The book is superb - scholarly and beautiful. Williams connects the Tarot with Greek mythology, so exciting to the first users of the cards in the princely courts of Renaissance Italy; his writing is lucid and elegant and his use of literary and visual sources, from Homer to Shakespeare, ancient funereal stelae to Michelangelo, inspirational. He is deeply responsive to the Tarot without being silly or fake-Egyptian. He writes in the tradition of Edgar Wind, not A.E. Waite.
Mrs. Glenister's anxiety about the cards' gayness seems very odd to me. Williams makes the four suits of the minor arcana into four allegorized mythological narratives, such as Ficino might have admired: Achilles for the Swords, Heracles for the Staves, Psyche for the Cups, Persephone for the Coins. Most of the figures, male and female, are nude, except for the court cards. If this bothers you, much Classical art will probably do so too ...
