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Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot

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Rachel Pollack's SEVENTY-EIGHT DEGREES OF WISDOM is a key work described by many (including Joseph Campbell) as an important source for understanding the wisdom of the Tarot. The book appears to have been first published in the early eighties in two volumes, one dealing with the Major Arcana and the other with the minor Arcana. Since few authors examine the minor cards Pollack's book is a must for serious students.

Pollack writes insightfully and intelligently, including longer passages for each of the cards of the Major Arcana. She includes reversed meanings and encourages shuffling the deck so as to ensure some cards fall upside down for a reading. She provides two examples for each card, one from A. E. Waite's deck illustrated by Pamela Coleman and the other from various other decks. Pollack notes that when she first wrote her book no one compared the different pictorial representations of various decks. She includes points of agreement and disagreement with interpretations from Waite's "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot", Aleister Crowley's "The Book of Thoth" and other works.

Unlike many contemporary authors on Tarot, Pollack subscribes to the notion that one can use the Tarot not only for interpretation of current circumstances but for seeking advice. She describes how to cast the Celtic cross a descriptive tool which can be used to gain insight into a present situation. She also shares a layout she created that the reader can use to gain insight into possible courses of action regarding work situations. Of the many books I've read on Tarot so far this one is the best.

If you are a Tarot beginner, you will be temted to buy at least 10 decks before even doing any reading at all, you will also buy about 5 tarot books to explore. I have passed that road too, and yeah there are a lot of good books for beginner.

Time after time, you will come back to just one deck: Raider White deck, and for me the miniature deck (the size of almost a usual regular bicycle deck). And you will start to forget all the book and time to time come back to the very few books you love. And this one is it. It is a very rich book with deep reading of all the cards. It touch you and teach you deeply and teach you how to grow your own way of reading the pictures of tarot deck.

This is not for the ultimate beginners! But invest in this one. After you get "bored" to the beginner books of tarot, you will start to appreciate this book. It is not for the people who just "want to know a bit" about tarot.

In fact if you only want one book on Tarot, this is it.
The book describe deeply and richly for each card.

This revised and slightly expanded version of two long sadly out-of-print books ("78 Degrees of Wisdom: Major Arcana" and "78 Degrees of Wisdom: Minor Arcana") is a welcome addition to any serious Tarot reader's library.
Although I wouldn't normally recommend this book for the Tarot beginner, I'd recommend it highly to serious students of Tarot wanting to know more about the many different meanings of Tarot cards. Some beginners might find Pollack's usages of the definitions of cards to be more than the superficial ones.

Going far beyond the "This one covers you" school, Pollack gives many different ways to interpret the meanings of Tarot cards, both from a spiritual viewpoint ("What does this card mean to you?") and a metaphysical viewpoint ("What does this card mean to the person you're reading for?"). It also allows for meditation and self-study of Tarot cards.

Although set up like a standard Tarot book, with chapters covering the Major Arcana, the Minor Arcana, and some readings, (including a sample reading or two) Pollack's definitions of the cards goes far beyond the ordinary superficial "Death means something in your life is going through a major change - you are about to stop one thing and start doing another." Each card has a picture - many from the Rider-Waite deck that most Tarot card readers start with, but some from other decks that you may not have seen. Each card has numerous definitions - and even some examples of what that card might mean when in certain placements in a Tarot card reading, both regular and reversed.

I've no other books in my Tarot library that are more heavily thumbed than my old copies of the two "78 Degrees" books, and I was very glad that Pollack has found a publisher willing to not only reprint them, but allow her to revise them and include both books in one volume. Highly recommended for serious students of Tarot.

These days most anybody can do a tarot reading. There are literally hundreds of different decks all complete with canned readings for each card. In a way, it's rather like reading your daily horoscope as the results are rather generalized to match virtually anyone.

Definitely, not every tarot reader is equal in quality. The best readers go beyond simplistic generalizations. They not only tailor their layouts and reading results to match the individual but also look to the deeper meanings of the cards. These unique abilities are both invaluable skills and amazing talents.

Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom is a must have resource for anyone wanting to do real tarot readings. The author has an inherent ability to see depth within the cards that many need to be taught to notice. Within this book, she shares her valuable insights and urges the reader to follow suit. Originally this book was two books separating out the major and minor arcane. This new format brings these important references into one easier to access resource.

This was one of the most useful books I've read regarding the subject of divination and Tarot. It takes the classical Rider/Waite deck and analyses it from a pictoral, historical, and a qabbalistic point of view. The progression of 'the tree of life' along the major arcana was incredibly useful to me.

Easily read and understood as well as thorough and in-depth. I love this book and highly recommend it to anyone who is studying the Tarot. This book has clarified a lot of things for me. Rachel Pollack writes in a very personal way that builds comfort and confidence in the cards. I would be hard-pressed to find a comparable book on the subject.

As a Tarot beginner, I found this book to be both insightful and a little wordy. First of all, I must say that all in all, this book is an incredible resource! If you can get past the Psych-101 lectures, you will find incredibly astute and deep meaning in 78 Degrees of Wisdom. Rachel Pollack did a great service in combining these two volumes, and made Tarot accessible and easy to personalize. I would recommend this book (and have) to anyone looking for 'real' help in understanding the fascinating world of Tarot.

Rachel Pollack takes the complex subject of Tarot and renders it intelligible. As a novice reader on the topic, I was hesitant about buying this book for fear of not understanding, but as soon as I'd read the Preface, I felt reassured. It was like being welcomed into a unfamiliar house and then finding warmth and acceptance.

The key to the book's success is found in Rachel Pollack's ability to communicate, as the Preface demonstrates: 'I wrote 'Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom' for three reasons. The first was to elucidate, in an abstruse colloquiality, the inherent dynamism of mystical exposition in a post-anti-intellectual epoch while simultaneously pre-empting myriad polarities arising from the tentativation of unscholarly ignorance predicated upon, yet not essentially inimical to, the clarity of confluence.

'The second reason for publishing was to extract from the inexplicable a discourse on deliniation between fact as fiction and fiction as didacticism, albeit well-intended, and to then distil that discourse till potency of purpose became integral to procedural rectitude without the attendant self-proclamation of justified revelation.

'The third reason was to communicate clearly and effectively.'

Such was the effect of this book that I no longer feel I need to read any others on the subject of Tarot.

I bought this book along with others because of the great reviews I saw. However, most of the other books did not live up to the great reviews. With one exception. SEVENTY EIGHT DEGREES OF WISDOM. This book doesn't give you formulas to memorize and it moves away from tradition and dogma. Ms Pollack asks the reader to let the tarot speak it's own unique language to each individual reading, querent, student and situation.

It gives the historical, mythological, spiritual, etc., meanings and attributions for each major card and also her personal insights and experience. She does the same for the minor cards, however, she doesn't go much into history and myth here but delves into her own experiences and interpretation. She also has GATE cards that allows the reader to get connected to particular cards that elucidate the intrinsic meanings of the suit. I'd love for her to do a book about meditations on the tarot.

To the back of the book there is an exposition on doing divination with the cards and she gives examples of the two spreads she covers to explain them better. Her Work Cycle spread is one with promise although I was left wanting a little more. I can't seem to find a resource where one can learn more about this spread.

There is one thing that I would ask every newbie to do when studying the cards. Get a resource that details occult symbols and colours. See how they fit into the particular cards and then you have a more detailed description of the cards. The meaning of some cards often don't appear in the artwork (figures etc) however the colours (red, orange, black etc) and the symbols (white rose, black staff, circle, etc) will clear up anything you have a question about.

Also, see MK Greer's book: Tarot for youself and Rachael Pollack's new book: The Forest of Souls.

Phoinix Sky

Rachel Pollack's book is a completely different take on the Tarot, which owes as much to Jungian psychoanalysis as to Ye Standard Occult Fortunetelling Definitions. While I think that at times she strains the material to fit her preconceptions (i.e. I doubt very much that the robes worn by Catholic priests have anything to do with skirts or with goddess worship), she is to be commended for a bold and well-thought out look at the Tarot.

She is also to be commended for avoiding the oft-repeated and just as oft-debunked claim that the Tarot originates in Ancient Egypt: while she mentions the legend in passing, she correctly identifies the source of the Tarot as 15th century Europe. Throughout the book her scholarship is generally excellent. If you already have a fair grasp on the Tarot, this will provide you with some new and important insights on interpreting the cards. (It will probably be a bit heavy for beginners, who are best advised to study Waite's Guide to the Tarot first)