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Psychic Tarot: Using Your Natural Psychic Abilities to Read the Cards
Learn to read tarot cards using your own psychic skills, and gain new levels of inspiration, guidance, and insight This friendly tarot guidebook features a wealth of creative exercises that are compatible with any deck, plus sample readings, spreads, and compelling firsthand accounts from a seasoned reader and teacher to start you on the path to trusting your intuition in reading the cards. Along the way, you'll learn a variety of original intuitive exercises designed to awaken your psychic abilities, such as Light and Shadow, Turning Point, and Hidden Question. Also included are simple techniques for doing energy readings, plus instructions on keeping a synchronicity journal and using tarot as a tool to communicate with spirit guides or loved ones on the other side.
240 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 14, 2019
Superfluous and superficial
Nancy Antenucci may or may not be a good psychic Tarot reader. She is definetely a shitty author. Her "book" is like a blog post. Superficial, using coloquial language, with lengthy examples the reader could have done without. On 200 pages, a wide array of topics are discussed - badly. For instance, even though this book is called psychic Tarot, a lot of spreads are discussed at length. still, even this - being one of the largest sections in the book - is done better by Dusty White in his book "Advanced Tarot Secrets".
She blabs about boundaries and stuff, but while her advice is sound, it is no more indepth than what you would find on the website of a selfhelp organisation. Too short, and not even that focussed on "psychic" tarot reading.
After finishing this book, I am not convinced that Nancy Antenucci is a fully sane, intelligent person. To be honest, her writing suggests that if she does experience these visions, she does not have the capacity to put her methods and experience into a sensible context. Than again, a fraud would probably try somewhat harder to be convincing? I don't know.
this is a bad book for beginners, because it does not explain tarot. It is a bad book for more advanced readers who want to ne psychics, because you could probably find more information about psychicness on the internet on a random witchy blog. It is a poor book in general beckause it does not know what its main mission is.
I would recommend Holistic Tarot and Advanced Tarot Secrets for most of the subjects adressed in this book. For more magical aspects, the website "Quareia" is an excellent resource.
Nancy Antenucci may or may not be a good psychic Tarot reader. She is definetely a shitty author. Her "book" is like a blog post. Superficial, using coloquial language, with lengthy examples the reader could have done without. On 200 pages, a wide array of topics are discussed - badly. For instance, even though this book is called psychic Tarot, a lot of spreads are discussed at length. still, even this - being one of the largest sections in the book - is done better by Dusty White in his book "Advanced Tarot Secrets".
She blabs about boundaries and stuff, but while her advice is sound, it is no more indepth than what you would find on the website of a selfhelp organisation. Too short, and not even that focussed on "psychic" tarot reading.
After finishing this book, I am not convinced that Nancy Antenucci is a fully sane, intelligent person. To be honest, her writing suggests that if she does experience these visions, she does not have the capacity to put her methods and experience into a sensible context. Than again, a fraud would probably try somewhat harder to be convincing? I don't know.
this is a bad book for beginners, because it does not explain tarot. It is a bad book for more advanced readers who want to ne psychics, because you could probably find more information about psychicness on the internet on a random witchy blog. It is a poor book in general beckause it does not know what its main mission is.
I would recommend Holistic Tarot and Advanced Tarot Secrets for most of the subjects adressed in this book. For more magical aspects, the website "Quareia" is an excellent resource.
January 19, 2024
A good guide to learning tarot on one's own, and developing intuition.
May 29, 2019
A lot of great information here, certainly not your run of the mill Tarot book. I would recommend this text primarily for more intermediate or advanced readers. While the contents will not suit everyone, it fills a good niche for readers whose style the book appeals to. There are plenty of other books on traditional and intuitive reading styles. There are also many books which cover psychological or archetypal Tarot readings. Where this book shines is for aiding readers who read intuitively but guided by some higher power, purpose, or Spirit.
As a mostly agnostic reader, I do not feel as if I absorbed as much of what the author had to share as others may. Though I did still find this Tarot book enlightening and useful.
As a mostly agnostic reader, I do not feel as if I absorbed as much of what the author had to share as others may. Though I did still find this Tarot book enlightening and useful.
March 26, 2020
There were some statements here which really clicked my brain into understanding but I was very distracted by the Donnie Darko ‘fear and love’ element and kept imagining Jake Gyllenhall screaming that life isn’t that simple.
“He told me to forcibly insert the life line card into my anus!”
“He told me to forcibly insert the life line card into my anus!”
December 3, 2024
This book takes a weird turn on page 71, which is the beginning of Chapter 7 ‘Energy Basics.’ It moves away from asking you to do exercises with your tarot deck and starts talking instead about tuning in to strangers in public places, guessing the contents of envelopes containing random pictures and contacting the dead.
I buy a lot of tarot books and I’ve noticed a growing trend in recent years to downplay the divinatory aspect of tarot cards and to present them instead as a tool for self development. They are still seen by some as divinatory tools or even as components in spell-casting but even practitioners who use them in this way often try to appeal to a wider audience by saying things like “there are many ways to use the cards and you are free to choose your own.” Even the ones that mention divining with the tarot often provide caveats such as “this is only a suggestion as to what could happen if things continue as they are and is not a definite prediction.”
This book, ‘The Psychic Tarot,’ dates back to 2011 but is still relatively recent so I was a bit surprised by this sudden turn away from the tarot itself and towards more general psychic exercises.
My sister is a psychic so I am accustomed to weirdness, if I can call it that, but I was expecting the book to focus purely on the tarot.
I’m not ready to contact the dead. I can wait until I’m ready to join them. Even with the psychic exercises, though, there are caveats.
The authors advise novices to “avoid being tested.”
The phrase “suspension of disbelief” was first used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his book about philosophy and poetry ‘Biographia Literaria,’ published in 1817. Coleridge introduced the concept to describe our willingness as readers to drop our guard and accept the implausible elements of a narrative poem so we could enjoy it as a work of imagination. He suggested that if a writer could infuse enough “human interest and a semblance of truth” into a story, the audience would simply go along with it no matter how fantastical it gets.
The idea that a tarot reader and querent are involved in a mutual suspension of disbelief turns the experience into theatre. The result is pure fantasy.
It seems the authors, like so many modern tarot experts, want to have their cake and eat it. Their method of reading the cards is neither accurate nor reliable and can lead to “loopy and obsessive thinking,” after which you are advised to take a rest.
There is quite a lot here on “synchronicity” and you are encouraged to keep a synchronicity journal. Many modern tarot books introduce this concept and cite the work of Carl Jung, as if to give their own practice a more solid and respectable foundation. However, many of them water down the concept. If you look at what Jung actually wrote about synchronicity and the examples he gave, synchronicity is not commonplace. It is, rather, something rare and strange that can signal a breakthrough in a patient suffering from psychosis. Also, it’s important to remember that modern psychology often views these events with scepticism, attributing them to confirmation bias.
That’s not to say that synchronistic events or tarot cards themselves can’t be powerful and transformative. In saying this perhaps I want to have my cake and eat it too but there are some exercises in this book that I enjoyed and found useful.
Chapter 9 is called ‘The Many Selves,’ and this introduces another concept that is quite popular at the moment. I’m reading a more recent book devoted to this idea which I’ll review separately. In ‘Psychic Tarot’ it’s touched upon very briefly and probably doesn’t give enough detail for you to really get to grips with it.
In summary I don’t recommend this book for those who want to learn more about working with tarot cards. It’s not a beginner’s book and doesn’t explain the cards well. But it’s too superficial and eccentric for anyone who has already worked with the cards a lot. It might be a good starting point if you are interested in developing your psychic abilities. It could get you thinking about how seriously you take yourself as a psychic and it’s an appropriate book to read if you see tarot cards as a way of exploring your psychic ability.
I buy a lot of tarot books and I’ve noticed a growing trend in recent years to downplay the divinatory aspect of tarot cards and to present them instead as a tool for self development. They are still seen by some as divinatory tools or even as components in spell-casting but even practitioners who use them in this way often try to appeal to a wider audience by saying things like “there are many ways to use the cards and you are free to choose your own.” Even the ones that mention divining with the tarot often provide caveats such as “this is only a suggestion as to what could happen if things continue as they are and is not a definite prediction.”
This book, ‘The Psychic Tarot,’ dates back to 2011 but is still relatively recent so I was a bit surprised by this sudden turn away from the tarot itself and towards more general psychic exercises.
My sister is a psychic so I am accustomed to weirdness, if I can call it that, but I was expecting the book to focus purely on the tarot.
I’m not ready to contact the dead. I can wait until I’m ready to join them. Even with the psychic exercises, though, there are caveats.
“You aren’t going to be right all the time. You may not even be right half the time.”
The authors advise novices to “avoid being tested.”
“Psychic work is a collaborative process, not a firing line. In some respects, it demands not only a suspension of disbelief on your part, but also on behalf of the person working with you.”
The phrase “suspension of disbelief” was first used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his book about philosophy and poetry ‘Biographia Literaria,’ published in 1817. Coleridge introduced the concept to describe our willingness as readers to drop our guard and accept the implausible elements of a narrative poem so we could enjoy it as a work of imagination. He suggested that if a writer could infuse enough “human interest and a semblance of truth” into a story, the audience would simply go along with it no matter how fantastical it gets.
The idea that a tarot reader and querent are involved in a mutual suspension of disbelief turns the experience into theatre. The result is pure fantasy.
It seems the authors, like so many modern tarot experts, want to have their cake and eat it. Their method of reading the cards is neither accurate nor reliable and can lead to “loopy and obsessive thinking,” after which you are advised to take a rest.
There is quite a lot here on “synchronicity” and you are encouraged to keep a synchronicity journal. Many modern tarot books introduce this concept and cite the work of Carl Jung, as if to give their own practice a more solid and respectable foundation. However, many of them water down the concept. If you look at what Jung actually wrote about synchronicity and the examples he gave, synchronicity is not commonplace. It is, rather, something rare and strange that can signal a breakthrough in a patient suffering from psychosis. Also, it’s important to remember that modern psychology often views these events with scepticism, attributing them to confirmation bias.
That’s not to say that synchronistic events or tarot cards themselves can’t be powerful and transformative. In saying this perhaps I want to have my cake and eat it too but there are some exercises in this book that I enjoyed and found useful.
Chapter 9 is called ‘The Many Selves,’ and this introduces another concept that is quite popular at the moment. I’m reading a more recent book devoted to this idea which I’ll review separately. In ‘Psychic Tarot’ it’s touched upon very briefly and probably doesn’t give enough detail for you to really get to grips with it.
In summary I don’t recommend this book for those who want to learn more about working with tarot cards. It’s not a beginner’s book and doesn’t explain the cards well. But it’s too superficial and eccentric for anyone who has already worked with the cards a lot. It might be a good starting point if you are interested in developing your psychic abilities. It could get you thinking about how seriously you take yourself as a psychic and it’s an appropriate book to read if you see tarot cards as a way of exploring your psychic ability.
April 7, 2020
I decided to read this book because awhile ago, I decided that I wanted to see if any books existed about using your psychic abilities in conjunction with tarot. I got this book out of curiosity, I found that while a lot of information was repetitive, there was some material that I found that was useful and that I’m willing to share. The author was saying that the idea for writing this book started at an annual conference hosted by the Tarot School called The Readers’ Studio. During a breakfast roundtable, Rachel Pollack, the author of Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, decided to ask everyone present a question and ask the tarot readers if they considered themselves to be psychic. Surprisingly, most of the tarot readers said “no” and this inspired the author to have people be open to their own psychic abilities. According to her, she says it is completely possible to be a tarot reader and not necessarily use psychic abilities to do this. Many tarot readers do their work from different perspectives and it could be possible to do tarot and use numerology, astrology or even psychology to interpret the cards.
The word “psychic” itself can be very misunderstood. People think that it is the ability to read thoughts, see directly into the future or see bad things occurring such as death. When using psychic abilities in a reading though, it is based more on where someone currently is now and what is likely to happen if they maintain the same thoughts or actions. It means that free will is a factor when it comes to the future, everyone has the power to decide and create their future. Tarot can be used as a tool for self-growth because it can be used to obtain more clarity or a better understanding of how one can live a happier life.
Some aspects of what I liked about this book is when she described “spirit space” which is what happens when you connect more deeply with whatever you believe “source” to be and become more aligned with your spirit. It means the process of letting go of ego, judgment, linear thoughts in general and be in a space of more compassion and receptivity. The author explains that is a similar place that you go to when you are in meditation and moving past the space of logical “right” or “wrong.” It is an internal shift from the logical to the more creative part of the mind.
She also recommended another method that I liked which is asking for an initial image for the person you’re reading for before doing a reading. To get yourself into a more psychic space before doing a reading for someone, close your eyes and ask yourself for a picture of what is going on with the person’s life. Before pulling out any cards, pay attention to what you sense or see if any pictures come up. Even if you don’t understand what it means, keep this in mind throughout the reading.
An example she used in the book is that when she did this for one of her clients, she got an image of her client singing on-stage. When she asked the client why she was there that day, she explained that she was looking to figure out what to do to fix an unhappy marriage. When you examine the two things together, the initial image was giving clues about the client’s creativity and personal voice. It could be a clue about how focusing on how creativity could improve her marriage, a clue for the client to take more life risks, a call for recognition, etc. There is the choice of whether you would like to share this, but it’s an exercise to get the psychic flow moving.
The word “psychic” itself can be very misunderstood. People think that it is the ability to read thoughts, see directly into the future or see bad things occurring such as death. When using psychic abilities in a reading though, it is based more on where someone currently is now and what is likely to happen if they maintain the same thoughts or actions. It means that free will is a factor when it comes to the future, everyone has the power to decide and create their future. Tarot can be used as a tool for self-growth because it can be used to obtain more clarity or a better understanding of how one can live a happier life.
Some aspects of what I liked about this book is when she described “spirit space” which is what happens when you connect more deeply with whatever you believe “source” to be and become more aligned with your spirit. It means the process of letting go of ego, judgment, linear thoughts in general and be in a space of more compassion and receptivity. The author explains that is a similar place that you go to when you are in meditation and moving past the space of logical “right” or “wrong.” It is an internal shift from the logical to the more creative part of the mind.
She also recommended another method that I liked which is asking for an initial image for the person you’re reading for before doing a reading. To get yourself into a more psychic space before doing a reading for someone, close your eyes and ask yourself for a picture of what is going on with the person’s life. Before pulling out any cards, pay attention to what you sense or see if any pictures come up. Even if you don’t understand what it means, keep this in mind throughout the reading.
An example she used in the book is that when she did this for one of her clients, she got an image of her client singing on-stage. When she asked the client why she was there that day, she explained that she was looking to figure out what to do to fix an unhappy marriage. When you examine the two things together, the initial image was giving clues about the client’s creativity and personal voice. It could be a clue about how focusing on how creativity could improve her marriage, a clue for the client to take more life risks, a call for recognition, etc. There is the choice of whether you would like to share this, but it’s an exercise to get the psychic flow moving.
January 29, 2021
Great and informative book! Was a lot to handle as someone who had just bought some tarot a month earlier but coming back to it after a year to finish it it did really seem full of great (and different) info and exercises.
I like how it really encourages you to figure out meanings for yourself. I also appreciate the list of activities in the back , it makes the book more applicable. I would like to return to this book in a few months to record some of the main ideas in my tarot journal and start making my way through the list of homework at the back!
I like how it really encourages you to figure out meanings for yourself. I also appreciate the list of activities in the back , it makes the book more applicable. I would like to return to this book in a few months to record some of the main ideas in my tarot journal and start making my way through the list of homework at the back!
April 4, 2021
This is an excellent book that I can’t recommend enough. I’m glad I stumbled upon it. I especially loved the example readings. Lots of good exercises for further study. I’ll be returning to this one again and again, I’m sure.
April 29, 2022
At first, I thought this book was like all other tarot books that I had read. However once I delved deeper into it, I discovered that it gave me information that I truly needed and hadn't received from other books.
May 30, 2015
3.5 stars for this one. When she stuck to the topic of tarot, there were a lot of helpful ideas about the imaginative and psychological layers of the cards. The sections on boundaries and psychological parts (inner child work) were especially useful, as were the suggested card spreads. But for me, there were too many detours into spooky and irrelevant topics like communicating with the dead and predicting the contents of envelopes.
March 24, 2025
Interview with Nancy Antenucci here: http://tarotbyhilary.com/7questionsna...
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews