Twenty-Two Impressions

A poetic new essay collection in which the symbols of the tarot brush up against life in a changing world.

The Tarot de Marseille is a 16th-century set of playing cards, the deck on which the occult use of tarot was originally based. When Jessica Friedmann bought her first pack, the unfamiliar images sparked a deep immersion in the art, symbols, myths, and misrepresentations of Renaissance-era tarot.

Over the years that followed, and as tarot became a part of her daily rhythm, Friedmann's life was touched by floods and by drought, by devastating fires and a pandemic, creating an environment in which the only constant was change.

Twenty-Two Impressions - notes from the Major Arcana uses the Tarot de Marseille as a touchstone, blending historical research, art history, and critical insights with personal reflections. In these essays, Friedmann demonstrates how the cards of the Major Arcana can be used as a lens through which to examine the unexpectedness - and subtle beauty - of 21st-century life.

Luminous and tender, full of nuance and possibility, it is a series of personal reflections on each of the 22 cards in the major arcana ... she merges memoir with instruction, historical insights with everyday observation, consideration of the cards' universal major themes with the specificity of her own circumstances, as well as wider reading into art, culture, spirituality, wellness, and shifting social attitudes around the cards. It's a lucid reminder of the "ongoingness" of history, stories, and the self - a meditation on the everyday magic of life and an argument for the enduring legacy of the tarot.
- Mel Fulton, Books+Publishing

Jessica Friedmann's essay collection Twenty-Two Impressions sheds novel light on the potential of the tarot to guide how people move through and experience life ... these essays draw connections between the cards and broader concepts, world events, and personal experiences ... Friedmann is an honest narrator who acknowledges and relates to spiritualism sceptics ... A misunderstood cultural phenomenon is used as a window to the human experience in the personal essay collection Twenty-Two Impressions.
- Foreword Reviews

These elliptical essays form a paean to the tarot and its transformative potential ... Friedmann's luminescent prose underscores how the tarot - maligned by some and simply misunderstood by others - can be embraced to access deeper nuance and introspection.
- Nathan Smith, The Saturday Paper