by Michael Rowland

ISBN 978-1-9996964-7-4. 272 pages. Paperback. Publication date: October 2021. Equus Press: London & Prague. Price: € 12.00 (not including postage).

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It would be remiss of a psychologist helping you to interpret a dream were they to simply tell you what the dream meant. Just as with the Tarot. A good reader will indicate to the querent the meanings of the symbols available and the links cards may form with each other, leaving it up to the querent to decide what this means to them. In Infinity in Bits you will see and read things which resonate, and you will be confused and you will be overwhelmed at times. That is, if you accept the invitation to a smorgasbord of visual art, poetry and revelations which have bubbled up and out of Michael John Rowland in bits and pieces, from an infinity of sources, intrinsically and beautifully connected to the 78 cards of the Tarot.

Read an Equus interview with the author here.

“It’s like a book, but better. The bloody book’s not about the Tarot, it’s the Tarot that is about the book. Alright? Right. Right? It’s a picture book for all the frustrated kids out there who persist inside messed-up adults in the search for all the answers that the cards don’t even pretend to bring. It’s a cartoonish insult to previous written things, with all due respect. It’s like a book, but better. Read it, okay? No. Let it read you. Okay?”—Jo Blin

“This is a book to relish, this is a book to laugh out loud to while summoning the demons—this is a rabbit hole to delve into and emerge ten years later with messed up hair-do exclaiming ‘I have found the key!’ Rowland, a practicing Tarot Card Reader, takes the Major Arcana as his subject matter, however then proceeds to riff off it quite brilliantly. Language becomes the chief protagonist as Rowland dispenses one nugget of wisdom after another, the sheer absurdity and sharp wit going into overdrive. It is a comedy book of stitched together one-liners. It is a guide to the enlightenment. It is one long Tarot Card reading turned standup show turned ayahuasca ceremony. The transcendental and the mundane, the grave and the ridiculous, the ethereal and tangible all commingle in this masterpiece of derailed wit. You never know if you are just a plain reader or the Tarot Reader; the subject or the spectator.”—Jaromír Lelek

“This is not your usual ‘tarot guide’ or ‘poetry compilation’, and if you’ve come for such, you might as well just turn around. This is the type of thing spiders mutter into your ear just before you fall asleep—not to lull you, but rather to take you in lucid dreams to the most fascinating places with unexpected imagery and people that you may not know. From Betty Page to Lynchian memories, this epic charged with esoteric symbolism is available to those wishing to head out. What will be created by Rowland’s words will be the bits of infinity, infinity and infinity, which don’t face the limitation of language but can only be put down in bits because, in what other way could anyone put endlessness in front of our eyes? The reading of Infinity in Bits leaves you with the feeling of having encountered the Magician before, perhaps in a previous lifetime, or just a moment ago. The montage provided by the author too serves as a reminder that all of this is REAL. And we’ve gazed and seen tentacled librarians shushing Armageddons in a house of stained glass, a hope made of broken bones, which makes you feel like you’re a nine-sided octagon. As long as the traveller is brave enough, or foolish enough, to sacrifice sanity in order to gain lore. And what better lore to gain than the one connecting us to the pictorial records hidden in the depths of humanity’s psyche? So is this poetry? A tarot guide? A pictorial compilation? Some kind of mushroom trip? It’s Infinity in Bits by Michael Rowland.”—Maria Samira Mekibes

“Rowland has given us an intimate reading that cuts its teeth on both the spirituality of language and tarot. This collection of works works because it’s not constant but is constantly adapting itself depending on the reader and where the reading is read–a special happening and transaction that Rowland has captured in the exchange of word and spirit via language and tarot.”—Tyko Say (Founder of OBJECT:PARADISE)