Book excerpt: Highly innovative work presenting a piercing interpretation of the tarot in terms of Jungian psychology. Through analogy with the humanities, mythology and the graphic arts, the significance of the cards is related to personal growth and individuation. The major arcana becomes a map of life, and the hero's journey becomes something that each individual can relate to the symbolism of the cards and therefore to the personal life. "Sallie Nichols, in her profound investigation of Tarot, and her illuminated exegesis of its pattern as an authentic attempt at enlargement of the possibilities of human perceptions has . .. performed an immense service for analytical psychology. Her book enriches and helps us to understand the awesome responsibilities laid upon us by consciousness .... On top of it all, she has done this not in an arid fashion, but as an act of knowing derived from her own experience of Tarot and its strangely translucent lights. As a result her book not only lives but quickens life in whomever it touches." --from the Introduction by Laurens van der Post