Seven Days of 78 Degrees: Day Two

Hello again for Day Two of my 7 day review of Rachel Pollack's 78 Degrees of Wisdom. Today's reading, Chapter 5 'Turning Inwards' covers Pollack's '2nd row' of the majors, Strength - Temperance.

Strength
'Many people feel a lack of spontaneity in their lives. They look around them or read books on psychology and observe, with a certain jealousy, or even shame at their own repressions, the characteristics of spontaneous people. And then, rather than follow the fearful process of releasing their hidden fears and desires, they carefully imitate spontaneity. They have extended the Chariot to a new domain' (Pollack, 73).
This quotation hit home with me. It's like I do a reading and see that I need more Page of Cups and more Knight of Wands in my life, and I go to work looking at lists of what those characters are like and add to my to-do list: 'Be more joyous and more exuberant.' Which is exactly what Pollack is talking about here. Rather than identifying the source of those qualities, or better still, what may be holding me back from them, I try to approximate them out of a sense of lack on my part. Unfortunately, Pollack doesn't go on with any sort of lucid explanation of how one would accomplish true Strength. I find so much of her writing does this. It drifts tantalisingly close, it hints, it flirts, but she never gives you the meat before she has moved on to the next thought that has drifted into her head.

I was again seriously PO'ed by the Wheel of Fortune section because she makes three more references to this 'yearly regal sacrifice' without once explaining where she got this idea that such a thing happened, and she makes no indication that she means it be taken as a myth or metaphor. 'Every year, at mid-winter, the priestess sacrificed the king; by imitating the death of the year, they humbled themselves to the Goddess's power, and by choosing a new king they subtly suggested to her that she might once more create spring out of winter...Thus the Wheel originally symbolised both the mystery of nature and the human ability to take part in that mystery through a ritual sacrifice' (Pollack, 84). Oh, did it? She claims it happened in India (85) and links it to Grail lore on page 87. What is up with this? It's really starting to tick me off.

There's an interesting tidbit about 'free will' in the section on Justice. Pollack claims that the Justice card 'indicates first of all that events have worked out in the way they were meant to work out; that is, what is happening to you comes from situations and decisions in the past. You have what you deserve' (96).

She gives an example of a person who has a reading that very clearly shows disaster if a course of action is taken. The person might say, 'Well, this is likely, but my free will allows me to change the situation', so he goes ahead and the situation turns out exactly as the cards predicted. Pollack says that the person was not exercising free will. The cards had predicted what the outcomes would be based on this course of action, given what has happened in the past to get the person here to begin with. 'It is not enough just to foresee a likely outcome for us to change or prevent that event,' she states. 'We must understand why it is coming, and we must work on the causes within ourselves for the thing we do and the ways we react. Free will certainly exists. We just do not know how to use it' (95). She does not overtly go on to state how to use it (typical of her writing style), but we gather that she means we should look at our pasts and examine how we got here before we can change the course of our future. That is a very fresh take on the Justice card for me, even though I am aware that it is often called 'Karma' in other decks.

Pollack points out that Death is not actually transformation, but instead it is the moment we acknowledge and drop our 'old masks' (102). It indicates a fear of change, she says. Hmm.

Those were some of the high points.