus and may, at its very least, encourage tarotists to take lessons from poetry and the poets, those universal editors of the divine utterance or oracular tarot readings.

Belíssima obra.Não é um manual de tarô, nem busca ser algo perto de objetivo. É, na verdade, uma declaração poética sobre o tarô, feita por um autor que claramente enxerga por além dos lugares comuns frequentes em outras obras sobre o assunto.

Dans une suite de chapitres qui rappellent souvent le style provocateur et potache des avant-gardes littéraires les plus joueuses du XXe siècle - dadaistes, pataphysiciens, oulipiens - Enrique Enriquez chamboule les théories, pastiche les traités classiques de tarot divinatoire. Il démystifie et libère ainsi la lecture des tarots pour en faire un exercice d'exploration du possible à l'aide de techniques ludiques et poétiques : jeux de langue, jeux de mots et de formes, anagrammes.D'entrée, le tarot est considéré comme un objet pataphysique que l'auteur nous propose de travailler en utilisant par exemple un système arbitraire de symbolisme basé sur la forme des lettres, ou en appliquant diverses recettes facilitant l'élaboration d'histoires à partir de détails entrant en résonance.La forme est aussi réussie que le fond, et on se demande au final si on lit un livre pataphysique déguisé en manuel de tarot, ou un manuel de Tarot à la sauce pataphysique.

Incredible book!

Bello ma inutilmente complesso. Era possibile arrivare al nocciolo della questione senza tergiversare così tanto. Altri manuali (il Wirth su tutti) sanno arrivare molto meglio.

This book has nothing to offer anyone interested in the tarot. It is in my opinion a vanity project for the author.Had the book been presented as surreal poetry I might have had a different opinion.If you are curious about the tarot I would recommend Jodorowskys "Way of Tarot".