TAROT & DREAM INTERPRETATION

By Julie Gillentine

a review by John Gilbert

Tarot & Dream Interpretation (ISBN 0-7387-0220-X) by Julie Gillentine with a Foreword by Rachel Pollack and published by Llewellyn Publications is a book I've always wanted to write. I could never pull it together so it made any sense as a book. Now I know why.

Certified Tarot Instructor Julie Gillentine has developed nine unique tarot spreads to help readers understand their dreams and benefit from this knowledge. Those nine tarot spreads make all the difference in dream interpretation. A good tarot reader could make a living doing nothing but helping other people interpret their own dreams by using these spreads. That's how important this information is and that's what was always missing in the book I was trying to write. Thank you Julie!

Ms. Gillentine has divided this book into three parts. In the first part, she discusses the similarities and differences between tarot and dreams and delineates the nature of dreaming. She suggests several ways for remembering, recording and analyzing your own dreams. These techniques are easy enough to use and teach to others.

In the second part, Julie describes her nine tarot dream spreads and gives examples including dream interpretation. In the third part she discusses each card separately with emphasis on interpreting each card in a dream interpretation reading.

Julie includes a list of symbols in the third part as a Symbol Dictionary. Though this is a fairly comprehensive collection of symbols, she explains how the reader can use Tarot to clarify symbols not found there. Lest the reader start to believe he or she has all the answers, Julie admonishes us: No matter how skilled and insightful another person's analysis is, the dreamer is the ultimate authority where dream meaning is concerned.

The tarot spreads Ms. Gillentine suggests in this book are designed not to make you skilled and insightful in interpreting the dreams of others, but to help you engender understanding and insight in your client - the dreamer. This is the key. We don't tell the dreamers what their dreams mean. We help them understand what their dreams mean to them. We may never understand their dreams. But it doesn't matter, as long as they do. That's what this book is all about: teaching you how to help other people interpret their own dreams. It can even help you interpret your dreams.

Wonderful book. I recommend it to you.

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