Book Details + Condition: Tarot Productions Inc. (Los Angeles, CA). Very scarce First Edition, 1968. Softcover. 38 pages. Illustrated throughout. Very scarce tarot instruction booklet based on the Albano-Waite Tarot Deck published by Tarot Productions Inc. and owned by Frankie Albano. The booklet was created as a separate standalone tarot instructional book, with speculation that it was created for the Giant Tarot Deck which had a version produced without tarot instructions. A firm and clean copy of a now scarce edition, with firm binding; light wear to original covers, with toning and a bit of discoloration present; interior is clean and free of markings. Please see more information on this scarce publication below.
From waitesmith.org: Tarot Productions, Inc. has the distinct historical note of creating the “world’s largest LWB” (Little White Booklet), which by all faculties of common sense should be entitled the “Large White Booklet” (but still LWB, or maybe XLWB). The inside of this booklet bears the words “new material copyright 1968, which happens to be the same verbiage used in the 1959/60 University Books, Inc. version of the Pictorial Key to the Tarot. This is worth mentioning as Frankie’s deck creations were a response to UB’s wildly successful decks and books beginning in the 1960’s. This extra large white booklet is in fact a truncated version of Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot without images for the pip suits. I don’t recognize the art, but it is eerily similar in style to that on the Albano Tarot Wheel, so my best guess is that like those on the TW, this image is a loose tracing of some iconic image of a goddess or metaphysically related image. It is obviously Ceres, who is represented in the Waite-Smith deck as The Empress. I have only found two copies of this booklet, but others are bound to appear in libraries or old bookshops and stacks of metaphysical papers…. Also note how Frank moved The Fool back to its position between Judgement and The World but did not renumber that card.
