nicky
I like this book very much
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78 Degrees of what?!
BSwett
It has somewhat grown on me. Very valuable journey through the cards. More than just tarot, it's a hearty existential lessons book. About life and personal evolution.
Can anyone recommend an equivalent to this book that is a little more focused on the old world Marseille style tarot?
Thanks, B.
Can anyone recommend an equivalent to this book that is a little more focused on the old world Marseille style tarot?
Thanks, B.
Elendil
Paul Huson's Mystical Origins of The Tarot may be of some use.
BSwett
Some of her forced numerology inventions are making me dizzy…
Pollack writes something along this lines:
The number 12 (The hanged man) can be divided as 2 times 6, which means 2 (The High Priestess) elevating 6 (The Lovers) to a higher place…
Also:
The number 13 (Death) relates to Judas because he was the thirteenth man in the last supper, so it also symbolizes Jesus (?!?), and Death.
What?
-
Pollack writes something along this lines:
The number 12 (The hanged man) can be divided as 2 times 6, which means 2 (The High Priestess) elevating 6 (The Lovers) to a higher place…
Also:
The number 13 (Death) relates to Judas because he was the thirteenth man in the last supper, so it also symbolizes Jesus (?!?), and Death.
What?
-
Richard
Some of her forced numerology inventions are making me dizzy…
Pollack writes something along this lines:
The number 12 (The hanged man) can be divided as 2 times 6, which means 2 (The High Priestess) elevating 6 (The Lovers) to a higher place…
Also:
The number 13 (Death) relates to Judas because he was the thirteenth man in the last supper, so it also symbolizes Jesus (?!?), and Death.
What?
-No, no, no Maam' !! This is getting a bit silly.
Such a shame, so many great ideas and concepts shuffled with a bunch of gibberish….
Rachel Pollack sometimes gets ahead of herself. There is another way to relate the Hanged Man numerologically to the Lovers, but I think that maybe she shouldn't presuppose a background of numerology on the part of her readers. Also, Death does relate to Jesus, but a more direct way is the fact that Death is the 14th Trump (13+1, if you start with the Fool as the 1st). The 14th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Nun, which means Fish, which is familiar as ΙΧΘΥΣ, Koiné Greek for Fish, which is an acronym for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. This relates also to the interpretation of Death as a rebirth or new beginning, since in the Christian mythos, Christ is said to have risen from the dead. Pollack can be confusing at times, but seldom is she just plain wrong.
Richard
The best book on the Marseille is Reading the Marseille Tarot by J-M. David. However, it is not a "cookbook" of divinatory meanings; it is mostly about the inconography of the Trumps. The idea is that if you really understand the images, then their divinatory meanings will come naturally, and there is no need to rely on anyone else's intuition, just your own.
Carla
Some of her forced numerology inventions are making me dizzy…
Pollack writes something along this lines:
The number 12 (The hanged man) can be divided as 2 times 6, which means 2 (The High Priestess) elevating 6 (The Lovers) to a higher place…
Also:
The number 13 (Death) relates to Judas because he was the thirteenth man in the last supper, so it also symbolizes Jesus (?!?), and Death.
What?
-No, no, no Maam' !! This is getting a bit silly.
Such a shame, so many great ideas and concepts shuffled with a bunch of gibberish….
I agree with you there, some of Pollack's meanderings with 'numerology' (which in her books is often as you say, 'numbers gibberish') can get pretty bollocky. I just gloss over that stuff . Wheat from the chaff, and all that sort of thing. I'm sure she knows what she means, but she glosses over it like we already know it, too. Meh.
BSwett
Let's start with an apology to all those who enter this thread. I'm sorry if my ongoing commentary here seesaws' in between anger and love towards this book. Then again, I live in a town where I don't know any other Tarot fans. My wife enjoys my readings but doesn't dive deep into the exploration of the cards like I do; my friends are bikers, climbers and snowboarders and that is what we do and talk about. I haven't found anyone else that wants to discuss, dissect, and debate Tarot matters, so this is the closest thing to a book club that I can find.
If my swaying opinions give you vertigo, I apologize and I encourage you to click your way out of here.
If you keep on reading: Hello again.
Now I enter the Temperance chapter, and once more, Madame Pollack seduces me with a lovely perspective of the card. No numerology here; just a continuation of the multi layer journey through personal evolution with the Major Arcana. Even if I didn't care much about the cards, this I would consider a fabulous life chapter/lesson.
But to respond to LRichard:
I truly appreciate your contributions. Still, I personally want to leave the Jesus story out of my cards as much as possible. I don't think it can be totally ignored, because, without questioning beliefs, it is a fundamental part of our collective history. At least for the last couple of millenniums.
But, why complicate everything with such mathematical eccentricities?
Death DOES relate to Jesus, but not 'more directly' because 13+1, and the fool, and the hebrew alphabet, etc. But simply because the story of Jesus' death is the most famous death in 2 thousand years, and millions of people carry an enormous (and heavy) cross in their backs representing his death because of the massive endoctrination that has been carried out by many Churches through time.
Fiction or non fiction, his story and all the wonderful lessons that one can chose to gather from it, tells us that he resurrected, just like other religions promise re-encarnation, afterlife, and other more cosmic post-death voyages.
So yes, the 13th card, if we really want to, can remind us of Christ. It can also remind us of Judas, or Buddha or Johann Sebastian Bach for that matter. And I can point out how, even though Bach died in 1750 (1+7+5+0=13), he resurrects over and over again, 263 years later, right here, as his music bounces around the walls of my living room.
Peace.
If my swaying opinions give you vertigo, I apologize and I encourage you to click your way out of here.
If you keep on reading: Hello again.
Now I enter the Temperance chapter, and once more, Madame Pollack seduces me with a lovely perspective of the card. No numerology here; just a continuation of the multi layer journey through personal evolution with the Major Arcana. Even if I didn't care much about the cards, this I would consider a fabulous life chapter/lesson.
But to respond to LRichard:
I truly appreciate your contributions. Still, I personally want to leave the Jesus story out of my cards as much as possible. I don't think it can be totally ignored, because, without questioning beliefs, it is a fundamental part of our collective history. At least for the last couple of millenniums.
But, why complicate everything with such mathematical eccentricities?
Death DOES relate to Jesus, but not 'more directly' because 13+1, and the fool, and the hebrew alphabet, etc. But simply because the story of Jesus' death is the most famous death in 2 thousand years, and millions of people carry an enormous (and heavy) cross in their backs representing his death because of the massive endoctrination that has been carried out by many Churches through time.
Fiction or non fiction, his story and all the wonderful lessons that one can chose to gather from it, tells us that he resurrected, just like other religions promise re-encarnation, afterlife, and other more cosmic post-death voyages.
So yes, the 13th card, if we really want to, can remind us of Christ. It can also remind us of Judas, or Buddha or Johann Sebastian Bach for that matter. And I can point out how, even though Bach died in 1750 (1+7+5+0=13), he resurrects over and over again, 263 years later, right here, as his music bounces around the walls of my living room.
Peace.
Lokisen
I tried reading "78 Degrees," and I got part of the way through it, but I have really mixed feelings about it. Some of the information presented is interesting and different, but I guess what ultimately made me not care for the book that much was Pollack's writing style--didn't agree with me, I suppose. Like, I really liked her take on the Tower card, it was really informative and specific, but other ones, like the Page of Wands, for example, were very vague and brief. This is just me, but I personally prefer more detail and description when reading interpretations of cards. And I understand that different authors have different interpretations for the cards, but some of Pollack's entries didn't always make sense, perhaps?
Glad to see I'm not the only one who was kinda "meh" over her text.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I prefer Crowley's "Book of Thoth" for interpretations, tarot meanings, etc.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who was kinda "meh" over her text.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I prefer Crowley's "Book of Thoth" for interpretations, tarot meanings, etc.
Richard
The Book of Thoth is the best source for interpretative meanings that I know of, but I don't think it would work for the OP, since Crowley bases a significant part of his interpretation of Death on its numerological correlation with the Hebrew letter Nun and its reference to Jesus Christ. Moreover, Crowley depends heavily on the fact that every Tarot card is linked to a Hebrew Letter and/or elemental or astrological concept, as originally conceived by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, by means of "mathematical eccentricities."......I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I prefer Crowley's "Book of Thoth" for interpretive tarot meanings.
