Rachel Pollack is one of the world's foremost authorities on Tarot, and is the author of twelve books on the subject, including Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom - considered the "bible of Tarot readers." Rachel has also written works of fiction, and has a poetry collection, Fortune's Lover also about to be published.

Recently, with the intention of marking the birthday - February 16th - of Pamela Colman Smith, "Pixie," in the centenary year since the Rider Waite/Smith deck was first published, I asked Rachel via email if she would like to answer some questions based on Tarot and "Pixie" Smith; here is the outcome....

Malcolm Muckle
Was the Rider Waite/Smith Tarot deck the first one you became acquainted with; how has your relationship with it changed over the years?

Rachel Pollack
I still see it as a great work, and still learn more about it, notice details I never saw before (often pointed out by other people), and discover new relationships. What impresses me so much about this deck is that every detail is meaningful, symbolic, but no one needs to learn this to use it. For example, at last year's Readers Studio Carolyn Guss, in talking about a class she was giving, pointed out that the fantastic objects in the 7 of Cups derive from the 7 planetary spheres. I had never observed that but it made perfect sense. And yet, you don't have to know that to find value in the picture.

Malcolm
Rachel, you've created your own Shining Woman/Tribe Tarot deck, and have visited places all over the world from which you drew inspiration for your own deck. How much in common has it with the Rider Waite/Smith deck?

Rachel
I discovered over time that many of the cards, especially in the Minor, were in a kind of dialogue with the Rider. For example, the Rider 5 of Swords shows an image of defeat and shame. The Shining Tribe 5 of Birds shows a willingness to do whatever it takes to free your inner self from such layers of "mud". This seems to me a deeper connection than trying to do the same pictures with a twist of some sort. However, people who expect every deck to look like the Rider may find it off-putting.

Malcolm
So when you read with the Shining Tribe deck, you're also drawing on the interaction it has with the Rider Waite/Smith deck.

Do you think you went through a similar creative process as PCS when vcreating your deck? Pixie used music as an inspiration for her non-Tarot artwork; do you have an equivalent?

Rachel
I did not have a grand symbolic scheme, but rather waited for images to come to me. Sometimes this happened from something I saw (like the African chair in the Toronto museum that inspired the Speaker of Birds), or places I visited (I was traveling to stone circles and ancient temples at this time for my book The Body of the Goddess), or meditations, and so on. If I'm really focused on creative work I find music distracting. What works for me is to write in cafes.

Malcolm
Lots of images, lots of archetypes, lots of energy floating around...

And since creating and deepening your own deck, does the Rider Waite/Smith deck still have the same impact and import for you that it used to 30 or 40 years ago?

Rachel
I don't use it as my reading deck so exclusively as I did then, but I still work with it in many situations.

Malcolm
Waite tended to think of PCS as "naive" - do you think that PCS's/Pixie's input to the original Rider Waite/Smith deck has been underestimated due to this? Due to other factors?

Rachel
The biggest factor was the dualistic attitude of the time, that thought was the sole basis of reality, so that Waite's conceptions mattered more than the actual pictures. I find it frustrating that people call it "Rider-Waite" when Dr. Waite did not paint a single picture. Of course, the fact that neither Waite nor Smith described how the Minor designs came to be also makes it difficult to assess Smith's contribution. I'm of the camp that says Waite gave her fortune-telling descriptions for the Minor and she constructed the pictures out of her own design. I know that Mary Greer has argued that Waite invented the scenes he wanted her to portray.

Malcolm
Mary also argues for the influence of the Grail Legends on the Minors. There are also similarities and correspondences - some of them very close - between the Minors and the 15^th Century Sola Busca images. (Compare them here)

If Tarot started as a game and morphed into an aid to personal mysticism/divination/spirituality – and an assist in putting together a coherent world view - do you see it reverting to nothing more than a game again?

Rachel
No, it has evolved far too much. I would like to see a more playful attitude because I think it takes us further than ponderous worship. And I think knowing its origins as an allegorical game frees us from orthodoxy and other rigidities of thinking. But the Tarot now comes from two and a half centuries of mythic, spiritual, and intellectual development.

Malcolm
"More playful" is good imo, I think a light touch in tarot reading encourages deeper processes to take place... takes the manacles off, a bit Zennish perhaps.

Rachel, your Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom was one of the mainstays for tarot readers for decades, and still is. Since it first came out, there have been hundreds of books concerning Tarot, and you yourself have brought out a revised 78 Degrees in Tarot Wisdom. I was interested to note the different order in which you went through the cards in the books - descending through the "pips" in 78 Degrees and ascending in Tarot Wisdom. Does this reflect a change of emphasis in how you see the Tarot journey?

Rachel
In 78 Degrees I followed Waite's order without entirely understanding it. I am now more conscious of the concept of descent from 10 to Ace as a kind of return up the Tree of Life. But I take a more Pythagorean approach, where we develop from the root of Ace to the fuller creation of 10.

Malcolm
That reminds me very much of Robert Fludd's images.

Looking at how you do readings... when I see you do a reading, be it Rider Waite/Smith, Shining Tribe, supplemented by an Oracle etc., there's no doubt at all that "The Tarot works!" Is it the same for every reader, do you think?

Rachel
Well, it's hard to speak for other people, but I think this happens all the time to readers.

Malcolm
When you do use the Rider Waite/Smith deck, do you always/sometimes/never use reversals? Or does it change with the kind of readings you offer?

Rachel
Lately, I give the deck to people with the cards all right side up and allow them to shuffle however they like. If this results in reversed cards I read that way, but if not, not.

Malcolm
There seem to be two main avenues of using symbolism in Tarot and Oracle cards; that of the intellect (studying the symbolism, associations, Tree of Life/Kabbalistic associations, astrological associations, numerology etc.) and that of the intuition - the Shaman/Oracle. Would you say it's fair to say that both approaches have the aim of enabling the subconscious to speak to us? Is this the same as "magic"?

Rachel
Well, magic involves distinct practices, so I think reading all by itself is not necessarily magic. And I think when we look at actual research on shamans and oracles they are highly trained in a tradition. And people from the more intellectual tradition will often find they need to allow intuition to tell them which symbolic meanings apply in a situation.

Malcolm
What you say reminds me of a survey years ago that found that a surprisingly high proportion of scientists had hunches that they couldn't rationally explain, and then spent not a little time and energy finding the intellectual, rational justification for their insights.

You've been studying Tarot and providing readings for people for 40yrs or more; are the reasons for people coming to you the same as they were 40yrs ago?

Rachel
This is true, because people have the same issues. However, since some querents come to me personally because they've read my books, they often seek a more subtle kind of guidance.

Malcolm
What do you think the Tarot provides for people that they can't find elsewhere? Do you think it was the same 100yrs ago for Waite and the GD?

Rachel
Hard to answer, since people approach the Tarot in so many ways, for so many reasons. I think all the reasons people use the cards persist over time.

Malcolm
Do you have a favourite Tarot work of fiction?

Rachel
Much easier to answer. Last Call by Tim Powers, and The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino.

Malcolm
I liked your quote from Calvino in your intro to The Tarot of Perfection - tarot as "an engine of pattern-making". I loved the squirrels by the way!

Would you describe Tarot as a growing spiritual tradition?

Rachel
Absolutely. It changes and develops all the time.

Malcolm
And you have great faith in the power of images; why do you think images work so well when words often fail?

Rachel
I should make clear that images can come in words as well as painted pictures. But images seem to go to a deeper place in the brain.

Malcolm
Come to think of it, it's bound to be that way as vision developed long before language and has much deeper pro-survival roots.

I think that maybe what first drew you to Tarot was that you saw it as an art form; what is the most important aspect to you now – symbolism, art, the unexpected, Kabbalah, or "the confluence of the sacred and the mundane" etc.?

Rachel
Here is a creative misreading - I did not at first see the comma after "unexpected" and thought the phrase was "the unexpected Kabbalah." Actually, it's hard to choose between all of those. By "art form" I did not mean to separate it from meaning or symbolic structure, just that the connection of a symbolic picture and a text that "pretends" to explain it was its own form. It's hard to choose one aspect of those various qualities, since they all work together.

Malcolm
I have to ask - are you working on another book at the moment? And which do you enjoy more – working with Tarot, or writing a work of fiction?

Rachel
I see both as creative acts. However, having done a very large work, Tarot Wisdom, I am not focusing at the moment on another Tarot book. I actually have a trifecta of new books - non-fiction Tarot Wisdom, fiction in Tarot of Perfection, and a poetry collection, Fortune's Lover. the first two are already for sale, the third in a few weeks. At the moment I have two projects--a novel about a magical storyteller, and an English rendition of the classic Chinese work, the Tao Te Ching.

Malcolm
Which of your own works would you most like to be remembered by?

Rachel
Always difficult to answer, especially since I write different sorts of books. Possibly The Forest of Souls. But I certainly am very happy that 78 Degrees has meant so much to so many people, and that Tarot Wisdom is getting a great reception from early readers. With fiction I can never decide between Unquenchable Fire and Godmother Night.

Malcolm
Which of Pixie's Rider Waite cards would you most like to emulate?

Rachel
In my life? Probably the Star or the Hanged Man.

Malcolm
Last century, "Tower times"? This century "The Star?"

Rachel
I hope so! Of course, the GD linked the Star with Aquarius, so that its qualities are supposed to be infusing the new era. A nice thought, but I'm not betting on it.

Rachel, very many thanks for taking the time and trouble to respond to the questions I posed - I'm sure that others will enjoy the answers you gave, and I hope our paths may meet again in the not too distant future.