Read Like The Devil: The Essential Course in Reading the Marseille Tarot

by Camelia Elias

Overview

This book is the first in a trilogy of books based on courses in cartomancy under the signature Read Like the Devil. It is packed with examples of student work and teacher feedback. Camelia Elias lives up to her reputation of a cartomantic martial artist, taking no prisoners. Her cuts through misunderstandings and misinterpretations are clean, leaving the serious student of cartomancy with a sense of wonder. The aim is to establish a top-level cartomancy that gives the possibility for all the students of the Marseille Tarot to reach the level of competence where they are beyond comparison, in a league of their own.

This course book offers rigorous deconstructions and revisions of traditional approaches to reading the Marseille Tarot, establishing a unique, oracular voice that's efficient, convincing, and poetic. The fortuneteller that emerges from these pages is analytical, deductively logical, and contextually situated. Her Read like the Devil method fuses the obvious with an incisively penetrating Zen clarity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788792633668
Publisher:	Eyecorner Press
Publication date:	01/03/2021
Series:	Divination
Edition description:	Read Like the Devil Trilogy Vol I ed.
Pages:	366
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Camelia Elias, PhD & Dr.Phil., is a former university professor. After 20 years in academia, she left her career to pursue her interests in teaching and writing on the philosophy and practice of reading cards. She works with contemplative arts, oracular language, and martial arts cartomancy and Zen at her own school, Aradia Academy.

Table of Contents

Not for entertainment · 9

Foundations · 21

Function: voice, gesture, tone, rhyme and rhythm · 22

Form: court cards and pips · 59

Agency: point of view, storytelling, rulership, timing · 109

Subject: love, health, work, money · 157

Process: hot and cold cards, predictions and investments · 203

Cartomantic arts in radiance · 237

The art of looking: connecting 3 to 7 cards · 249

The art of accepting: mirrors in 9 to 17 cards · 269

The art of inquiring: straight and crooked paths · 295

The art of relaxing: in council with 13 cards · 325

The not-to-be-denied heart · 351

References · 359

Acknowledgments & permissions · 362

Editorial Reviews

Read Like The Devil is broken up into two main sections. The first is foundations: function, form, agency, subject, and process. It shows you how to look at the cards, in relation to the other cards and especially in relation to the question at hand. It doesn't tell you what the cards mean. Instead, it teaches you to see what the cards show when they're on the table. It does most of this with three-card readings - most questions don't need more than three cards to answer.

The second section is titled "Cartomantic Arts in Radiance" - how to do a reading. It begins with this statement: "When a sitter comes in to ask 'what is your prediction, madam?' the reader must show her skin in the game. Is her skin glowing, or dull?"

So much of giving a good reading is telling a good story, based on what the cards show, in relation to the question. The book gives many, many examples of good readings - and also of not-so-good readings. For those who are just starting to do public readings, those examples alone are worth the price of the book.

Reading this book, I think I know what it must have been like to sit in one of Dr. Elias' university lectures. Here's the material, here's how you use it, and now here's a story that illustrates what we're talking about. Meanwhile I'm taking notes as fast as I can, because I'm definitely going to have to go over this three or four more times before it all sinks in.

I highly recommend it to intermediate and advanced readers who are looking to take the next step forward in their divination. I'll end with this quote, which I think sums up the book better than I can: "In divination the only thing that's real is the question, whether from the heart or some distorted illusion of the mind. The job of the fortuneteller is to answer it, regardless."

- JOHN BECKETT, Under the Ancient Oaks, Patheos.

Read Like the Devil: The Essential Course in Reading the Marseille Tarot by Camelia Elias is like taking a master class - all of her TdM teachings rolled into one place. It occurred to me that her samurai sword reading style works quite well with Marco Benedetti's Visconti-Sforza homage deck - streamlined, minimalist, no frills and no nonsense.

- Sherryl Smith, Tarot Heritage

From the Publisher