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lindseylaws's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
mepresley's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
4.0
I found Pollack's book to be a helpful introduction to Tarot: its history, the meanings of the cards, how to do readings, and particularly what we can take from the cards/ readings--how we can use these things on our own journey of self-discovery and enlightenment. I especially appreciated her points about the limits of our concept of "common sense" in terms of how we understand ourselves, the world, and our place in it.
"Behind the fear and skepticism lies the same problem: Tarot cards offend 'common sense,' that is, the image of the world we hold in common, which is usually the image taught to us by society. We can call this image 'scientific,' though only in the strict historical sense of that word as meaning the view propagated by officially recognized scientists (excluding, for instance, astrologers and yogis) since the seventeenth century....[T]he 'common sense' view of the world that arose in one culture--Europe--has held sway for no more than two or three hundred years, and has already started to fade....Interestingly, while traditional science's reputation has fallen on hard times, its view of the world remains mostly unchallenged.....
How then do we characterize this 'common' (shared, ordinary) sense? Primarily it insists that only one kind of relationship can exist between events, objects, or patterns....Causality remains restricted to observable physical action" (266-8).
Pollack goes on to say that the precise value of Tarot comes from the way it operates outside this 'common sense' understanding of the world and the limitations it imposes on us.
"We come to the notion that Tarot works precisely because it makes no sense. The information exists. Our unconscious selves already know it. What we need is a device to act as a bridge to conscious perception....[T]he most important implication of synchronicity*, [is] that existence does not follow rigid determinist laws in which all events arise from fixed causes. And yet at the same time, events have meaning. Or rather, meaning emerges from events. From all the random darting and spinning of particles emerges solid matter. From the separate actions and experiences of a person's life emerges a personality. From the mixing of Tarot cards emerges awareness" (272-3).
On a personal level, I was somewhat surprised and thoroughly delighted to see how much Tarot can and does dovetail with the lessons I've learned through yoga and meditation. The worldview Pollack talks about is one that is moving towards an understanding of
"the balance of things, the steady harmony within the constant shift and flow of life. We become aware of the Strangeness always waiting beyond our ordinary experience, we learn to recognize the gifts we receive from existence, and our own responsibility to understand and use them. Most of all, we begin to grasp the truth the Tarot always urges upon us--that the universe, the whole universe, lives. And what we can know of ourselves, we can know of everything" (349).
I didn't find this to be a 5-star read because there were areas in which it felt like Pollack was moving too quickly for me to grasp the concepts, particularly in terms of all the numerology stuff, but mainly because of a rather large amount of surface-level errors with grammar and mechanics. In the quotes provided above, for instance, I have inserted commas where they were needed but missing from the original text. I also wished there were better pictures of the Tarot cards.
---
*Synchronicity is a concept studied by Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli in their 1930s examination of "meaningful coincidence." Pollack states, "They were trying to suggest that an 'acausal principle' could connect events as surely as the causal ones of natural laws" (270).
ovenbird_reads's review against another edition
4.0
This was a super interesting look at the Tarot from a historical, philosophical, and psychological perspective. This is not a book about fortune telling. It's a book about the Tarot as a system of symbols that can be used to access the depths of your sub-conscious mind. It really reads the Tarot like a complex book that can be interpreted in almost infinite ways. A fantastic introduction for anyone who has any interest in the Tarot and what it really is--not magic, but a psychoanalytical tool that has transformed itself multiple times throughout history.
katj3x's review against another edition
2.0
I bought this book based on positive reviews and an observation I thought I'd read somewhere about Harold Bloom having said that it was essential to understanding the tarot. (I have since looked and been unable to find mention of this anywhere.) I was rather optimistic about it, thinking I’d at last found a book that could elucidate the symbology of the (Rider-Waite-Smith) tarot for me.
Less than a hundred pages later I was grinding my teeth, doing my best to dig out any interesting bits from all the flower-scented beautiful spiritual light.
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom is not a book of analysis proper, but of interpretation. Rachel Pollack thinks the tarot carries not only the symbolism of the individual cards and perhaps an overall structure of some kind, but a very specific and organized set of teachings about life and the world: “The Tarot ... is not impartial. On the contrary, it attempts to push us in certain directions: optimism, spirituality, a belief in the necessity and value of change.” This stance distills much of the tarot’s putative divinatory powers into rather anodyne New Age advice, although by itself it is not contradictory if we’re parting from a hermeneutical blank slate.
She divides the Major Arcana in three lines of seven, leaving the Fool out (she suggests he can fit in between any of several pairs of cards). The first one, which ranges from the Magician to the Chariot, she calls “the outer concerns of life in society”; the second one, from Strength to Temperance, “the search inwards to find out who we really are”; and the third, from the Devil to the World, “the development of a spiritual awareness and a release of archetypal energy”. These represent three stages in a linear path towards some kind of rapture, “a unity with the great forces of life itself”, each step being represented by one of the Major Arcana.
Even if we’re to give her the benefit of the doubt, we can at best countenance these interpretations as being inherent to the Waite tarot and not the primordial 15th century decks, since there are central concerns with the distinction between conscious and unconscious, “the materialist conception of the universe” and so on — notions that were just not around at the time when the tarot was originated. And even then it takes a lot of generosity to accept many of her analyses, for three main reasons:
One, she finds symbolism everywhere to support her desired meanings — a sword facing upright means “both resolve and the idea that wisdom is like a sword piercing through the illusion of events to find the inner meaning”, and a yellow road is “yellow for mental action”. Even if we accept the plausibility of these images carrying such meanings, still the sword has to point somewhere, the road has to be some color. Without recurring to authority, it’s hard to know what is relevant and what is not; and the ultimate authority on the RWS tarot, Arthur Waite’s own Pictorial Key to the Tarot, is known to be deliberately misleading when regarding certain topics that the Golden Dawn held secretive. Pollack is, therefore, justified in adopting his descriptions and divinatory meanings at times and ignoring them at others — but she does this without much criterion, saying that “to a great extent, the material in this book does not derive from teachers on Tarot (I never studied with anyone or took any classes) but just from working with the cards”. This leaves an opening for her to use only what she likes from the Pictorial Key, later filling the empty spaces with her own New Age preconceptions, without arguing for it.
Two, her interpretations are often implausible. For instance, she says that a child with his back to us means that, in the context of the card being considered (Judgment), “the new existence is a mystery, with no way for us to know what it will be like until we experience it ... [and] that we do not really know ourselves, and that we cannot until we hear and respond to the call”. That seems a bit more elaborate than this humble symbol can support, assuming it’s meant to symbolize anything at all. This kind of symbological overburdening is much too frequent in the book.
Three, her extremely systematic understanding of the Major Arcana involves certain relationships that are so elaborate that they could not possibly have been intended by the devisers of the Tarot, either Waite (who notoriously swapped two of the major arcana around) or whoever came before him. She draws not only all sorts of silly numerological relationships within and between the cards but also argues that cards on the same “column” in her three-line division are related — so the Moon relates to the Emperor, which is “above” it, as well as to Strength, because the Moon is card number 18 and Strength is card number 8; just as the Sun relates to the Hermit (19 and 9), as well as to the Magician (because “the other half [to 20] of 19 is 1”) and to the Wheel of Fortune (“1 plus 9 equals 10”). The claimed significance of these relations is often subtle, but it’s easy to see how quickly they get out of hand. I find it highly implausible that someone could have built a system that univocally represents some external truth, as Pollack argues the Major Arcana does when considered sequentially, all the while carrying a scheme as elaborate as that. The way out would be to dare and say that the tarot actually reflects some transcendental blueprint of human psychology, but she doesn’t go that far.
I cannot, therefore, accept Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom as a book about the RWS tarot. It is an esoteric system built upon its images, vaguely buttressed on A. E. Waite’s own occult notions, but ultimately independent and, to me, unsatisfactory. If your interest in the Tarot is exegetical and distanced, as is mine, look elsewhere.
The book is not without its merits: the section on the Celtic cross spread was helpful, and in her analyses of the cards Pollack often notes the presence of interesting symbols that could easily be missed: the water behind the veil in the High Priestess, the similarity between Death and the Knight of Cups, the scales on the wall behind the old man in the Ten of Pentacles, so on. And some of her interpretations are persuasive, or at least good material for coming up with your own understanding of the cards, which seems more productive if we’re to play the game of arbitrariness anyway.
I don’t regret having read this, but I could probably have gotten the same information from somewhere else, along with much this book doesn’t offer, and without having lost my time reading about all the sparkly pseudo-Jungian esotericism. Two books I think may be closer to what I was looking for are [b:The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination|415498|The Tarot History, Symbolism, and Divination|Robert Michael Place|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309282736s/415498.jpg|404681] and [b:Mystical Origins of the Tarot: From Ancient Roots to Modern Usage|141375|Mystical Origins of the Tarot From Ancient Roots to Modern Usage|Paul Huson|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364137919s/141375.jpg|136345]. I haven't read them and won't read them any time soon, but if you can relate to the concerns exposed above, you may want to try starting your studies there instead.
2013/06/03: I also recommend Danusha Goska's review for a more informed analysis of some of Pollack's interpretations.
Less than a hundred pages later I was grinding my teeth, doing my best to dig out any interesting bits from all the flower-scented beautiful spiritual light.
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom is not a book of analysis proper, but of interpretation. Rachel Pollack thinks the tarot carries not only the symbolism of the individual cards and perhaps an overall structure of some kind, but a very specific and organized set of teachings about life and the world: “The Tarot ... is not impartial. On the contrary, it attempts to push us in certain directions: optimism, spirituality, a belief in the necessity and value of change.” This stance distills much of the tarot’s putative divinatory powers into rather anodyne New Age advice, although by itself it is not contradictory if we’re parting from a hermeneutical blank slate.
She divides the Major Arcana in three lines of seven, leaving the Fool out (she suggests he can fit in between any of several pairs of cards). The first one, which ranges from the Magician to the Chariot, she calls “the outer concerns of life in society”; the second one, from Strength to Temperance, “the search inwards to find out who we really are”; and the third, from the Devil to the World, “the development of a spiritual awareness and a release of archetypal energy”. These represent three stages in a linear path towards some kind of rapture, “a unity with the great forces of life itself”, each step being represented by one of the Major Arcana.
Even if we’re to give her the benefit of the doubt, we can at best countenance these interpretations as being inherent to the Waite tarot and not the primordial 15th century decks, since there are central concerns with the distinction between conscious and unconscious, “the materialist conception of the universe” and so on — notions that were just not around at the time when the tarot was originated. And even then it takes a lot of generosity to accept many of her analyses, for three main reasons:
One, she finds symbolism everywhere to support her desired meanings — a sword facing upright means “both resolve and the idea that wisdom is like a sword piercing through the illusion of events to find the inner meaning”, and a yellow road is “yellow for mental action”. Even if we accept the plausibility of these images carrying such meanings, still the sword has to point somewhere, the road has to be some color. Without recurring to authority, it’s hard to know what is relevant and what is not; and the ultimate authority on the RWS tarot, Arthur Waite’s own Pictorial Key to the Tarot, is known to be deliberately misleading when regarding certain topics that the Golden Dawn held secretive. Pollack is, therefore, justified in adopting his descriptions and divinatory meanings at times and ignoring them at others — but she does this without much criterion, saying that “to a great extent, the material in this book does not derive from teachers on Tarot (I never studied with anyone or took any classes) but just from working with the cards”. This leaves an opening for her to use only what she likes from the Pictorial Key, later filling the empty spaces with her own New Age preconceptions, without arguing for it.
Two, her interpretations are often implausible. For instance, she says that a child with his back to us means that, in the context of the card being considered (Judgment), “the new existence is a mystery, with no way for us to know what it will be like until we experience it ... [and] that we do not really know ourselves, and that we cannot until we hear and respond to the call”. That seems a bit more elaborate than this humble symbol can support, assuming it’s meant to symbolize anything at all. This kind of symbological overburdening is much too frequent in the book.
Three, her extremely systematic understanding of the Major Arcana involves certain relationships that are so elaborate that they could not possibly have been intended by the devisers of the Tarot, either Waite (who notoriously swapped two of the major arcana around) or whoever came before him. She draws not only all sorts of silly numerological relationships within and between the cards but also argues that cards on the same “column” in her three-line division are related — so the Moon relates to the Emperor, which is “above” it, as well as to Strength, because the Moon is card number 18 and Strength is card number 8; just as the Sun relates to the Hermit (19 and 9), as well as to the Magician (because “the other half [to 20] of 19 is 1”) and to the Wheel of Fortune (“1 plus 9 equals 10”). The claimed significance of these relations is often subtle, but it’s easy to see how quickly they get out of hand. I find it highly implausible that someone could have built a system that univocally represents some external truth, as Pollack argues the Major Arcana does when considered sequentially, all the while carrying a scheme as elaborate as that. The way out would be to dare and say that the tarot actually reflects some transcendental blueprint of human psychology, but she doesn’t go that far.
I cannot, therefore, accept Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom as a book about the RWS tarot. It is an esoteric system built upon its images, vaguely buttressed on A. E. Waite’s own occult notions, but ultimately independent and, to me, unsatisfactory. If your interest in the Tarot is exegetical and distanced, as is mine, look elsewhere.
The book is not without its merits: the section on the Celtic cross spread was helpful, and in her analyses of the cards Pollack often notes the presence of interesting symbols that could easily be missed: the water behind the veil in the High Priestess, the similarity between Death and the Knight of Cups, the scales on the wall behind the old man in the Ten of Pentacles, so on. And some of her interpretations are persuasive, or at least good material for coming up with your own understanding of the cards, which seems more productive if we’re to play the game of arbitrariness anyway.
I don’t regret having read this, but I could probably have gotten the same information from somewhere else, along with much this book doesn’t offer, and without having lost my time reading about all the sparkly pseudo-Jungian esotericism. Two books I think may be closer to what I was looking for are [b:The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination|415498|The Tarot History, Symbolism, and Divination|Robert Michael Place|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309282736s/415498.jpg|404681] and [b:Mystical Origins of the Tarot: From Ancient Roots to Modern Usage|141375|Mystical Origins of the Tarot From Ancient Roots to Modern Usage|Paul Huson|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364137919s/141375.jpg|136345]. I haven't read them and won't read them any time soon, but if you can relate to the concerns exposed above, you may want to try starting your studies there instead.
2013/06/03: I also recommend Danusha Goska's review for a more informed analysis of some of Pollack's interpretations.
badpriestess's review against another edition
2.0
I've heard people say that this is the best book you could possibly read to learn more about Tarot. I don't know if I'd agree with that, because, for my purposes, this book left a lot to be desired. I can definitely recognize the author's amount of education and experience with the Tarot, but this book had way more information than I really needed to go out and do a reading for someone else (or even myself). No way would I recommend this book for a beginner in the Tarot. This is strictly for someone who wants a billion different interpretations (bordering on rambles) on each component of each card. Oftentimes I would read her description of what a particular card means, and walk away with more questions than answers. I also don't understand why she discussed the cards in each suit from King to Ace, rather than from Ace to King. Pollack's interpretations and way of writing simply did not appeal to me or offer any valuable information. I don't feel like I could use much of her work in my own divination.