"The Symbolism of the Tarot" by P. D. Ouspensky

This is a large format book, but quite thin, both on pages and on content. Most of the pages are with reproductions of the Great Arcana of the Waite Tarot Deck. Ouspensky was a student of Gurdjieff, a complicated and not always sincere man, who passed himself for a spiritual master most of his life, besides using methods that border on sadism and breaking his own principles countless of times. Ouspensky was his best student, though excommunicated and humiliated by his teacher number of times, and he published the most cohesive accounts of Gurdjieff's teachings, and molded them into something that might resemble a 'system'.

Ouspensky dabbles in other occult fields, as was the custom at that time, mostly in Theosophy, which in itself was a conglomeration of just about anything you wanted to put in, and wrote and lectured extensively on occult subjects, mostly in the United States, where there were enough people who were willing to pay for it.

This particular book falls short of the standards even of the time when it was writtent. It consists of a generic 'new age' essay on the many, many facets of tarot, followed by 22 musings on the meanings of the symbols of the 22 Great Arcana cards. To put it simply - you could have written this book yourself. There is nothing insightful or terribly original inside of it, pretty much consists of random thoughts on tarot in general and then on each card in particular without giving any new points of view for their use or interpretations.

I would label this book a waste of time. There are plenty of better Tarot books, and if you really want to delve into the symbolism of each card then get Crowley's 'Liber Thoth'.