Book excerpt: Joan Bunning's The Big Book of Tarot offers a complete course on how to use the tarot cards for personal guidance. The author communicates the basic depth and beauty of each card and shows how the cards trigger psychological projection, enhance intuition, and improve communication with the Inner Guide. While there are countless books devoted to tarot, what sets Joan Bunning apart from every other writer on the subject is her ability to take a rather complicated esoteric system and break it down into clear, manageable, and easily learned parts. The lessons Bunning offers cover the basics and then move gradually into more advanced concepts. Exercises and sample responses for each lesson help you learn and practice. The book includes: Lessons on how to consider one card by itself, how to look for card pairs, and how to create the "story" of a reading A convenient reference section that contains two pages of information for each card including a picture from the popular Waite deck, a description, keywords, action phrases, and suggestions for cards with similar and opposite meanings An exploration of the meaning of reversed cards and how to work with them to give tarot readings a natural flow of high points and low points without abrupt transitions Practical insights on how to work with and interpret a wide variety of tarot spreads Note to the Reader: This book consists of material drawn from the author's many previous books as well as new material.