====== Notes & Thoughts ======
===== Introduction =====
My introduction to Tarot happened one sunny afternoon in 2015, while standing in line at Barnes & Noble. My then-fiancé (now husband) encouraged me to buy the cards, after he saw me playing with the [[tarot:reviews:runningpress]] at the register. I played around with the kit a few times, but didn't really find it very interesting beyond the initial novelty of something I was taught as a child was necessarily satanic and evil.

I discovered Robert M. Place's [[tarot:reviews:alchemical]] in 2017 by what I can only see as kismet. I came across images of this deck while searching for something online, and I was immediately drawn to the esoteric woodcut style of Robert's artwork. I bought the deck, which comes with a little white book, but I didn't use it seriously until the next year, when I finally bought a copy of his in-depth Tarot book, [[https://robertmplacetarot.com/the-tarot-magic-alchemy-hermeticism-and-neoplatonism/|The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism]].

Robert's detailed breakdown of the evolution of sorcery, magic, and occultism in the west created a foundation for me to start investigating more deeply the various folk beliefs and spiritism of my American and European ancestors, and it's through this research that I've developed my own view of the Tarot and its usefulness in modern life. I definitely recommend Robert's book if you're interested in learning more about Tarot and the history of magic, with less of the ahistorical, metaphysical narrative that's common with many New Age authors and the original author of modern Tarot theory, Arthur E. Waite.

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