Here's another Steiger volume that looks like it washed up on the shores of time, a little worse for wear but still ready to teach us THE ANCIENT ART OF THE TAROT! Steiger's teamed up with tarot futurecaster (and dowser!) Ron Warmoth, a colorful character who seems to have enjoyed B-tier celebrity on the psychic scene. Brad opens with a real wacked out scene of Warmoth giving a tarot reading to a small time hood in a hippie bar who turns out to be Jack "Murf the Surf" Murphy, another minor celebrity of the time who committed the "Jewel Heist of the Century" and held up Eva Gabor for her gems before going down for murder after a nasty Florida crime spree. Warmoth sees all of this in the cards and tries to warn Jack off his path but nothing doing. Later on Warmoth says he would do anything to save a human life, but I gotta say he doesn't seem to have tried too hard with Jack! His other psychic skills include "correctly interpreting personalities of men and women he's just met" so maybe Ron wasn't one to aim too high with his gifts.
After some flashy stories with Warmoth, we move into the meat and potatoes of tarot, and here again is more of the same you'd get in any similar guide of the time. The card art is uncredited but gets the job done. Perhaps someone well versed in tarot would recognize their provenance; I admit that's not my bag. Steiger does a neat job tying everything together, making this book a prime example of his talent at writing these cheap occult books. Just get a minor "name" to coauthor, throw in a little occult history on some specific subject, some psychic readings maybe, wrap it up in under 200 pages and bon appetit!
Award Books, 1969
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