Doing Research

Wikipedia is a good place to start. At the end of the Wikipedia post they usually post their references. Go find the references they use and read them. For Tarot I think searching "history," "origin," "culture," and "significance" should lead you to some good sources. Depending on what you're researching you have to find what is a trustworthy and knowledgeable source for whatever the subject is. Good luck.

When you are researching something you know nothing about, it is pretty close to impossible to judge the reliability of a source, especially on the internet. May I suggest that you head for the nearest library? Look for books that have a bibliography—that's a good clue to reliability, though not a guarantee. And ask the research librarian for help. Most will be glad to help you.

I use my library card.

Honestly, though. I do. Who knows what winners are updating Wikipedia these days?

Also consider how reliable you need the information to be. I mean, if you're writing fiction it's perfectly fine to have fictitious information in the story. Yes, it's best to get some things right, but sometimes it's okay to have a legendary tarot reader from France in the 1800's even if no such person existed. If it sounds plausible and in some way makes your story work, go with it.

I live just outside of Boston and in the city of Salem,which is known for their witches( I hope you know of it's history or this conversation is for not) has the most well known witch to this day, Laurie Cabot. I know she has a website, she also has a place of business in which she will do a reading for you. I can't think of a better source to go to, she could at least point you in the right direction.

Your library may offer inter-library loans. They likely have their card catalog online which might help in producing a list of sources to check.

I realize an hour-and-a-half seems a long way, and it's certainly frustrating, but to some extent, that's the nature of research.

Regarding the history of the tarot, we don't actually know for sure. Egypt is just a theory. The Tarot first appears in Europe in the fifteenth century. This is actually a decent summary.

http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2011...ld-know-about-the-history-and-myths-of-tarot/

It would benefit from citations—the use of citations is one indicator of the worth of a source. A second indicator has to do with the credentials of the persons writing. Sometimes a publisher is a guide; Llewellyn is less useful as a source than, say Oxford University Press, in many instances.

You might try posting a thread in Story Research asking for sources.

If it's tarot you need to know about I would be happy to talk to you about it. I've been doing it since I was a kid - learned the old fashioned way too by being shown how to do it.

The more you familiarise yourself with any given subject the more you'll be able to discern for yourself the reliable sources from the nonsense.

Here's a decent overview of what each of the cards mean:

http://www.paranormality.com/tarot_meanings.shtml

And here's one for the different types of spreads:

http://psychiclibrary.com/beyondBooks/tarot-card-spreads

I found the best source is asking people who do readings - might as well take Shaldna up on the offer

I'm not a fan of Wikipedia as a source, but this entry on the Visconti-Sforza cards is not terrible.

If you're a medievalist with a background in mss. you'll eventually be exposed to this deck and to the game tarocco. I've actually looked at the cards at Yale's Beinecke Library.

Sassy1 said:

Thanks Medievalist, I'll go check that forum, and maybe re-post my question. It does sometimes suck living so far away from decent library.

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You're talking to someone who can't drive, so I hear you, but even if I could, part of research is first locating good sources (you can do that online, via WorldCat, and other library catalogs, Amazon and other online booksellers, Jstor (lots of libraries, especially college libraries provide free access to the full articles, so make a list of ones you're interested in), Project Muse (again, lots of libraries provide full access), Google Scholar, contacting other scholars and experts).

The second part is figuring out how to get to the sources, and it's actually the easier part.

Medievalist beat me to most of the points I was going to make, and I skimmed, so apols if I'm repeating but, libraries are fantastic resources. It wouldn't surprise me if that nearest library has some way to help those folks like you who are far away. If you are living in one of those sparsely populated parts of the country, there'll be others like you and I'll bet that library has some special setup for that.

Hopefully WLCT said:

I live just outside of Boston and in the city of Salem,which is known for their witches( I hope you know of it's history or this conversation is for not) has the most well known witch to this day, Laurie Cabot. I know she has a website, she also has a place of business in which she will do a reading for you. I can't think of a better source to go to, she could at least point you in the right direction.

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I agree, go to those who use it to learn more about it. They're foutains of wisdom. Also, Hopefully WLCT. I live in lynn, near the Swampscott line. I can walk to salem if I desire to. Tried it a couple times, only took 30 mins. But I prefer the bus.

kenpochick said:

Wikipedia is a good place to start. At the end of the Wikipedia post they usually post their references. Go find the references they use and read them. For Tarot I think searching "history," "origin," "culture," and "significance" should lead you to some good sources. Depending on what you're researching you have to find what is a trustworthy and knowledgeable source for whatever the subject is. Good luck.

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I agree about checking the references at the bottom of Wikipedia articles.

With a lot of web sources, I recommend paying attention to who the author of the webpage is, and who publishes the website. A website run by a university, a government organization, a respected news outlet, or a professional organization is more likely to have reliable technical information than a personal blog, for example.

I think it also depends on what type of information you need. For example, if I need to study up on an illness, I'll focus mainly on reputable medical resources for technical information like what types of medications are usually used to treat it. However, more subjective personal accounts can be very helpful for getting a more personal idea of what it's like to experience the illness, and what the symptoms feel like.

It's also a good idea to look to see if a source you're reading appears to have a bias, and to read at least a few different sources.

With something like tarot cards, I think research can be tricky because a lot of interpretative resources are somewhat subjective. People writing about how to read tarot cards will often include some subjective information based on their own style and experience, and different people approach the cards differently. If you're looking for more objective information like the history of the cards and how they were used over time, you'll probably be best off focusing on sources that deal with things like medieval history and symbolism.

Also, when it comes to libraries, if you live near a university that has a library that's open to the public, I find that university libraries are more likely to have detailed reference books with narrowly-focused information, which can be helpful. Of course, if you're not a student, you probably won't be able to check anything out.

Sassy,

You may be far from a library, but you can still correspond with a librarian, which I highly recommend. You want to to the library's website and find the e-mail address for the reference librarian. Then send him/her a note asking for suggestions as how best to research your subject online.

Librarians live for this kind of thing. I have never ever EVER met an unhelpful librarian.

Medievalist is wise, as always.

In my (smaller) state, if you have a library card for one library, you can check out books from any other municipal public library in the state. You can do it on line and have the books delivered to your local library.

If you want to use Inter Library Loan from a library not in that system, you fill out a different online form and, again, the books are delivered to your local library to pick up. Sometimes there's a fee for this. You can ask that they not order the book without talking to you first if there's a fee.

Your local library probably has some way of obtaining books via ILL. Ask the reference librarian.

DancingMaenid said:

With a lot of web sources, I recommend paying attention to who the author of the webpage is, and who publishes the website. A website run by a university, a government organization, a respected news outlet, or a professional organization is more likely to have reliable technical information than a personal blog, for example.

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With something like tarot cards, there are also going to be personal blogs that have good information because it's the kind of thing that independent scholars or just people who are interested will want to blog about. Of course there are going to be a bunch of blogs not worth the electrons they're stored on. Which makes it even harder to sift sources. Sometimes one just has to do a lot of reading to build up a store to compare other sources to.

I know it took a lot of reading on my part to know when late Georgian and Regency blogs were valuable or just full of hot air. Alas one of the most interesting ones I've found doesn't cite very many sources.

Sassy1, I hope your local librarian can really help you out!

There's also Google Books, which doesn't display the whole text of most books, though with a topic such as Tarot cards that has been around for a long time, there should be many older/public domain books on it:
http://books.google.com
For the full text of older books:
http://www.gutenberg.org
Looking for tarot, this is the only thing I find:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43548
but maybe there are other keywords that can bring up other books.

If you find recent titles you want the physical copies of, there are many ways you can find and order them for cheap. I wrote about the way I inhale/get books (online as well as in person) here:
http://ben-bradley.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-and-where-i-buyget-books.html

And of course a specific book may not be any more reliable than a specific Wikipedia article.

I prefer archive.org to Google books. They have almost all the books Google scanned plus tons more than they scanned, and their scanner images are much better than Google's.

I just wish their search function was better, but one can use Google to search archive.org fairly effectively.