Seven Days of 78 Degrees: Day Five

It's already Day Five of my 7-day review of Rachel Pollack's 78 Degrees of Wisdom. I feel a sense of relief at coming to the end of the minor arcana today. It's a bit of a slog to read through the full minor arcana card by card, when all the interpretations have been very familiar to the point of it feeling like a revision guide. While this is encouraging as it affirms my tarot knowledge, it can make for tedious reading if no new insights pop up from time to time.

One thing I  notice is the reversed meanings of the cards seem to have no real pattern. Sometimes they are given as a deepening of the upright meaning, sometimes they are the opposite of the upright meaning. This isn't a huge problem, but I do tend to look for patterns and so when one doesn't make itself apparent, it does not sit well with me. Also, the meanings are deeply and completely RWS interpretations, and I am in a place now where I am exploring other systems or ways of looking at the minors, and would have enjoyed seeing something a bit broader. Perhaps the book should be titled 78 Degrees of Wisdom: A Close Look at the Rider-Waite-Smith.

I will say that the explanations of the cards are all very lucid, thorough and easy to understand. I would recommend this book as a reference to be kept on the shelf beside other good guides such as Sarah Bartlett's Tarot Bible and Pictures from the Heart: A Tarot Dictionary by Sandra A Thomson.

I look forward to reading the chapters on divination and tarot spreads.

Seven Days of 78 Degrees: Days Three & Four

I'm over half way through the book now. I must say I am increasingly amazed at how much of my tarot practice is virtually identical to that Rachel Pollack describes in 78 Degrees of Wisdom. Because she doesn't do much in the way of referencing her sources, I am not sure how much of this material comes from her and how much from Waite, Jung, etc. I must also admit I was hoping for more of a scholarly treatment of the cards and their history, or a deeper pulling together of various esoteric traditions and correspondences. Does this mean that I waited long enough to read this book? If I had tried to read it before I virtually already knew most of it, by osmosis or whatever means it has got into my head, would it have blown my mind? Or blown me away? Who knows, eh. 

So far the thing that is ringing for me is Pollack's statements about free will in her discussion of the Justice card. I am accustomed to taroists saying, 'Oh, the cards don't foretell the future. A reading is not set in stone, you have free will and so things might change.' I have said this myself many times. But actually...I think Pollack has a very good point when she says that free will is something we have but do not use nearly as often as we think we do. A simple decision is not exercising free will. And turning left instead of right one day won't render a tarot reading invalid. Even doing something drastic like resigning from your job to go and farm  turnips in Tuscany won't necessarily render a tarot reading invalid. According to Pollack, a tarot reading will stand until you do some deep inner work on what got you to the point from which the reading is projected in the first place. This is a lot more than just saying,'Well, if the reading says I will be unhappy in my work, I'll just quit and get a new job' and expecting then to be happy in your work. Some deep exploration must be done to find out why work makes you unhappy, and change that, not just change jobs. This is not an entirely new concept to me...but it's one we as taroists may have a tendency to play down in our rush to assure our clients that a tarot reading is not the final word on their life. When we say, 'You can change it,' we need to be very clear about how much effort that really entails.

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).

Seven Days of 78 Degrees: Day One

Welcome to Day One of my 7 day review of 78 Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack.


I've now read Pollack's take on her first row of the Major Arcana, Magician - Chariot. (She treats the Fool separately.) All of the material so far sounds really, really familiar. Obviously Pollack's work would have influenced other tarot writers whom I've read, but now that I think about it, I believe one of the first books I read about tarot was Illustrated Guide to Tarot by Rachel Pollack. I found it in the library and thought it looked pretty thorough. Of course at that time I didn't know a thing about Rachel Pollack, or any other big name in the tarot world. I didn't know anything about anything! I then went on to buy Mary K Greer's books Tarot for Yourself and 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card as well as a blank book. So I went the Mary K Greer route and decided at some point, after reading reviews at Amazon, I'm guessing, that Rachel Pollack was too advanced for me and it would be best to stick with more practical books. Still I've managed to absorb a lot of her ideas without reading her, it seems.

A few things stood out to me in these first chapters:

Seven Days of 78 Degrees

I just got this book today, a classic text on the tarot. My intention is to post about this book for the next seven days, 11 - 17 August.

I have steered clear of Rachel Pollack for the first years of my tarot study because I felt I didn't have enough background to follow her, but I will be attending a tarot conference in October at which she is key speaker, so it seemed like the right time to read something beyond her Haindl guides.

I hope those who have worked with this book for years will chime in with their own wisdom and encouragement.