The Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot [Paperback]

Rachel Pollack (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2002

"The Forest of Souls" examines the tarot cards and their dreamlike pictures from the standpoint of myth. The cards are brought to life through stories and poems, exercises and meditations, even rituals and invocation. The book draws on ancient practices to use the cards as an opening to wonder and mystery. The focus is on the possible truths the cards reveal, rather than the easy answers of fortune-telling.

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About the Author

Rachel  is considered one of the World’s foremost authorities on the modern interpretation of the Tarot. She is also a poet, an award-winning novelist, and a Tarot card and comic book artist. She has published 12 books on the Tarot, including 78 Degrees of Wisdom (Thorsons, 1998), considered a modern classic and “the Bible of Tarot reading.” Its’ marriage of common sense, wide-ranging knowledge, and esoteric awareness have inspired many tens of thousands of readers worldwide to a deeper knowledge of the Tarot.

She is a member of the American Tarot Association, the International Tarot Society, and the Tarot Guild of Australia. With fellow Tarot author Mary Greer, she has taught at the famed Omega Institute for the past twelve years. She has been conferred the title of “Tarot Grand Master” by the Tarot Certification Board, an independent body located in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As a fiction writer, Pollack has been bestowed many honors and awards, among them the famed Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction (for Unquenchable Fire) and the World Fantasy Award (for Godmother Night). She is a recommended member of PEN International, and has written for numerous publications.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Myths of Origin

Where does it come from? No matter how we treat the subject--whether we dive deep into the symbolic mysteries, or recite formulas for fortunetelling, or play with the pictures--we cannot escape the question. There are certainly enough answers. Enter the world of Tarot and stories of its origin move around you like excited birds. Here is a sample.

The Tarot depicts the sacred myths of the Romany (or Gypsies), disguised in cards for the centuries of exile from the Rom homeland in India--or Egypt--or outer space. The Tarot is a Renaissance card game inspired by annual carnival processions called triumphs. The Tarot is a card game derived from annual processions called thriambs, in honor of the God Dionysus, the creator of wine. The Tarot conceals/reveals the secret number teachings of Pythagoras, a Greek mystic who lived at the time of Moses, and who influenced Plato. The Tarot depicts the secret oral teachings of Moses, who received them directly from God. The Tarot contains the lost knowledge of Atlantis, a drowned continent first described by Plato. The Tarot is a card game imported from Palestine and Egypt during the Crusades. The Tarot is a vast memory system for the Tree of Life, a diagram of the laws of creation. The Tarot hides in plain sight the wisdom of the Egyptian God Thoth, master of all knowledge. The Tarot shows Egyptian temple initiations. The Tarot shows Tantric temple initiations. The Tarot preserves the wisdom of Goddess-initiated witches during the long, dark centuries of patriarchal religion. The Tarot maps the patterns of the Moon in Chaldean astrology. The Tarot was created by papermaker guilds who were the last remnants of the Cathars, Christian heretics brutally suppressed by the Church of Rome.

All of the above, and more, Tarot writers have proclaimed as the one, true, authentic origin of the Tarot.

The great mythographer Joseph Campbell once commented that the world is full of creation stories and all of them are wrong. The Tarot is like that: full of origin stories, and probably all of them wrong. They are wrong because they take a compelling idea as literal truth. Wrong because they need that literal belief to take the idea seriously, and if someone should disprove once and for all these origin tales they will have lost their hold on its meaning and value. But if we can learn to take these origin tales as myths, as divine play, then not only can we let go of this need to prove the superiority of one to all others, we also can appreciate the poetic truth of each one. And we can marvel at this amazing work, this pack of seventy-eight pictures that somehow adapts itself to so many spiritual and historical traditions.

The Tarot''s Secret Origin is part of its myth. One of the most remarkable things about the cards is the way people snapped at this idea the moment it appeared and have clung to it tenaciously ever since. Here is a personal story. Years ago I was in Denmark shortly after the publication of the Danish edition of my book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom. Two radio stations wanted to interview me. The first, on national radio, went very well. The second was for a New Age program and I looked forward to it as a chance to discuss the Tarot in some more depth. The day before, the host called me to go over some topics. When I told him that I did not believe the Tarot came from Atlantis, or that secret occult masters crafted it and disguised it as a game, he canceled my appearance.

Though we cannot determine the exact origin of the cards, we can, in fact, pinpoint the origin of the myth. In the 1770s and 80s a man named Antoine Court de Gébelin published a nine-volume study of esoteric ideas called Le Monde Primitif (The Primitive World). The very idea of a primitive human state is itself a myth. In our time, the term "primitive" suggests people unformed, ignorant, savage. In earlier times it meant the opposite, a supposed golden age in which people knew spiritual truth and lived in perfect peace. The Garden of Eden is a variation on this myth.

In the course of his work, Court de Gébelin visited a friend, Madame la C. d''H., who showed him the latest fad, an Italian card game popular in the southern countries, called in Italy tarocchi, and in France les tarots. Court de Gébelin looked through the bright pictures and had an epiphany. The ordinary card game was, in fact, a disguised great work of occult mystery. He called it the Book of Thoth, the very sum of all knowledge.

Thoth was an Egyptian God, the quintessential master of wisdom. Thoth guided the boat of the Sun God Ra across the sky, he invented mummification to resurrect the slain God Osiris, he helped judge dead souls for the afterlife, he even gambled with the Moon to create extra days for the year (more about that story in awhile). The Greeks linked Thoth with their own Hermes, God of magic, healing, wisdom, science, commerce, and, not incidentally, patron of swindlers and thieves (you have to love a religion with a God of swindlers).

Much of the esoteric tradition originates with a shadowy figure known as Hermes Trismegistus, or Thrice-great Hermes, author of The Emerald Tablet, a work composed in Alexandrian Egypt in the early Christian era. The myth of the Emerald Tablet considers Hermes Trismegistus another name for Thoth. Now Antoine Court de Gébelin had described the Tarot as an even more fundamental divine work than the Emerald Tablet itself. Thoth, he said, had given the symbolic pictures to his human disciples and disguised them as a game so it could move through the centuries undetected.

What a...(Continues)

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Llewellyn Publications; First Edition edition (September 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567185339
• ISBN-13: 978-1567185331
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #636,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent addition to any Tarot library, July 9, 2003

By 

Psyche (spiralnature.com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot (Paperback)

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.

63 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lost and Found in The Forest of Souls, October 22, 2002

By 

Diane B. Wilkes "Diane Wilkes, Voracious Reader" (Oreland, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot (Paperback)

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.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At Play with the Tarot, October 16, 2002

By 

Sandra A. Thomson (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot (Paperback)

"Playing" with the Tarot in its most serious and its most frivolous sense is much of what Rachel Pollack, and her latest book, are all about. The Forest of Souls is one of her most creative and innovative books to date.

Part of the purpose of the book is to inspire us to learn to become "playful readers." The book calls upon us to learn to use the Tarot to explore unknown territory, to let go of more traditional definitions and layouts, and to use the cards in "divine play" to open pathways to the "sacred mysteries and riddles of existence." In Forest, we are shown many examples of how to do just that.

The book is filled with delightful anecdotal stories from different cultures and traditions, including one that says Thoth invented the Tarot so he could play cards with the Moon. Never heard that one? Read the book for more details.

Cards from many different decks are used to illustrate points, including Rachel's own Shining Tribe deck, as inspirational a deck as was ever created.

For those who have never been able to have a reading with Rachel, Forest offers examples of some of the techniques and ways of reading that she puts into practice, and that you may want to extend into your own practice. This is a book all about "breakthroughs" in reading the Tarot and in living your life.