Personal Prophesy.

Personal Prophesy 

Deborah Leigh with Elizabeth Rose 

iUniverse, Inc.

2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100 Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

ISBN: 0595291953 $21.95 283 pages

Personal Prophecy is an interesting book that could be utilised by anybody that has a plain old deck of playing cards. So you don't need any fancy or expensive equipment (or knowledge) to get the most out of this book.

The author, Deborah Leigh (I haven't figured out who Elizabeth Rose is yet), has been reading ordinary playing cards for 20 years and learnt about this method of understanding life situations from her grandmother. She has taught others around the world to read playing cards and hopes to empower others through this skill.

In reviewing this book I realised that I would have to split my thoughts about it into two sections--content and presentation.

The basic information required to have a go at doing your first reading is all there, and written in a way that is easy to understand ... not technical language and pretty down to earth. The meanings of the cards are presented individually in the various suites. For example, there was a chapter on the general meaning of 'Hearts', following by individual interpretations for each of the cards.

Reading the cards was fun, but I found the spreads rather complicated for a beginner to try (that includes me!). I feel that a simpler reading method would have been beneficial for the reader to try before moving onto a more complicated spread. This would enable the reader to build a bit of confidence in the interpretation of the cards.

Now, on to presentation ... this is difficult to begin. As mentioned above, the actual content is very interesting and usable by anyone, you don't need any previous knowledge or fancy tools to use the information.

One of the downfalls of this book is its presentation. The formatting was inconsistent and would have benefited from being professionally edited. This would have kept the information flowing in a coherent way; it would have also made it easier to find the information required when attempting a complicated reading. It seemed to me that the chapters would have been better organised by keeping all of the interpretative text together, rather than having it spread through various parts of the book.

In summary, even though the presentation could have been better, I found this book a bit on the addictive side and would recommend it to the beginner who is interested in learning more about reading everyday playing cards. The language isn't complicated, and there are examples given for interpretations. After reading this book, I don't think you'll play a card game again without trying to look at the hidden meaning in your friends' (and your own) cards!