Corrine KennerRezensionen

Lots of misogyny shoved into a book that's apparently about character writing through the use of astrological factors. Like the book she wrote about using Tarot to help form characters but also plotlines, this gets really repetitive after awhile. A lot of the questions she suggests were ones I was already familiar with, but I liked seeing them in new categories. I'll still go through the chapters a second time and pick out questions to answer for new writing projects

Truly a book for beginners with basic and repetitive knowledge. Lack of illustrations.

this book is geared more towards those that are new to journaling with tarot and taroting in general. the first half of the book focuses solely on what is tarot journaling and what type of journal to will work. the last half of the book starts to develop and bring together the book for those that have been doing both reading tarot and writing a journal for a while giving you different ideas on how to jump start your own writing. not the best thing i've read by her and i was disappointed by it, but the book has it's own merits.

if you're looking to learn how astrology connects to tarot this is the book that you're going to need. keep in mind you do need some background in tarot to understand the cards, but the astrology information helps you relate these aspects to the tarot cards themselves. you'll also find about 10 different spreads that aren't exactly normal spreads. they are to give you examples of how to relate the tarot to the astrology. ie: comparing the Sun card to your own astrological card (for me it would be Hermit), so it would be laying out the Sun and Hermit card to see how they interact or different from one another.

I used this book for NaNoWriMo in 2013 and it gave me a lot of good ideas. I'm just learning tarot and I'd never thought of using it as a writing aid before I got this book, but it was very thought-provoking and helpful.

Astrology for Writers
Spark Your Creativity Using the Zodiac
by Corrine Kenner

This imaginative 315 page how-to really got my juices flowing. I dabble at writing so it was great to see how the author in a very simple style showed us how to use the different parts of astrology to actually flesh out a character, right down to what he might wear and what job he could have. I feel this Godsend will help many to release writer's block and get some cool tales out to the world. I would recommend this creative companion to anyone wanting a new focus that can take them amazing places. Thanks Corrine, you rock.

Love & Light,

Riki Frahmann

I am a bit mixed on this book, on one hand I disagreed with a lot of her interpretations of the card but on the other I am far enough along in my understanding of the tarot that this didn't really throw me and I was able to use what I already knew instead. I did find many of the exercises for creating characters and scenes and such to be interesting and helpful and rather entertaining to use. This seems to be either for an experienced writer or an extremely casual writer though, as the suggestions were pretty slight and low on detail with creation more the focus vs. HOW to write. I found it entertaining and a useful tool that I will have fun playing with.

Different as they are, the symbolism used in the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot and the Crowley-Harris Thoth tarot is based heavily on astrology. Unfortunately, most introductory tarot books only mention astrology in passing, if at all. Meanwhile, beginning astrology students aren't likely to come across any references to the tarot unless they're studying with a teacher who mentions it. Tarot and Astrology aims to bridge this gap, and succeeds for the most part.

I think this book would be best suited for someone who already had a background in either tarot or astrology; it might overwhelm someone unfamiliar with either. And I think it's tilted slightly (very slightly) in favor of the astrologer learning about tarot, simply because that's how most of the material is organized. Kenner begins by introducing the Major Arcana of the tarot, but instead of presenting each card in the standard order of the Major Arcana, they're listed in astrological order, first the cards that correlate to the planets followed by those that correlate to the signs of the zodiac. She does the same thing with the Minor Arcana and the Court Cards. But for those who know the cards better than the planets and signs, an list in tarot order is located at the beginning of the book for quick reference.

Kenner also manages to fit in an introduction to the Qabalah and how both tarot and astrology relate to it, listing the Qabalistic associations for each card in its description. In addition, she generously includes quite a few tarot spreads, both simple and complex. While I recognized the classic Houses of the Horoscope spread, the rest were unfamiliar to me and I'm guessing they're Kenner's own invention (It would have been nice to have had a separate list of the spreads to make them easier to find, especially as the book lacks an index, but this is a quibble.)

The book is illustrated throughout with the Wizards Tarot, a deck created by Kenner. While I really like this deck in its own right, I don't believe it was the best choice for a book like this. Kenner's descriptions of how the pictures on the cards relate to astrology sometimes only fit these particular illustrations. Since I suspect this book will reach a wider audience than this deck will, I think the RWS deck or one of its close clones would have been more familiar to readers.

Overall, this book would be a good introduction to astrology or tarot for people somewhat familiar with either. But I'd also recommend it for people who have worked with both, since Kenner has crammed in so much information that even the experienced are likely to find the book interesting.

Almost every introductory book on the tarot that I know of suggests starting a tarot journal as one way to help learn how to read tarot cards. In these books, the tarot journal is somewhere to record your readings, the meanings of the cards, your notes on each card, and so on. Tarot Journaling takes a slightly different approach. This is an introduction to both journal writing and the tarot, suitable for someone who knows nothing about either. (Readers with experience in both the tarot and journal writing may not find all that much that is new here, although they may not have thought to combine the two this thoroughly.) Corrine Kenner's approach both uses the tarot as a foundation for a journal that explores your life and journaling as a way to learn the tarot.

I thought the structure of the book was clever. The introductory section and each chapter is named after one of the eleven positions in the Celtic Cross tarot spread and is related to the meaning of that position. For instance, the chapter "What Crosses You" is named for the position in the Celtic Cross that shows what the main obstacle is in the reading. In this chapter, the author discusses common obstacles to journaling such as writer's block, dealing with your inner critic, and time management—and issues specific to tarot journals like working with "bad" cards. She also includes several appendices with tarot keywords, correspondences, list writing prompts, and templates (this last also available on the author's website).

I wanted to like this book more than I did. It's a great idea: introduce tarot cards as brainstorming tools for writers, suggest spreads for creating plots and characters, then stand back and let the writing flow. But as the book itself turned out, there's a fair amount of emphasis on mysticism and divination. Maybe John Steinbeck and Stephen King used tarot cards to help their writing, as the book cover claims, but I have a hard time envisioning either of them cleaning, centering, grounding, and shielding themselves per the instructions in Chapter Two. I also disagree with the author on several meanings and associations with the cards, but that kind of stuff often just depends on where you learned your definitions originally, and other readers may have no problems with the author's whatsoever.

I think several of the spreads show lots of potential. I tried designing a character with the Zodiac Spread and was happily surprised with how easily I came up with the outline of a viable person. I look forward to playing with that spread some more, plus spreads for the Hero's Journey, Freytag's Pyramid, and other spreads meant to help with developing characters (major and minor), plot, scenery, or overcoming writer's block.