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Title: The Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot by Rachel Pollack ISBN: 1-56718-533-9 Publisher: Llewellyn Publications Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.86 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent addition to any Tarot library
Comment: This is the first book by Rachel Pollack I've read, she's written a few others which have been highly acclaimed - and after reading this excellent book, I can understand why.
Pollack opens with a description of the various histories and mythological guesses at the origins of the Tarot, combining it with its known history, and personal experience. Spirituality, symbols, myths and archetypes are common themes explored in this book as Pollack approaches the decks in a more spiritual rather than divinatory light.
The text is beautifully accompanied by a variety of black and white illustrations of various Tarot decks, many of which I've never seen before. She examines the commonalities found within them, and explains much of the mythology and reasoning behind such images. Pollack relies heavily on the Shining Tribe Tarot she created, obviously as that symbolism resonates best with her understanding.
There are methods of asking questions of the Tarot that she seems to feel others would find heretical. Coming from a chaos magick background myself, I can't quite understand why, though I've found my work enhanced by her suggestions. She expands upon the traditional spreads listed in every other book with spontaneous questions and insights of her own. Previous to reading Forest of Souls, my Tarot readings were much more ridgedly structured. Ms. Pollack has given my practice a much needed breath of fresh air, allowing for much more creativity and spontaneity in my readings.
An excellent book for expanding one's thought on traditional histories and practices of Tarot, highly recommended to anyone with an interest in Tarot.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Essential Addition to Your Tarot Library
Comment: In her new work, Rachel Pollack takes readers deeper into the Tarot than many would have thought possible. She says that "the Tarot works best as an instrument of our wisdom when we dare to ask it outrageous questions..." and she does, indeed, ask questions and explore concepts that are both complex and challenging.
Forest of Souls is written so that people who have had little exposure to Tarot can follow along (cards from many decks are reproduced right in the text), but also where people who have spent years studying can find new things - even the third and fourth times through.
Rachel encourages us to let go of more traditional definitions and layouts, and to use the cards in "divine play". With tales of myth and history from different cultures and traditions, she moves from the origins of the Tarot to the origins of the universe... and through the inner workings of the human soul.
Although this book is not about how to read the Tarot, it will significantly enhance your reading skills and enlarge your notion of what the Tarot can be and do. Many of the questions pondered also create transformational experiences as Rachel leads us to "explore possibilities outside our normal ways of thought."
I highly recommend Forest of Souls to anyone interested in Tarot, no matter what their level of experience or skill.
Rating: 5
Summary: Lost and Found in The Forest of Souls
Comment: The author begins her book with a "Gallery of Quotations," utilizing diverse sources--a Reconstructionist Jewish prayer book, personal correspondence, T.S. Eliot, and the Bible. Being a font of fabulous quotations, Pollack is also self-referential.
In the ensuing chapters, like the reverently irreverent Tracy Ullman, Pollack takes on such subjects as the Tarot's origins, wisdom questions (as opposed to asking, "Will X marry me," she asks, "What is marriage?"), Jewish and Kabbalistic thoughts as they pertain to the Tarot, and formulating new versions of the Fool's Journey. The author does a reading for God ("God's Reading") and finds Christian symbolism abounding in her own Shining Tribe deck when she performs "A Reading for the Resurrection: Easter 2001."
What do I mean by reverently irreverent? Some might call doing a spread for God irreverent. Yet Pollack's awe is reserved for what is truly profound, and part of that profundity is in pushing the limits of what we have done before or think we know. She pushes those limits not out of irreverence, but reverence for the truly infinite. And for the tarot, in what it can offer us in terms of infinite wisdom
If you have been fortunate enough to attend a workshop with Rachel Pollack, you know that her style is humorous and digressive. She is widely read and thinks and speaks in an unconventional, intellectually searching voice. This voice is manifested in The Forest of Souls, far more than in her previous tarot writings. I could actually hear her in my head, alluding to Professor Irwin Cory and tales of her dog's exploits. The tone of the book has an immediacy and vitality that makes it easy to read, which is an amazing feat, as the concepts and thoughts are both complex and challenging.
They are also unique. I cannot think of another book like this in the tarot oeuvre. It is also demanding, particularly in its structure. While Pollack offers us a panoply of different ways in which we can use the tarot, this is no traditional workbook. She describes what she has done, but she certainly doesn't set up a format that we can follow by rote. She doesn't make it easy. One example is her approach to alternative Major Arcana journeys. I am excited by doing one of my own, but I must admit I would have preferred some step-by-step instructions, even as I feel challenged in a positive way. Pollack's Forest of Souls isn't a stop on the Carnival Tour. This isn't the Easily Digestible Approach to Tarot, but one of visionaries, dreamers, and explorers. Only adult tarot readers need apply.
In high school, I read Elie Wiesel's The Gates of the Forest, a moving novel about the holocaust and Kabbalah. I remember being so engrossed in this book that I was shocked to feel something wet on my shoulder. It was a tear that had fallen without me even being aware that I was crying, so enmeshed was I in that compelling story. The title of that book, so similar to Rachel's, brought that memory back to me. The synchronicity of the subject matter seems to align with the magic of the Tarot, another inviting and complex forest for which we are blessed to have a guide like Rachel Pollack.
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Title: Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot by Rachel Pollack ISBN: 0722535724 Publisher: Thorsons Pub Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals (Special Topics in Tarot) by Mary K. Greer, Barbara Moore ISBN: 1567182852 Publisher: Llewellyn Publications Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Shining Tribe Tarot, Revised and Expanded by Rachel Pollack ISBN: 1567185320 Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Tarot for Your Self : A Workbook for Personal Transformation Second Edition by Mary K. Greer ISBN: 1564145883 Publisher: New Page Books Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.99 |
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Title: Tarot and the Tree of Life: Finding Everyday Wisdom in the Minor Arcana by Isabel Radow Kliegman ISBN: 083560747X Publisher: Quest Books Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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