Untold Tarot: The Lost Art of Reading Ancient Tarot

by Caitlín Matthews

Discover forgotten divinatory skills, and learn to read the Tarot with confidence. Not just another Tarot book, Untold Tarot presents historic styles of reading little known in the modern era. It teaches traditional ways of reading used for pre-twentieth-century decks, drawing upon older cartomantic arts such as blending and pairing cards, reading lines, and following "line of sight" to piece together untold stories according to the direction in which the characters are facing. The time to rediscover these lost skills is ripe, and the practical and personal approach presented here empowers you to read in your own fluid style and develop a full palette of skills. The book also includes a selection of card spreads drawn from traditional French and Italian sources, plus methods of reading cards based on the author's own extensive research.

Genres: Tarot, Divination, Nonfiction, History, Occult, Spirituality, 21st Century

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Caitlín Matthews is a writer, singer and teacher whose ground-breaking work has introduced many to the riches of our western spiritual heritage.

She is acknowledged as a world authority on Celtic Wisdom, the Western Mysteries and the ancestral traditions of Britain and Europe. She is the author of over 50 books including Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, a study of Divine Feminine in Gnostic, Jewish and Christian thought and King Arthur’s Raid on the Underworld, a new translation and study of the Welsh poet Taliesin’s extraordinary poem, itself a major cross-roads of British mythology.

Caitlín was trained in the esoteric mystery traditions through the schools founded by Dion Fortune, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and Gareth Knight. Her shamanic vocation emerged early in her ability to sing between the worlds and to embody spirits. She has worked in many of the western traditions with companions upon the path including R.J.Stewart. Like him, she teaches the many strands of the ancestral European traditions. She specializes in teaching traditional European spirit-consultation oracles where the diviner draws directly upon the spirits of nature for answers and in the use of the voice to sound the unseen. Caitlín has been instrumental in revealing the ancestral heritage of the Western traditions through practical exploration of the mysteries as well as through scholarly research. Her teachings are couched in a firm historical and linguistic framework, with respect to the original context of the teachings, but never loses sight of the living traditions of these teachings which can be explored through direct application to their spiritual sources.

Trained as an actress, Caitlín is in demand as a storyteller and singer. She appears frequently on international radio and television, and was the song-writer and Pictish language originator for the Jerry Bruckheimer film King Arthur. With John Matthews, her partner, who was historical consultant on the film, she shared in the 2004 BAFTA award given to Film Education for the best educational CD Rom: this project introduced school-children to the life and times of King Arthur. She and John are both concerned with the oral nature of storytelling and its ability to communicate the myth at a much deeper level than of the commercial booktrade. This is apparent in their forthcoming project, The Story Box. For Caitlín, her books are merely the tip of a much bigger oral iceberg which is her teaching.

With her partner, John Matthews, and with Felicity Wombwell , she is co-founder of The Foundation for Inspirational and Oracular Studies, which is dedicated to the sacred arts that are not written down. Their FíOS shamanic training programme teaches students the healing arts as well as hosting masterclasses with exemplars of living sacred traditions. Caitlín has a shamanic practice in Oxford dedicated to addressing soul sickness and ancestral fragmentation, as well as helping clients find vocational and spiritual direction. Her soul-singing and embodiment uniquely bring the ancient healing traditions to everyday life.

Caitlín’s other books include Singing the Soul Back Home, Mabon and the Guardians of Celtic Britain, The Psychic Protection Handbook, and Celtic Devotional. She is co-author, with John Matthews, of the Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom and Encyclopaedia of Celtic Myth and Legend. Her books have been translated into more than nineteen languages from Brazil to Japan.

The author lives in Oxford with her husband and son in a kind of book-cave or library, whichever you will. They share their home with a white cat and a black cat.

Reviews

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lenormand expert Caitlín Matthews presents a guide to reading with the Tarot de Marseille system, based on numerology and suit correspondences.

"We cannot read the early tarots as we read the modern ones. We need to use other, older skills. However, this doesn't mean that we won't be able to read tarot for modern needs and questions: the cards will still speak eloquently to you." (page 95)

Chapter 1 gives a very good history of Tarot, tracing its roots back to Italian card gaming. Whenever authors incorrectly claims tarot originated in ancient Egypt, I am immediately skeptical of everything else that they have to say. If they also state that the Celtic cross spread was developed by the ancient Celts rather than A. E. Waite, then I put the book down -- or close the browser -- and walk away.

Chapter 2 covers the trumps (Major Arcana). Each card is given a two-page spread. The name of each card is given in French, Italian, and English. There is a full page of description, including a historical context. The author provides the keywords and personalities related to the card. There is also a quote that embodies the card's meaning. The Tarot de Marseille meanings for the trumps are very similar to the Rider-Waite-Smith meanings.

Chapter 3 covers the pips (Minor Arcana). It explains the number and suit associations. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

Chapter 4 covers the court cards. Keywords for the personality of each court card are given.

Chapters 5, 6, and 7 address how to read tarot cards. The author uses older and cartomacy-based techniques. There are several different methods and spreads. The section on basic skills is fantastic. The author also explains directionality, which is a crucial element for Marsielle style readings.

This book features a variety of really beautiful Marseille decks. The decks shown in this book are listed on page 220, but sadly not all of them are available for purchase.

[Marius · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must have for anybody, who wants to read the Tarot de Marseille pips. Caitlin Matthews does an excellent job interpreting the minor arcana cards. She approaches them from a numerological and suit interpretation style rather than an open reading style. If you are familiar with Lenormand readings, then this will be familiar to you. This may sound rather mechanical, but not until you see the debt and range each suit can mean, masterly put in tables by Caitlin. The complicated court cards are also addressed with similar cut through analysis. There are various spreads but a 21 card spread akin to the Lenormand "Grand Tableau" is worth a mention. Terrific. This book is densely written, so you may need to read it twice to get the full scope of the information within it. I would definitely recommend this book for anybody, who is serious about TdMs, regardless of the reading style you may have.

This book can be purchased on Amazon; https://amzn.to/3C5u5qd

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

So interesting. More to say later.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic and approachable guide to the Tarot de Marseilles, which many neophyte tarotists often find very intimidating. In response to the common difficulties that most cite with the Marseilles tarot (e.g. learning to read pips, memorizing numerology, etc.) Matthews offers several avenues to learn and internalize the Minor Arcana (even including sight reading of the visual flourishes often given on the pip cards), and encourages us to use the system(s) that best match our own preferences. She also covers a common avenue that I even admit to using in the past, which is mapping the standard RWS meanings onto the Minor Arcana cards.

What I also really liked was her discussion of reading the Marseilles deck in spreads, covering blending cards, using directionality of the Court cards, and the use of spreads ranging from minimalist three-card spreads (like what Joav Ben-Dov discussed in his awesome book The Marseille Tarot Revealed), to sprawling, massive spreads that can take up a whole table, used historically with decks like the Visconti-Sforza.

A really great touch is her use of differing decks to illustrate the Major Arcana and the spreads she discusses, illustrating the incredible diversity of Marseille decks over the centuries - from the earliest Visconti and Jean Noblet decks, to the common Nicholas Conver deck, to modern interpretations like Ryan Edward's Playing Marseilles and Lynyrd-Jym Narcisco's Tarot de Maria Celia.

All in all, this was a great read, and a great window into an area of tarot often not touched upon by other books. For people interested in learning the Marseille deck, this is one of the best books you can get.

[Yve · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are hundreds of quick references for Smith-Waite-style decks, but considerably less for the Tarot de Marseille and similar. Untold Tarot fills that gap.

Matthews gives a page-long cheat sheet for each of the trumps, based on the Conver Tarot de Marseille. She also gives two alternate ways of interpreting the pips. The first is very similar to playing-card-cartomancy, as far as the general meanings of numbers and the interactions of the suits (she links Spades-Swords, Hearts-Cups, Clubs-Batons, Diamonds-Coins). The second is a numerology scheme based on the trump sequence. This is akin to the system from Jodorowsky's The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, but presented here in a handily summarized and condensed form. There's a nice table of possible characteristics of the four suits, and also of note is a complete list of the 1700s card meanings found by Pratesi. So this is all information that you can find elsewhere, but it's nice to have it all collected in a single volume that is easy to refer to.

The book also includes a sampling of possible specific meanings for cards and combinations, and explanations of spreads in practice. While it's impossible to cover every possible interpretation, this can be helpful for a learner. There are three adaptations of 18th century spreads (all of which were new to me), as well as a collection of spreads of Matthews' own invention.

As I've now come to expect from Tarot books, the prose is a bit confused and full of sweeping, grandiloquent, self-contradictory statements (and some plain falsehoods). This doesn't stop it from being a nice general reference.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a book likely to have a large audience overall, but if you read or want to read Marseille-style tarot decks (decks without scenes on the pip/Minor Arcana cards), you may find this to be useful as all get-out. Matthews discusses ways of interpreting tarot cards that emphasize the practical more than the esoteric or purely psychological. Without scenes to set the tone for the pip cards, readers must rely on number and suit to read these cards, and Matthews shows various ways to do that. She includes some spreads, but she also shows how to read cards in a line or a tableau, methods that will be familiar to readers who also use Lenormand cards. She uses older names for the suits (Batons and Deniers instead of Wands and Coins/Pentacles) and for some of the trumps. I thought the book was pretty dense, and I'll need to reread parts of it, but I was delighted to learn about all these new (old!) techniques.

[Chadwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this book is pretty solid, but it really takes off with its discussion of the pips. I am not a traditionalist reader of the tarot, but her presentation of old-fashioned approaches to pips is very well presented and useful. It's one of my very favorite texts on the topic.

[John Of Oxshott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a splendid little book published on high quality glossy paper and illustrated with some superb colour reproductions of old and new tarots. I love looking at beautiful tarot cards like these and it makes the book a joy to read and re-read. It’s also a very functional guide for anyone who prefers reading with ancient tarots such as the Tarot de Marseille. The author brushes aside the layers of esoteric correspondences imposed by secret societies and digs into the roots of taromancy to bring the focus back onto the cards and their traditional meanings.

“We don’t need to read them with the help of the zodiac or the Tree of Life: this is surely like reading a French novel with the help of a Russian dictionary. Some people may see the jettisoning of esoteric methods of reading as a betrayal of ‘original methods’ and spurn common-sense reading methods as being ‘too literal.’ But the ability to read the signs around us is a skill that we apply pragmatically.”

She attributes to the cards various meanings and keywords, many of which are derived from the pictorial representations of the cards and some of which, in the case of the minor arcana, are derived from numerology and the character of the suits. In fact she gives more than one method of reading the cards “pragmatically.”

I found some of her explanations confusing because she blends multiple techniques and methods into her exposition of what specific card combinations mean. Sometimes she uses very abstract vocabulary to describe what she is doing, giving it an academic and, dare I say it, esoteric character. I had to read her text very carefully and methodically before I was happy that I’d understood her points. But one thing I liked very much about this book is the emphasis on using the cards to tell a story. She is interested not so much in the meaning of individual cards as in how the cards work together to reveal a “distinctive landscape” that yields “perceptions beyond the eye.”

She gives plenty of examples, so if the abstract language is a bit off-putting, there is also enough of what she calls “common sense” to ease you into this method of working with the cards.

This approach influences the kinds of layout she uses. These differ from modern spreads that often give each card a pre-defined purpose. She lets the cards tell their own story. I particularly like what she calls The Fountain Spread of interconnecting triads. “In each case, the underlying cards of each triad’s base speak about, describe or amplify the card that makes the apex of the triangle. Try it for yourself.”

Encouraging us to try it for ourselves is something she is very good at. In particular she urges “Always follow up your reading with a report as to what befell. This way, you can check the accuracy of your own reading.”

Good advice. Hindsight is, in my experience, one of the best ways of learning what the cards foretold.

Like many tarot books, this opens with a short history of the tarot, but it is more interesting than most and packed with details which I hadn’t read before or had forgotten. One small quibble I had is that she persistently misspells the name of Pamela Colman Smith. She isn’t the only one to do so but it’s annoying. To be fair, though, I’ve never heard anyone pronounce Caitlín correctly even though she has given a guide to its pronunciation in her profile on Amazon.

“My name is pronounced Kath'LEEN, for those who are wondering. NOT CATE'lin.”

Good to know! I urge anyone with a YouTube channel to take note.

[Sasha Wolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a beautifully produced book with high-quality illustrations and probably the best-quality paper I have come across. It contains a wealth of information, of which I found the historical section the most useful. The section on the trumps is also good, although it could have been improved by choosing decks for the illustration that more closely match the points being highlighted in the text. The pips section also needs more illustrations to make it truly useful, in my opinion. There is a good selection of spreads and reading techniques.

I did not rate it more highly mainly because it had more of a "beginner" character than I was expecting from the publicity; although almost all of my experience has been with modern decks, none of the techniques or interpretations were new to me. It would, however, make an excellent compendium for someone new to Tarot who has chosen one of the pre-Golden Dawn packs as their starter deck.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Informative book, and a good reference one to keep nearby while doing readings. It was a little to advance for me, I still class myself as a beginner at Tarot. But I learnt some tidbits like if a card is looking at the card to its right, theres a meaning there. I love that it's dealing with olde tarot and it's an art that is dying with all the new Tarot decks out there, was alot of history for the cards and anyone interested in that kind of thing will love this book. Very in depth spreads as well but I think I will stick to the modern meanings I've become to used to them. I skimmed read last half of book, as like I say it's a good reference one.
I'd recommend it for people wanting to deepen their knowledge of the Tarots

[Granny · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the one hand, I think it's wonderful that the author took the time and effort to research and write this book. On the other hand, I might not be the right person to read it.

I've been reading Tarot for over 50 years now and I thought I would be entranced by secrets I had not known. But there is so much complexity to the spreads (and so many cards!), that I felt overwhelmed.

Maybe it's time and experience, but when I read for someone else, I usually pull 5 to 7 cards and I get all the information I need. I have found that too much information only muddies the waters and confuses my sitter. Less is very definitely more.

That's my experience, right or wrong. Your experience may vary.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on the Marseille or Pips tradition.
I especially like her Cartomancer style of reading as opposed to the Spiritual Soul Seeking so often employed in Tarot books.
What I enjoyed:
-Chapters on the Courts were very in depth without being overwhelming or repetitive
-Spreads, directional ques and reading techniques, these are all taken from Lenormand but it works for getting to the crux of a reading and allows for a creativity of sorts when the movement suddenly changes direction.
-Lots of information on the Minors
Overall a great book to read from front to back and can also be employed as a cook book to refer back to.

[Sue Stauffer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a wealth of information but maybe a little too much. There are numerous ways to interpret the cards but so much it can be overwhelming at times. I see this a lot with tarot books. The author obviously knows their stuff but a bit of self editing would go a long way in making these methods more user friendly. The historical parts are interesting and she provides some diverse layouts. A good book for anyone looking for meanings on the pip cards to read classic tarot like the Marseilles you'll just have to resist trying to learn every option at once.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of interesting techniques for reading TdM. I would have liked a little more explanation on how different combinations of correspondences resulted in the meanings she gave, but the spreads and reading techniques are amazing.

[Oliver Ho · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best tarot books I’ve read so far. Dense with information in some parts. It will require a few readings.

[Rute Sobreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it

[Joanne Sprott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matthews has such a depth of esoteric knowledge that I knew this book would be worth the read. I use it as a reference for new (to me) takes on the cards based on her historical analysis.