Book Review – The Modern Fortune Teller's Field Guide by Tom Benjamin

María Alviz Hernando
2 hours ago
9 min read

When Tom Benjamin asked me to read and write an endorsement for his third book "The Modern Fortune Teller's Field Guide" I was just short of, as we say in spanish, clapping with my ears in excitement. Let's begin by saying that Tom Benjamin is an excellent tarot teacher with the ability to drive the point home with ease and without flourish. His work is practical and solid. We have similar approaches to reading, and yes, to fortune telling and reclaiming prediction in tarot as legitimate, so I knew that I would enjoy the book. But more than enjoying it, I found it incredibly useful and empowering as a reader. The book opens strongly, speaking about the historical realities of fortune telling in a succint but powerful way. It addresses how fortune telling has been vilified and stripped of its predictive purpose, to be turned into a version deemed appropriate by those who attempted to reclaim the practice through othering the figure of the fortune-teller, and then proceeds to walk the reader through the author's vision of what fortune telling is, in a way that's refreshing and open to alternative opinions. This is something that the author shines at, his ability to explain a point clearly, adding the value of his experience, without making it sound like the light, the truth and the way. In the first chapter alone, Tom Benjamin opens a few cans of worms worth discussing; the current "obsession" of mainstream divination with empowerment, the refusal to see prediction as compatible with agency, pretty-thoughts manifestation and a view of ethics that goes beyond any so called tarot-code imposed by any third party. This beginning offers readers of any level a lot to ponder on without preaching, and to question, which I'd say is far from a bad start for a book that makes you stop to consider where you stand on many topics related to divination as a practice, my favourite being:

Given our current focus on free will, are we truly in the driver's seat at all times?

With this introduction, let's get down to business with my review.

The Modern Fortune Teller's Field Guide

The book, published by Crossed Crow Books, is available in paperback and e-book, sitting at a generous 306 pages of length. It's foreworded by Maria Minnis, author of Tarot for the Hard Times (Weiser Books).

What is this book about?

As its name indicates, this is a field guide, not a manual. This is not a book to make you a tarot reader from scratch (and there any many options out there for that). The goal of this book from my perspective is to make you think, to make you interact with the cards, to make you question your beliefs and assumptions about tarot, and to find a system of reading that works for you based on experiencing tarot and understanding the world around you. The book walks you through a plethora of very interesting exercises. I believe that the author's background in theatre adds a little spice to the way these exercises are presented, these are not your run of the mill exercises, but some that push you out of your comfort zone and invite you to truly experiment with the cards.

There are also sections that are dedicated to helping you deal with challenges that you are very likely to encounter, specially when reading for others. Tom Benjamin invites you to truly work on who you are as a reader, and to identify the circumstances of each reading and its consequences, highlighting that not every client, not every question and not every setting will require the same approach. This is where the term field guide seems to apply the most. There is a chapter that I found particularly useful, that was about handling our own ego as readers, balancing self-confidence in your craft with not becoming a self-righteous know-it-all, while also walking through the querent's ego and giving useful advice on how to navigate certain situations. And there's another chapter that deals with the subject of teaching tarot to others that I found approachable and useful for anyone wanting to dabble into it. In definitive, this is a book about the experience of being a tarot reader tackled from many points of view, in a way that I haven't seen many books do. It has some similarities with the fantastic"Fortune Stellar" by Christiana Gaudet, one of my favourite tarot books that deal with the professional side of being a tarot reader, but Tom Benjamin expands it even further.

Who is this book for?

The short answer is, this is a must-read book for anyone who wants to read tarot for other people, regardless of whether the idea is to do it professionally or for friends and family. If you have the basics of tarot, you can expand your practice a great deal with the exercises presented in the book. There is a section of the book in which the author goes briefly through his own interpretations of the cards, but it is not per se a book of meanings. If you're an intermediate reader, you will find ways to fill in the gaps, and if you are a seasoned reader, you will still find a lot to ponder on about your own practice, and ways to fine-tune your contextual reading skills.

My top-takes

I have found a lot of gems in this book, and if I were to list them all, I would probably defeat the purpose of you reading it by yourself, so here are my three top takes of the book. #1 Lifespan of a reading The concept "lifespan of a reading" and how the author makes a very eloquent and very compelling case for something that I often explain to querents who want very long-term predictions. Tom Benjamin defines the lifespan of a reading as the time that happens between the reading itself and the situation happening or not. He goes on to make a case about how our own predictions can be affected by sudden changes in the lives of those who affect our results, and how the further ahead in time the prediction goes, the easier it is to lose precision, and the harder it becomes to identify what may affect the trajectory of your situation. Think of it like zooming in on Google Earth to your neighbourhood vs. just having a view of your city. The level of detail is not going to be the same. This is how Tom Benjamin explains it in a quite hilarious way in his own words on Chapter 11 "Called it!"

"Let’s say you’re working toward a promotion at work. You’ve spent the last couple of years working with your boss on an action plan, taking classes, doing the things. You would like to know whether or not you’re going to get the promotion before the end of the year. We’ll say it’s now early May. By limiting the reading to May through November, we’re able to see the ripple effects of what you’re doing right now and have been doing. Now, let’s say your boss up and quits, throwing a wrench into all your plans. It might mean you advance sooner, or it might mean another boss comes in and doesn’t care about your action plan. You have never heard any rumblings of your boss leaving. Everyone’s happy with her and she performs well. What you don’t know is that a memoir she’s been working on has suddenly been picked up by a major studio and will have a Netflix limited series starring, oh, Pedro Pascal. This kind of shocking development would be easier to predict in the first three months of that six-month time period, but it wouldn’t be impossible to see it in the second half. The further away we get, the less likely it is that we could predict this hiccup."

#2 Kill your darlings! The entirety of Chapter Three "Kill Your Darlings" is worth its weight in gold. But I am, in particular, drawn to the part in which he elaborates on why "Ignorance is a darling" and how presuming that we know everything about how the world works based on our own experience is a surefire way to fail spectacularly. We are readers, but we don't know everything, and jumping to conclusions about the cards on the table when we have no idea about how the context works, often leads to the wrong interpretation. I have said many times that one of the best things you can do to become a better reader is not learning more about the cards but learning more about the world, and Tom Benjamin puts it beautifully here:

"Say you have an eager young actor sitting at your table, about to finish his BFA in musical theatre from some school no one’s ever heard of. For our purposes, we’ll name him 39 Oliver, because that’s the first musical I fell in love with as a child. Oliver wants to discover the likelihood of him “making it” on Broadway—his great love. You’re more than happy to read for this earnest, eager, hopeful star-to-be, and you draw our favorite tarot badass, The Empress. Good news, right? For those of you who don’t know the theatre world, now is a good time to provide you with some relevant context. Talking about how the American commercial theatre industry works in a book about fortune telling may seem out of scope, but see that’s just the thing: if you don’t care about the world Oliver is trying to move into, how can you give him a decent reading? In the current climate, Oliver—who is a twenty-one-year-old femme queer kid with dreams of playing Hamlet—is more likely to get his dream career by making it big in reality TV first. If you’re not familiar with the theatre landscape in this country today, you won’t know that Oliver is attempting to break into an industry that advertises itself as progressive and home to freaks but is shockingly conservative and rigid. The people getting cast as Hamlet in commercial theatre today are the Hollywood hotties. Look at who has played Hamlet in New York, and you’ll find very few femme boys. Now, the world is changing—but slowly. Oliver isn’t likely to be at the top of anyone’s casting sheet for that role, not only because he’s not the “type” for it (yes, this is a thing you have to know if you’re an actor), but because nobody’s heard of him. He can’t sell any tickets. And the financial risks of the commercial theatre are admittedly huge. Oliver might get to play Hamlet one day, but the odds of him doing it on Broadway are slim. As I said, our goal isn’t to poison Oliver’s well, but the answer to his question is not “just be a bad ass.” Not, anyway, if we want to give a helpful answer."

#3 We can get burned out doing the things we love Oh boy! This one hit home after having spent the entire summer going through a phase of "I can't even." Despite tarot being my absolute passion, despite feeling God's favourite child because I get to do what I love every day, and despite a looming feeling of "What is wrong with you and what exactly do you have to complain about?" From July to mid-September, I have been going through a phase of burn-out of which I am still recovering. I went through a similar one in 2022, and I can attest that it can be difficult to stop doing what you love until you don't have any more to give, and I definitely need to get way better at managing that. Here's how he says it:

If we put out more energy than we take in, we’re going to burn out. And that can happen with things we really love. In fact, it’s more likely to happen with things we love because we enjoy it so much that we don’t necessarily pay attention when the warning signs start beeping gently in the background. We push through, in part because many of us live in a push-through culture, and in part because we love what we do and want to spend all our time doing it. And when that happens, we can reach a point where we just can’t anymore.

Conclusion – Do I recommend this book?

I might be biased because I share a lot of views on divination with the author, but, in case you haven't noticed: YES. In fact, I would take you by the hand to the nearest bookstore so that you can get your copy right away. It is incredibly helpful, packed full of insights, easy to read and not a page is wasted.

Great, then, how do I get it? You can get the book directly from the publisher if you are in the US at Cross Crow Books. Of course, it's available on Amazon in many countries (in some, it might still be on pre-order) and you can go the old-fashioned way and order it at your bookstore, or go to Bookshop.org and support a local business while you're at it.

Find Tom Benjamin on Instagram as @tombenjaminstarot or in his website. Other books by the author: Tarot on Earth Your Tarot Toolkit