Review by Angelo Nasios
“The journey of tarot continues on, Rachel Pollack
presents tarot in a simple and direct manner in the style
of Eden Grey, that proves there is always more to
learn”
Tarot author, teacher and all-round legend best
known for her “78 Degrees of Wisdom” has written a new
book, “The New Tarot Handbook”. I was very excited when
I saw that this book was an upcoming release,
anything that Rachel writes is simply worth reading. I was
looking forward in seeing what The New Tarot Handbook had
to offer. What more is there to be said? If you have
read 78 Degrees of Wisdom or her 2008 release, “Tarot
Wisdom” you may think the same thing. To be honest I had
some concern as to what was going to be presented. Was
it simply going to be another 78 Degrees, reworded in
a different fashion with a few updates? Or will be
refreshing offering new insights? Let us explore and find
out.
To start the book is in total 280 pages long and
is grouped in six chapters. Listed as Introduction,
The Major Arcana, The Minor Arcana, The Court Cards,
Readings and Further Study.
In the introduction Rachel
explains her background in how she came across tarot.
Rachel speaks about the influence that Eden Grey author
of Tarot Revealed impacted her and on modern tarot
reading. This is a very nice homage to Eden as Rachel also
describes The New Tarot Handbook as restoring the Eden Grey
tradition by saying “I like to think that this book revives
Eden Grey’s tradition – a work that is short, direct,
yet hopefully is backed up by deeper knowledge and
awareness”. This statement gives us our structure and
intention of this book. A book that is simple, easy to read,
that is backed by real knowledge and solid
understanding that people can grasp onto. After reading most of
the book I can say that Rachel had done exactly what
it was she was hoping for. The New Tarot Handbook is
short, direct and easy to understanding. Now to say short
I do not mean short in content, there is plenty of
solid background on the cards, explanations of symbols
and meaning.
To give a brief description of how this
is setup, there is a Waite-Smith image of the card,
in this case The Empress. Below that are a few
keywords to generalize the essence of the card, for The
Empress it is “passion, love, motherhood, abundance”.
Below that is Rachel’s spiel about the card. After that
you will see divinatory meanings and reversed meanings
in the style of Eden Grey’s Tarot Revealed. After
each card is a “reading for” the card, a spread
customized for each card.
As for what is presented in the
actual description and explanations of the cards in the
words of Goldilocks “Ahhh, this porridge is just right”
so too is the amount of information just right. In 78
Degrees of Wisdom and so to in Tarot Wisdom there is a
sense of information overload, that there is a lot to
soak up. This is not the case here, where you are given
the right balance of knowledge needed without feeling
like a deer caught in headlights. The writing is casual
and easier going than previous writings. But by all
means this is not dummied down tarot, a good way to
describe it is as Diet Tarot Wisdom or 78 Degrees of Wisdom
Lite, still has that refreshing taste with no calories!
The New Tarot Handbook provides new insights along
with already established ones, so readers of Rachel’s
others books will find out there is more to learn.
The
flow of the book is smooth; Rachel shows how cards are
interrelated to one another, building up from previous cards
and showing the development and growth from one to the
other. This is a very important thing for tarot readers
to understand, how cards are connected to each other
and how that impacts the meaning. In the example of
The Empress she does this by showing the connection
via pairs, the Magician and Empress, High Priestess
and Empress and Emperor with Empress.
I love to read
about the mythologies in the cards, with The Empress we
are taught the association with two goddess,
Venus/Aphrodite and Demeter, then going further explain the myth
of Persephone’s kidnapping by Hades. I would like to
make a quick side note that Rachel says Hades is the
god of death; in actuality he is the god of the
underworld, not death himself. Death is represented by another
figure, that of “Thanatos” who is the personification of
death. But Rachel was making a point with associating
Hades with death in that in the end Demeter gets her
daughter back from “death”, revealing a lesson that you
should never underestimate a mother.
Moving onto the
Minor Arcana Rachel explains the suits in terms of their
elemental qualities and explains the numerological meanings
of each number, the foundations that all readers
should have. The minors are setup just like the Majors
with the removal of the keywords under the card instead
replacing it with the Element & Theme of the card. The
minor are at times linked to the majors to give you a
sense of deeper connection, while some cards like the 2
of Swords simply states it “links her to the High
Priestess”, without any other explanation of that that
connection.
Towards the end in the section of “Readings”
Rachel explains the reading process and goes with the “do
as you will” mentality throwing to the wind the
notion that you have to follow certain ritualistic
“rules”. She also lists several complex free spreads.
In
conclusion The New Tarot Handbook was a wonderful read.
Rachel’s aim at writing a book that was simple and direct
to the point was achieved. Who would is this book
good for? Anyone really, however I would recommended it
to a new reader who is looking for a deeper awareness
to the cards meaning, mythology and symbolism without
feeling lost in the esoteric translation.
Angelo Nasios is a tarot reader, blogger and
YouTube vlogger.
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