Tarot Book Review - The 2 Hour Tarot Tutor by Wilma Carroll

I must admit that for my first tarot book review this has ended up as a weird experience. Let me explain.

As you might have noticed I have lots of affiliate links to Amazon recommending tarot decks and books that you might like to explore, not only to guide you towards what’s available but also to gain some revenue from my site so that I can keep it going. It was due to one of these Amazon links that Wilma Carroll emailed me asking if I’d like to include a brief review of her book which she offered a link to. I happily agreed to this and it was then that I decided to ask her for a copy of her book so that I could write my own review.

I learnt to read tarot over 20 years ago and although I glance at various tarot books in bookstores I am, indeed, well out of the loop as far as modern material goes. I also started to read tarot in a very back to front manner, in as a much as I studied symbolism, religious beliefs and vedic numerology before I ever picked up a pack of tarot cards. I found that all that I had studied made the cards very easy to interpret and that the cards offered a very useful platform for my natural psychic abilities.

Hence I was never influenced by anything anyone else had written about tarot. I also first started reading tarot with a Marseille deck (now called an Ancient Marseille deck)which is non pictorial on the minor cards and thus was never influenced by the infamous Rider Waite deck, which is pictorial throughout.

As soon as I read the introduction in The 2-hour Tarot Tutor I could see that Wilma Carroll had approached the tarot via a very different route than myself. She had studied endless books, become confused, and used the Rider Waite Deck. My philosophy is “throw the Waite deck away and use your knowledge and intuition,” while hers is “Say what you see in the card”, based only on the pictures that Pamela Coleman-Smith created under Waite’s auspices.

So, this immediately means that The 2-hour Tarot Tutor could help fans of the Waite deck quickly gain confidence in this intuitive style of tarot reading.

The bulk of the book is somewhat anecdotal, with a fair amount of stories about Wilma’s personal experiences as a reader and her beliefs as to what one can or can’t do with the cards, such as whether or not one can accurately predict the timing of events or stock market trends. Wilma also says that she avoids addressing health issues for clients as she “is not a doctor”. There are also a couple of hefty tarot spreads to get your teeth into, but the actual interpretations of the cards, which are saved for the back of the book, are mainly standard Waite interpretations, with no information as to why the cards should mean those things except, maybe, through the pictures depicted.

Unfortunately Wilma and I’s opinions differ greatly as I do address many of the types of questions for my clients which she feels may not be appropriate to delve into, and I do get accurate answers. However, my consideration on this would be that as this book is addressed towards beginners, that she may be throwing a cautionary warning that is is not wise for an inexperienced reader to tackle certain types of question. Where Wilma and I do agree is on such issues as “Always trust what you see in the card, even if the querant disagrees,” various of the historical points on tarot and things like a disorganised spread can indicate a disorganised person.

My final point on The 2-hour Tarot Tutor would be that at 276 pages long it will certainly take you a lot longer than 2 hours to read the book, unless you’re a speed reader. There are certainly no quick fixes in this book, and some of the information takes time to assimilate, so a 2 hour cover to cover read won’t make you a tarot reader over night. It also depends on what you are looking for as far as learning tarot. Do you want to know how to conduct yourself as a reader, understand the history and superstitions surrounding tarot, or learn the actual cards? This book does not offer you any greater “formula” for reading the cards other than “look at the pictures”, and if you choose not to use the Waite cards then