It is hard to put into words what Rachel Pollack’s insights mean to me. She is a shining inspiration for the way I want to be not only as a tarot reader, but as a human being. I did not know her well but was lucky to meet her and have lunch with her at a tarot conference in 2018. Although she passed last April, I have a hard time talking about her in past tense. Through her books and teachings, it feels like she is very much still here with us.
78 Degrees of Wisdom is the Pollack book which has had the most reach. And with good reason! That was one of the first tarot books I ever read and it blew me away. Not long after that I read Tarot Wisdom which I found just as good if not better than 78 Degrees. But it wasn’t until last year that I read an unassuming little book of hers that I hadn’t seen many folks talk about. That book is The Forest of Souls and it quickly became my favorite Rachel Pollack book and one of my favorite tarot books of all time.
I shared an activity from this book in a post a couple months ago (tarot, take me home) and also mentioned it in a note here on Substack, but I haven’t shared a full review. I guess even what I’m doing today is not necessarily a ‘review’ in the traditional sense. Instead, I want to wander through the pages and share with you some of the passages I have underlined. These words have become glimmers and beacons for me at a time in which I am much in need of glimmers and beacons. Perhaps some will connect with you as well.
“…unlike sacred books, or the works of psychological sages, the Tarot can change and become new every time we pick it up. This is because we can shuffle it. We can take the cards, with all their intense symbols, mix them, and lay them out as a new work.”
This has always stood out to me about tarot but I never knew quite how to put it into words. I expounded on this idea in another recent post (dark, light, gift) and I should have credited Rachel there for bringing this to the forefront of my mind. Tarot is always new!
The above passage comes from the beginning of the book and is brought full circle in one of the last chapters where Rachel plays with the idea of different numerical sequences for the major arcana. She reminds us that the earliest decks did not have set numbers for the major arcana, and even know there is some quabbles among tarot practitioners about what numbers each card should hold (most famously Strength vs Justice). Rachel honors the significance that has built up around the way we most commonly order the cards and how that has greatly influenced her own thinking and teaching – “and yet there is value in newness as well.”
Like many nuggets in this book, I could write a whole ass post just about this one topic. But I will reign myself in for now so we can take a broad view of the many rabbit holes Rachel offers here.
“…as far as scholarship can tell us, (tarot) began as a game. This may startle many people, especially those who have heard exaggerated stories of the Tarot’s mythic origin. The more I think about it, however, the more it appeals to me that these are playing cards. When we play, we can do so much more – we can allow so much more – than when we make everything solemn and literal.”
!!! I have always been a proponent of having fun with tarot. I taught a workshop at a local bookstore a couple years ago where most participants had little to no prior experience with tarot. I’ve noticed that newcomers sometimes have an inherent fear of interpreting a card the ‘wrong’ way. To dispel this in the workshop I had everyone pull a card and share the most silly or outlandish message it might hold. It led to much laughter, and hopefully a sense of playfulness those folks could carry forward on their tarot journey.
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Next, Rachel gives a wonderful musing on the origins of tarot and our beliefs and myths about time. She suggests that perhaps we can consider time as a web instead of a strict linear trajectory. In this paradigm “the future can cause the past as much as the past causes the future… (or) neither one causes the other, they exist in a relationship that goes in many directions all at once.” From there:
“One use of a myth of time as a web is a way to imagine the origin of tarot. Suppose our collective beliefs about Tarot as the key of keys – Antoine Court de Gébelin’s ‘discovery,’ the Golden Dawn, our current psychological approach to the cards, whatever ‘future’ developments we do not know about – suppose all these beliefs somehow reached back in time to draw the Tarot into existence in Renaissance Italy?
We, all of us, caused the tarot to come into the minds of cardmakers in such a perfect form and structure that in our own time we can adapt it to an almost endless series of esoteric, mythological and cultural ideas.”
My jaw hit the floor. I just… love this. What an expansive, inclusive, and imaginative way to contextualize tarot’s development. This passage goes on to point out that future generations of tarotists may also be reaching back right now to us – you and me. What might they be asking us to draw forward? What evolution of tarot craft and function is whispering to you from 5, 10, 20 years forward?
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Now, some musings on card meanings:
The belief that such meanings exist in the cards spurs people to find meanings the original designers may never have intended. Once found, however, those meanings exist.
This part spoke to me as a tarot deck creator myself. One of the most amazing things about releasing the Spacious Tarot into the world has been witnessing folks forming their own interpretations to our illustrations. People find such rich layers of meaning in the artwork, things that Annie & I weren’t even consciously aware of when we created the deck.
A most famous example is our Lovers card. When I came up with the concept, I described it as two light beams intertwining. But many people have pointed out that the image looks like a double helix, and that association has added depth to the card. As deck designers, we didn’t consciously intend this. But it has become part of this card’s spectrum of meaning through those that interact with the deck.
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There’s an entire chapter devoted to the way tarot serves as an “instrument of our wisdom.” Rachel builds a particularly lovely metaphor for how tarot mirrors different types of music. This connected with me quite intuitively, as when I’m teaching tarot myself I’ve often compared reading tarot to being a jazz musician. Rachel takes this even deeper, drawing the following comparisons:
Occult tarot systems (such as the Golden Dawn & BOTA traditions) are similar to classical music in that they are structured, analytical, systematic and involve many rules, traditions and deep study.
Fortunetelling is the folk music of tarot. “Like folk songs, fortunetelling forumulars are simple and compelling and easy to learn,” Rachel explains.
Here’s the one I already brought up: Rachel describes an approach that may draw on some foundational/occult interpretations but pairs that with intuition and imagination as similar to jazz music. Obviously, this is where I am most at home.
There are also those who use the cards with NO knowledge or regard to their history or standard interpretations. Those who have never seen a deck before and simply start pulling cards with reckless abandon. Rachel suggests this might be the rock’n’roll of tarot.
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At the heart of the book are several readings Rachel did on some Big Questions like: what is soul? What is tarot? These are special to read in their entirety but I simply must share this particular passage:
We are each a mysterious creature, unknown to ourselves as much as to others. We are hunters, fierce in our desire for meaning and love. Together we form a complex and dangerous landscape. The Tarot helps us move through that landscape. It allows us to look at ourselves, to see how lives fit together, and also what possible meaning lies behind, or inside, events.
I mean…tattoo that on my forehead.
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Next we get into something I generally do not speak about due to my personal ignorance on the topic: tarot and Jewish mysticism. Being a tarot historian in her own right, Rachel Pollack is clear that the cards were not originally intended to tie into Kabbalah. And yet, “Judaism gives us a model on how to discover meanings ina mysterious work (and) the tarot certainly is a mysterious work.” She also believes a person does not need to be Jewish in order to find value in Jewish perspectives on tarot. If you have been turned off by overwrought occultist jargon parading as Kabbalah, you might find Rachel’s approach more down to earth.
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If you were to ask me to state one concept from Forest of Souls that is most likely to stick with me forever… well, that would be a very tough call. But it might be the concept of loving the images.
Rachel says this is how she describes her entire approach to tarot. It’s not about fixating on keywords, astrological associations, etc etc… although those things can have value. But ultimately, tarot cards are images. To truly engage with tarot, we need to truly engage with the pictures.
When we love the images, we do not run away from them. We really look at them, see what goes on inside them, for us, right at this moment, as if we face a new picture each time we look at it… approach (the images) with passion and excitement.
This dovetails perfectly with the earlier passage about tarot always being something new. This philosophy requires you to truly show up and be present each time you pull a card. No holding yourself at a respectable distance. Being fully present and engaged in what you see in each moment. This also goes nicely with the playful approach described earlier, too. Personally, some of the worst readings I’ve done happened when I was overthinking and having an inflated sense of self importance. The best readings always come when I have a light heart and freely roaming curiosity.
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My goodness, this is becoming quite long and I’m only about halfway through the book, so I will pause soon and come back another day with part two. But to round out part one, I leave you with yet another electrifying idea Rachel puts forth:
What if tarot existed before creation?
Among the more striking concepts in Jewish tradition is the suggestion that the Torah existed before creation. Supposedly, God created the Torah before the universe and then consulted it in order to make the world… …can we say something similar about Tarot? Can we play with the idea that the Tarot images that have proven so vibrant, so suggestive of so many systems and visions, actually existed before the physical universe?
This is a perfect example of what I love so much about Rachel Pollack. She brings an intellectual grounding and scholarship to tarot, while at the same time bringing unbounded mysticism and imagination. She presents the question of tarot existing before creation not as a literal truth, but as an evocative, perception-altering myth. And as Joseph Campbell said:
Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words…mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.
Of course, Rachel also turned to the tarot itself in her pondering. She asked the cards several questions, including: did the tarot exist before creation? How did God use the Tarot to create the world? She shares the cards she drew and the insights she found. Perhaps you might turn to your own tarot cards with these inquiries. Love the images and see where they take you.
Thank you for indulging my commentary so far! I’ll be back again soon so we can experience the second half of the Forest of Souls together.
Carrie