Top ten best-selling tarot books ever - which and why!
- Janne de Jong
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
As I am in the process of writing a tarot book to help people understand the tarot and lead them to a healthy, authentic tarot practice, I started to research which books are real stayers in the market. What makes up a tarot book which is sold and read again and again?
The research has given life to this article: A list of the top ten best-selling tarot books ever - and the stories behind them; Which are they, and why have they stayed so popular and read (or at least bought) by so many?
So, sharing with you a part of my own research; here you are people: The ten most popular tarot books in history.
There is no established public list of all time best selling tarot books, partly because we do not have knowledge on sales numbers from the first tarot book ever written, But we do have, or are able to bring about, a list of the best-supported ranking of the commercially strongest tarot book, based on known sales numbers, translations into other languages, number of years on the market, numbers of editions and so forth.
My findings surprised me quite a lot. None of the considered must-read foundational books on tarot is represented! True classics from A.E. Waite, Crowley, Wirth, Lévi, Gray and the like are all missing from the list (why on earth). What have I been reading all along, boring old books! Hahaha.
I started analyzing the list. The list contains books from several important eras for the modern tarot reader, from the 1980's up until the 2020s. No books older than 1980. This is obviously partly due to a lack of confirmed numbers of sold books prior to the 1980s, but it must me more to it that that. Why would not Arthur E. Waite's Pictorial Key To The Tarot sell in great numbers in the last 50 years? A truly obligatory book for anyone who wants to understand the modern tarot scene in general, and the development of the Raider-Waite-Smith deck and all the decks following its footsteps, in particular? Of course, when a new tarot book is published and hit the shelves, one would get all the sales numbers from book stores, curious people and libraries, I get that. Only the really interested reader and cartomancer (or cartomancer-to-be) would deliberately pick up a book first published in 1911 called "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot". But still!
Lets discover which books actually made it to the list. A funny plot twist, as I discovered: I haven't read a single one of these best-selling books! I am truly curious now wether I have missed out. After 30+ years of reading the tarot, I havent managed to read one single best-selling book about it. I am not sure where to send my apologies.
Top ten best-selling books about tarot (from know numbers):
Rachel Pollack - Seventy-eight degrees of wisdom (1980)
Rachel Pollack was indeed a knowledgable lady of the tarot. I did read, and do use as a reference tool, her Tarot Wisdom - Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings, which includes and reuses many of the elements from the 78 Degrees. But the 78 degrees, I never read. Maybe because "everyone" read it - I usually want to explore my own way. But perhaps also because I quickly discovered Rachel Pollack was a true believer of connecting the tarot with the Kabbalah. It confuses me more than it enlightens me. Rachel Pollack was a huge contributor to nudging people in the 80s and 90s to go from memorizing to understanding the tarot cards and tarot system. Pollack belongs to the psychological/initiatory school of tarot which is directed towards self development and psychological insights. Pollack was dedicated in their work collecting and explaining meanings and key-words for many different historical card decks and through the ages. I do know that 78 Degrees by many is seen as a "bible" for learning the tarot, but I also know a good amount of people advising against it as a tool for learning tarot, because it is too complex. And which camp do I truly belong to? I guess I have to read the book to find out...
Liz Dean - The Ultimate Guide to Tarot (2015)
This book is a beginner's guide to the tarot. Liz Dean has according to her website as much as 26 tarot books and decks by her name. This particular book is translated into Danish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian and Chinese. I haven't read this as I started out with tarot in 1994-1995, and Liz Deans Ultimate Guide (beginner's guide) came out in 2015, My bot calls this "the almost perfect modern commercial tarot book". I will take their word for it.
Amy Zerner & Monte Farber - The Enchanted Tarot (1992)
Very gift-friendly deck and guidebook, published at a time where there were not too many card decks on the market. Well, not the vast selection that we see today anyway. At the time the guidebook and deck was published, I had already found "my" deck, the Hanson-Roberts tarot deck. This was my only deck for two decades and stuck with it.
Stefani Caponi - Guided Tarot (2020)
Published in 2020, and already sold more than 175.00 copies. Stefani did something truly important with this book. She went from memorizing and understanding tarot to skillful intuitive reading, trusting your own intuition and training and using those skills when reading. I might actually pick this one up, this sounds a lot like my book...
Mary K. Greer - Tarot For Your Self (1984)
Mary Greer took tarot readers from "Read & Understand" to "Do & Experience & Discover". That is not a small step. She introduced tools like journaling, visualizations, rituals to deepen the understanding of the self through tarot. A book explaining how to use tarot as a self development tool is not a small thing.
Paul Fenton-Smith - Tarot revealed (1980s)
Simple - Systematic - Step by step - Practical - Can use book to look up cards during a reading. Seems like a perfect beginner's book from the 80s/90s era. As I already had my beginner's book in Norwegian (written by the Norwegian astrologer and tarotist Per Henrik Gullfoss), I probably didn't need this one. During the 90s I had one book and one deck. Everything else was practice. I am sure this book has been a good reference book and starting point for many readers.
Craig Junjujas - Psychic Tarot (1980s)
Seems like this book connects tarot to psychic development to healing to higher self. I will look for vintage editions of this one! Might become a stayer in my tarot book collection. The book is illustrated with the Aquarian Tarot Deck, which is an older deck from the 1970s drawing inspiration from Art Deco and Art Noveau, however with a recognizable 1970s drawing style.
Alejandro Jodorowsky & Marianne Costa - The Way of Tarot (2004)
A book which is not only a book, but a book posing a new way, a new theory thus establishing Jodorowsky as an tarot authority and influencer. The Marseille deck is the focal point of the book, and Jodorowsky continues the path of Oscar Wirth, revitalizing the French tradition of the tarot and the Marseille deck. Jodorowsky's book might climb higher up on the lists as time goes by.
Benebell Wen - Holistic Tarot (2015)
A brick of almost 900 pages. A reference tool, an encyclopedia based in a holistic view, combining tarot with Eastern and Western Mystic Schools, history, symbolism, divination and psychology. Indicates depth over simplicity, however it is not an easy ambition to combine and reference all those subjects in one book and make it into a holistic approach where everything is taken into account. As a former student of comparative religion and religions science, I am intrigued to check this brick out.
Dusty White - The Easiest Way to Learn Tarot - EVER! (Y2K)
Such titles always puts me into the sceptic's camp, but one should always have at least partly an open mind...! When scrolling through the index pages, it seems to me to things: This is a pretty average and typical book on how to get to know tarot, cards and meanings as a beginner. And, some of the approaches suggested in the book is not all that easy. Some exercises takes effort and dedication. The result might be brilliant, however, the reader might understand - through this book - that learning to know, read and understand the tarot will never be easy. It will be a lifetime of exploration, dedication, contemplation and practice. And this book might perhaps be the book to teach people exactly that - the easy way.
So, here we are - the modern world's best selling tarot book. Not one single first generation classic in there - however some of them might become classics over time. I am curios as to how the list would look like if we measured, not best-selling books (from known sales numbers), but if we measured something like most influential tarot scholars/thinkers over time. We would definitely find most of the "first generation" tarot writers and scholars from the 19th and early 20th centuries. This list would include Éliphas Lévi, Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla), MacGregor Mathers + Golden Dawn, A. E. Waite + Pamela Colman Smith, Aleister Crowley + Frieda Harris, Oswald Wirth and Papus. Plus a few second and third generation thinkers (Gray, Greer, Pollack, Foster Case, Jodorowsky).
Small sales numbers - huge impact. I guess I will be writing that list next time around.
Comments