Remembering Rachel Pollack
For the past few weeks the tarot community has been holding vigil as Rachel Pollack, one of our greatest tarot mentors, has made her transition from this life. Blessings to her soul and to all who hold her dear, and from the literally hundreds of posts I’ve seen on social media, that is no small number. On Friday, April 7, her wife Zoe let us know that she had passed peacefully.
Over the past twenty years I have learned many things about tarot. I’ve read books, attended classes and tarot conferences, read cards professionally, and taught tarot for many years. I can’t always remember who taught me what specifically, either through their books, their cards, or their lectures, but I can remember clearly several things I learned from Rachel. First, I had already absorbed a lot through the first tarot book I ever read, which was Rachel’s classic, “Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom”. There should be a copy in every tarot library! It’s not light reading, but it gets better with each time.
A few years into my tarot journey I actually got to meet Rachel in person. She and Mary K. Greer were headliners at Readers Studio in New York when I attended my first tarot conference in 2009. I was already dazzled by the experience of a tarot conference – the sheer joy of walking into an event filled with tarot yumminess! – but meeting both Rachel and Mary on top of that had me somewhat star-struck. Eventually I realized that my tarot heroes were living, breathing human beings just like the rest of us and became accustomed to the experience of having lunch with them or taking a bus trip into the city. (This is what I love about tarot conferences.)
I particularly loved Rachel’s Master Class. One thing she shared surprised me; she believed that you don’t have to be a psychic to read the cards and that it’s a skill that can be learned. I agree, but I do think one sharpens one’s intuitive saw by reading tarot. Anyway, that year she taught a class that I have always considered to be one of the best tarot workshops I have ever participated in. She called it “Dr. Apollo’s School of Bad Fortune-Telling”. It was an exercise designed to bring out a sense of playfulness and creativity and get the reader past self-consciousness. Everyone was given a few minutes to come up with a flamboyant, over-the-top personality and do a reading with a partner in the style of this persona. She gave us prompts to help us create a back-story for our own inner Fortune-Teller.
First your Inner Fortune-Teller a title, like “Sir”, “Countess” or “Madame”.
Next choose an exotic name, such as Stardreamer or La BonChance.
Create a mysterious fictional origin story, like “being descended from a tribe of Irish shape-shifters”.
Give more detail about your family's Ancient Traditions, e.g., “On the eve of the first full moon of each year, the women in my family gather to read The Signs for the upcoming year”.
Create a mystical story about how you received your tarot deck, such as it was handed down to the first daughter of each family.
Find a partner and perform a reading using this technique.
It was enormous fun and I think it was a beautiful illustration of the way Rachel’s amazing mind worked, creative and canny and always pushing past the paradigm to the next level. She was a shining light to us in life; may she continue to shine. Thank you, Rachel, for all that you have given us. Now let’s do our best to pass it on!
