The Kabbalah, long rumoured to be linked to the Tarot, is shown to come from the same sources, and originally had eight, not ten, sefiroth. The visual evidence alone is overwhelming: the mystery of where the Tarot comes from has been definitively solved.
Editor's Thoughts:
This book about the Tarot is fascinating if you are interested in unlocking the secrets hidden in them. I generally use and teach from the Rider-Waite deck because it is full of Jungian symbolism, kabala, astrology, and more. However, this book has opened my eyes to more. I found this a difficult book to read because it isn't organized in a way that makes it easy, I'm guessing on purpose.
Many years ago, I was a student of the teachings of Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, et al and I found his style of writing reminiscent of that, only easier to understand. I am a fan of Rumi and Swift makes a lot of references to the Tarot and Rumi. Other correlations, to Sufism, the Babylonian cylinders, Gurdjieff, and Taoism, plus others paints a deep and rich picture of the power of the Tarot to help us with deep self-understanding and personal growth.
I would love it if this book's illustrations were in color and bigger since visuals are such an important part of the learning.
About the Author:
I am a native of St. Catharines, Ontario. I studied humanities at Brock University for two years, and then transferred to the University of Toronto, where my reading included Sufism and Classical Persian (the latter under the late G.M. Wickens, translator of Persian Classics for UNESCO), and from which I graduated. My exposure to the Gurdjieff teachings dates from my sixteenth year, and it led to an interest in Sufism.
I have dual Canadian and UK citizenship, and I lived for some 13 years in London, working in a series of jobs: eventually in the editing departments of various publishers or doing freelance editing and proofreading and, finally, as Editor of the Services Resettlement Bulletin for the Ministry of Defence. I studied Arabic in evening classes at what was then the Polytechnic of Central London School of Languages.
A short novel I wrote in the 1980s about a Britain of the not-too-distant future under nuclear attack had fallout shelters and the wisdom of having them as prominent themes. It was eventually published by a small press in northern Ontario. Unfortunately they did little to promote it, few copies were sold, and it is now out of print.
In Canada again I pursued my interest in alternative medicine, especially Traditional Chinese Medicine. Like so many others I had to deal with the circumstances produced by the so-called "Common Sense Revolution" of the Ontario Conservatives. In due course I resumed freelance publishing work.
Articles I researched and wrote on international local government appeared on websites run out of London by someone I worked for briefly when I lived there. A graduate student at Cambridge University told me that my explanations of certain issues were the clearest he had ever read. Some of those articles have been reproduced elsewhere.
I score extraordinarily high on clerical perception tests. A way to knowingly benefit from this continues to elude me.
The contents of Mirror of the Free are the product of my own independent and privately pursued research over a number of years.
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing; Reprint edition (November 16, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1846944198
ISBN-13: 978-1846944192
Available from: Dodona Books and other retail and online booksellers
