Tall Dark Stranger: Tarot for Love & Romance [Paperback]

Corrine Kenner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 8, 2005

Corrine Kenner's tour of the Tarot begins with its colourful, romantic history. She goes on to describe the deck itself while relating its special significance in love and relationships. The second part of the book is devoted to the nitty-gritty of Tarot readings: choosing a deck, preparing for a reading, asking appropriate questions, timing events, and interpreting cards and spreads. By the end of the book, readers will have a powerful edge in conquering the ever-mysterious ways of love.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Corrine Kenner specializes in bringing metaphysical subjects down to earth. Her work on the tarot is widely published, and her classes and workshops are perennial favorites among students in the Midwest. Corrine is a certified tarot master, and she holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from California State University, Long Beach.


Corrine is the author of Tall Dark Stranger, a handbook on using tarot cards for romance, and Tarot Journaling, a guide to the art of keeping a tarot diary. She was also the creator of Llewellyn's Tarot Calendar. She is a contributor to the 2005, 2006, and 2007 editions of the Llewellyn Tarot Reader. A former newspaper reporter and magazine editor, Kenner edited Llewellyn's popular Astrological Calendar, Daily Planetary Guide, and Sun Sign Book. She is also the author of Crystals for Beginners.


Corrine has lived in Brazil, Los Angeles, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota. She now lives in the Midwest with her husband Dan and her daughters Katherine, Emily, and Julia.


You can find her website at www.corrinekenner.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Tarot's Romantic History

For centuries, the Tarot has been used to answer questions about love and romance. From teenage girls in Renaissance Italy to contemporary cartomancers, the cards have been shuffled and spread in search of tall, dark strangers.

Love at First Sight Picture yourself in Italy, in the year 1440. You are living during a momentous time in history. The Renaissance has begun, and culture is literally being reborn. For the next two hundred years, society and culture will undergo a dramatic transformation, as Europeans leave the dark ages of medieval times behind and give birth to the modern world.

The leading thinkers and artists of the day are inspired by the golden age of Greece. Age-old myths are told and retold, and the ancient gods and goddesses are everywhere- in art, in song, in poetry, and in drama. Young people are even memorizing the classic philosophical works of Plato and Aristotle.

In the winter of 1440, a teenage girl named Bianca Maria Visconti found herself immersed in the heart of Renaissance art and culture when she was sent to visit the royal court of d'Este in Ferrara, Italy, a regional center of Renaissance art and culture. Bianca was the daughter of a duke, so she was a member of high society. In those days, young nobles would travel from palace to palace to study and spend time together. Their pursuit was high-minded: the young aristocrats were preparing to assume the rulership of their country. So by day, Bianca and her friends would read, ponder, and debate the great works of science, history, and literature.

But at night, they played cards.

Bianca was especially fond of a new card game called tarocchi. It was a complicated pastime, because it involved a whole host of literary and mythological figures, all of whom embodied the virtues and ideals of the ancient Greeks and Romans. There were twenty-two cards that depicted allegorical figures like Justice, the Wheel of Fortune, and the Moon. There were also four suits in each deck, numbered one through ten, as well as four sets of court cards-a page, a knight, a queen, and a king.

Bianca was so captivated by the game that when it was time for her to go home in January 1441, one of her friends gave her a set of fourteen hand-painted cards to take with her. And later that year, when Bianca was engaged to marry a young man named Francesco Sforza, her father Filippo actually commissioned a deck of his own to commemorate the wedding.

Bianca's tarocchi deck, of course, was the forerunner of today's Tarot. And Bianca's wedding deck, the Visconti-Sforza Tarot, is one of the oldest Tarot decks still in existence. To this date, it also rates as one of the most romantic decks of all time. In fact, the Lovers card may even be a portrait of the newlyweds Bianca and Francesco, dressed in their wedding best. Many of the surviving cards are housed at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, and you can find replicas of the deck practically anywhere Tarot cards are sold.

At first, tarocchi was a game reserved exclusively for royalty and upper-class socialites like Bianca. Typically, adventurous noblemen would discover card games on their travels, and then bring them home to entertain the ladies at court. From there, the pastime spread-to the cooks in the kitchen, the maids throughout the palace, the gardeners.

Before long, the game moved off of the palace grounds and out into the rest of society. Initially, Bianca may have been attracted to the game because the cards themselves were breathtaking. Every card was a miniature masterpiece, hand-painted with expensive pigments that had been ground from semiprecious stones and gilded with real gold. Later, the designs were simplified a bit, as wood-block printing made it relatively easy and inexpensive to produce card decks for the masses. Playing cards soared in popularity. Parents even bought specially designed decks for their children to use-in part, to keep them entertained, but also in the hope that their children would pick up a few moral lessons from the game.

The Game of Life Ultimately, a core set of ethical values and beliefs were at the heart of tarocchi. While most people treated the cards as a game, it was a game with meaning-because those who played it, like Bianca and her friends, were well versed in the allegorical symbolism of the cards.

Renaissance people were trained to see beyond the literal and the obvious. They spoke the secret language of symbols that was firmly woven throughout their culture and their studies. That language was the foundation of their worldview. Bianca and her friends had been taught that the world was a place of symmetry and order. They believed that four elements-earth, water, air, and fire-combined to form the physical world. They believed that mankind was the measure of all things and that humanity's place was squarely at the center of the universe.

They also studied the metaphoric language of astrology, in which the movement of the planets measured and reflected the forces that shaped human existence. They knew that the sun was more than a mass of incandescent gas: it represented enlightenment and the illumination of God's will.

Bianca and her friends were well versed in the corresponding symbolism of mythology, too. They knew that Apollo was the Roman god of the sun, Venus...(Continues)

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Llewellyn Publications (June 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738705489
• ISBN-13: 978-0738705484
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #571,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My name is Corrine Kenner, and I specialize in bringing metaphysical subjects down to earth.

I've written twelve books and edited four anthologies, including Tarot for Writers, Simple Fortunetelling with Tarot Cards, Tarot Journaling, and Crystals for Beginners. One of my books, Tall Dark Stranger: Tarot for Love and Romance,was a COVR Visionary Award finalist, marking it as one of the top three divination books of 2006.

I don't just write about tarot: I also created the Wizards Tarot, the Epicurean Tarot and a forthcoming deck called the Victorian Christmas Tarot. My work has even been featured in the Encyclopedia of Tarot.

Public Recognition

I've been a keynote speaker at national and international tarot conferences, and I've taught tarot and astrology in England, Canada, and across the United States. I'm also a frequent guest on talk radio shows, web-based podcasts, and internet forums. Some of my books have been translated for a worldwide audience; they're available in Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, and Russian. Here in Minnesota, Metro magazine called me one of the best psychics in the Twin Cities. I've also been featured in Downtown Minneapolis and CitySouth magazines.

My Background

I was born in Minnesota in 1964, and raised on a farm in North Dakota. In my late teens, I lived in Brazil. In my early twenties, I moved to Los Angeles, where I earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from California State University. For the first part of my career I worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, and media relations specialist. Now I live in Minneapolis with my husband, a software developer, and our four daughters who range in age from nine to twenty-one.

My Mission Statement

It's my goal to make tarot and astrology easy, fun, and comfortable for everyone -- whether I'm conducting a reading, teaching a class, or sharing what I know through my articles and books. I want to de-mystify the art of astrology and tarot, without taking away from their mystical appeal.

Credentials

I am a member of the American Federation of Astrology, the National Council for Geocosmic Research (NCGR), the Minnesota STARS chapter of NCGR, the International Academy of Astrology, the International Society for Astrological Research (ISAR), and the Organization for Professional Astrology. I'm also a certified tarot master.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievable lightness of insulting the reader, July 14, 2010

By 

Pete (EU) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tall Dark Stranger: Tarot for Love & Romance (Paperback)

This book is a sheer insult both to a Tarot enthusiast and to the reading public in general. It is outrageously shallow and unintelligent, consisting of shameless copy-pasting and degraded second-hand knowledge.

There's nothing you can gain from this book. What you get is a constant repeating of more or less same words, phrasings and interpretative patterns. The interpretations of the cards are wordy, muddled, and completely lacking any consistent point of view - there's scarcely any »love and romance« there. Instead, you read things like this: »There is more to the Temperance card than meets the eye, however. In fact, the card is one of the most meaningful and romantic cards in the Tarot deck. [Follow two long paragraphs babbling about Archangel Michael, then arriving to this »most meaningful« aspect of the card:] If you are looking for romance, you might find it at the seashore or on the beach.« (pp. 126-127) Wow. And on page 175 we read for the Four of Cups: »Obviously, there is more to the Four of Cups than meets the eye - especially for the guy under the tree.« There's more to the cards than meets the eye, oh, really?

And one example of that shameless, empty-headed copy-pasting that abound in the book. Tarot has four suits of Minor Arcana and among them four Pages. In Ms. Kenner's book these are described on pages 161-162 (Wands), 189-190 (Cups), 217-218 (Swords), and 245-246 (Pentacles). On all of these pages about the Pages we read exactly the same descriptions. I repeat - exactly the same! If you'd like to experience this yourself, read the following passage four times:

»All of the Pages in the Tarot deck embody the elements they represent. Elementally speaking, the four Pages of the Tarot are all earthy, physical creatures. They simply combine the element of earth with the element of their suit. The Page of Wands personifies fire, the Page of Cups personifies water, the Page of Swords personifies air, and the Page of Pentacles personifies earth. [Follows one line - repeat, one line of description of the concerning Page.]
Like all Pages, the Page of [the concerning suit] is youthful, with childlike enthusiasm and an unbounded capacity to learn. [Follow a few unimaginative, derivative, and commonplace observations on each of them.]
When you see the Page of [name of the suit] in a romance reading, he usually reflects a facet of your own personality. If you don't like or acknowledge the Page of [name of the suit] side of yourself, however, you might find yourself projecting all of his qualities onto someone else in your life - and you'll either love him or hate him. In either case, your relationship with the Page of [name of the suit] will be [follow two, three words that should be different for each suit, but to our dispair we read »passionate, fiery, and hot« for both the Page of Wands and the Page of Pentacles, whereas there really is the one and only word for the Page of Cups: »emotional«!]
During the Renaissance, pages were the youngest members of the royal court. Pages would frequently serve as messengers; it was their job to take news from one person to another. Because they were young, pages were students learning their future roles through apprenticeships.
Because pages are students and messengers, his appearance in a romance reading might also be telling you that important lessons or messages are coming your way regarding the [follows one word that differs for each Page] side of your love life.
Pages are purely elemental; they are not associated with any astrological sign.«

End of copy-paste, and end of the section on the Pages!

Be warned.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not satisfied, October 1, 2009

By 

Es "immortal soul..." (Australia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tall Dark Stranger: Tarot for Love & Romance (Paperback)

I was very excited when I bought this one year ago.but was very sorry that I bought it later on.
It is not accurate.the outcome does not make sense in real life.Sounds like made up.
It feels like a game book.
I only done a couple of spreads and then left it in my book shelf ever since.I Havent touched it again.

10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Note from the Author, June 24, 2005

By 

Corrine Kenner "Corrine Kenner" (www.corrinekenner.com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tall Dark Stranger: Tarot for Love & Romance (Paperback)

If you've ever wondered what the cards hold in store for you - especially when it comes to relationships - you're just the person I had in mind when I wrote "Tall Dark Stranger: Tarot for Love and Romance."

For centuries, the love-struck, the lovesick, and the lovelorn have consulted the tarot with questions about love and romance. The cards are a time-honored tool for exploring romantic relationships - and my book can help you use that tool to its fullest.

With a copy of "Tall Dark Stranger" at your side (or on your lap), you'll learn how to use tarot cards to reconstruct past events and decisions that have led to the present moment. You'll learn how to use tarot cards to reflect on the current situation. And you'll learn how to use tarot cards to explore options for future growth and development.

The information you'll find in its pages is grounded in the work and studies of generations of tarot experts. But it goes beyond theory into the real world of practical application.

Whether you are a newcomer to the tarot or an old hand at the cards, "Tall Dark Stranger" will help you learn how to:

- conduct romance readings, with step-by-step directions, tips, hints, and suggestions.

- get answers to specific questions about love and relationships.

- interpret each of the tarot's seventy-eight cards in light of romance and relationship issues.

- spot symbols and images that directly relate to specific romantic issues.

- find good advice in "bad" cards.

- and learn how to use a tarot card reading to change your life for the better.