Table Of ContentTHE COMPLETE
ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO
TAROT
THE FOOl.^- THE MOON
THE EMPEROR THE HIEROPHANT
JUDCMENT
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Bi L-S i ^ 1
How to Unlock the
Secrets of the Tarot
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i
The Complete
Illustrated Guide to
Tarot
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The Complete
Illustrated Guide to
Tarot
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
RACHEL POLLACK
ELEMENT
Shaftesbury, Dorset • Boston, Massachusetts • Melbourne, Victoria
For Claire Longtin North, enthusiastic Tarotist
and woman of wondrous spirit.
© Element Books Limited 1999 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication
data available
Fitst published in Great Britain in 1999 by
ELEMENT BOOKS LIMITED British Library Cataloging in Publication
Shaftesbury, Dorset SP7 8BP data available
Published in the USA in 1999 by ISBN 1 86204 212
ELEMENT BOOKS INC
160 North Washington Street, Boston MA 02114
author’s acknowledgements
I am indebted to the many brilliant Tarot writers, past and
Published in Australia in 1999 by present, especially Mary K. Greer and Gail Fairfield, and
ELEMENT BOOKS Robert V. O’Neill. Any mistakes or misrepresentation of their
and distributed by Penguin Australia Ltd ideas are entirely my own. This book also would have been
487 Matoondah Highway, Ringwood, Victoria 3134
poorer without the ideas, inspiration, and enthusiasm of the
Reprinted October 1999 women and men of Tarot-L. I thank them for their scholarship
All rights reserved. and imagination, and especially their quick response to
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in ai questions. I also wish to thank Hollis Melton and the women
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without f of Wednesday night, for all their encouragement, and their
permission in writing from the publisher demonstration of a Tarot community.
A special thank you to Fara Shaw Kelsey for her knowledge
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER and encouragement.
Any information given in this book is not intended
to be taken as a replacement for medical advice.
Any person with a condition requiring medical attention
IHE PUBLISHERS WISH TO THANK THE
should consult a qualified practitioner or therapist.
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Contents
INTRODUCTION PART FOUR
WHAT IS TAROT? 7 READINGS 127
Divination 8 Ideas about Readings 128
The Tarot’s Structure 10 Frequently Asked Questions 132
The Opening of the Minor Arcana 12 The Reader and The Querent 134
The Modern Tarot 14 Getting Started 136
Simple Spreads 138
PART ONE Three Card Readings 140
ORIGINS AND HISTORY 17 The Turn of the Clock 144
The Legends of Ancient Egypt 18 The Celtic Cross 146
Historical Knowledge 24 A Relationship Spread 150
Heresies 28 The Sacred Quest Spread 152
Kabbalah 30 The Body Spread 154
The Occult Tradition 32 Your Own Tarot Spread 156
Dream Work 158
PART TV^O
SYMBOLS AND STRUCTURES 41 PART FIVE
The Major Arcana Sequence 42 THINGS TO DO WITH TAROTS 161
Pathways on the Tree of Life 46 Ways to Get to Know Your Cards 162
The Numbers on the Cards 50 Tarot Games 164
The Court Cards 52 Personality, Soul, and Year Cards 166
The Suits and their Elements 54 Alaking Your Own Deck 168
Tarot and Astrology 56 Tarot, Music, and Storytelling 170
The World of Symbols 60 Soul Questions 174
ITe Tarot Garden 62 Ways to Work with a Card 176
The Tarot Bestiary 64 Meditation with the Tarot 178
As Above, So Below 66 Magic and Tarot 182
Final Words — A Life in the Cards 184
PART THREE
THE CARDS 69 Glossary 186
The Journey of the Major Arcana 70 Further Reading 188
The Minor Arcana 94 Index 189
The Court Cards 116 Acknowledgments 192
m 'v^nC Sf» 1
.^tf^
INTRODUCTION
What is Tarot?
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The 78 cards o f the Tarot have lived many lives in the 600 years that we
have known them ~ a card game played by the Italian nobility, works of fine
art, allegories ofimoral teachings and philosophy, inspiration for novels and
films, coded systems for magic and esoteric wisdom, gateways for meditation,
and much more. Most of all, however, we know the
Tarot for its use in divination. Divination is the quest
for supernatural knowledge of the past, present, and
future. Many methods of divination have been utilized
by different cultures throughout the centuries, and
cartomancy, or the use of cards for fortune-telling, dates
back many centuries. It was in the late 18th century,
ABOVE Careful reading
of the allegorical
. p f-n 1 r !• • • pictures oftheTarot deck,
hozvever, that the use oj Tarot cards jor divination such as the fooi, can help
us to understand
, . / I n~' J' • ourselves better
became widespread. We now use larot readings in an
attempt to understand ourselves better and maybe even discover the future.
-V
7
WHAT IS TAROT?
Divination
BW
'i-Vir.i
T
HE PRACTICE OF divination divination system that is known
of one kind or another ranks as Ifa remains the primary way
among humanity’s oldest and in which the Orishas, or gods,
W,
RIGHT A carved most honored of activities. reveal their divine presence in
bowl used by the if f-
Virtually every culture has vi< everyday human life.
people of Africa as
part of their developed some method of iJi ■ 'w-' “Divination” derives from
divination rituals. using symbolic systems to help the Latin word divinatio, to
them discover secrets beyond divine. Whatever the method,
ordinary sources of information. People when we do a divination we seek to
have studied the patterns and cries of understand, in some small way, the spiritual
birds, or cut the birds open to study patterns that underlie our lives. Divination
their entrails. The Ancient Chinese systems, especially the more elaborate ones,
heated iron rods and set them almost always reflect a religious or
against the shells of dead tortoises philosophical system. We may read the Tarot
to see what images appeared when the as a party game, but the game works because
shells cracked. European women turn over the symbols on the Tarot cards describe the
ABOVE The IChing teacups to discover what pictures of the deeper truths that give meaning to our lives.
has revealed the
future are revealed in the tea leaves clinging And it works because the Tarot consists
flow of events and
individual lives for to their porcelain. of pictures rather than words. While it is true
thousands of years.
In our modern world, we have tended to that people have written hundreds of books
denigrate divination as irrational, and so about the Tarot, and that most people who
push it to the margins of society. We think of want to use the cards in a reading look up
Tarot readers as women in flashy clothes who their meanings in a book such as this one,
will tell your fortune in a storefront. Other the Tarot remains first and foremost pictures
BELOW The societies, however, have placed divination at - mysterious, evocative, suggestive of whole
Chinese looked the core of their cultural and religious worlds of meaning.
deeply into the
activities. In Ancient Greece, people traveled
spiritual meanings People have always expressed the greatest
of divination. great distances to consult the oracle at truths in pictures. European art begins some
Delphi, a place the Greeks called “the 30,000 years ago, with the powerful cave
of the world.” Stephen paintings of bulls and other animals that
Karcher, the translator of the have been discovered in France and Spain.
/ Ching, the Chinese No one knows the exact purpose of these
“Book of Changes f has oldest works of art. Theories regarding their
written that the / Ching
meaning usually assume some kind of magic,
formed the very or initiation ceremonies. Considering how
center of spirituality
widespread divination is, perhaps the cave
in China. In many
painters were establishing a system of images
parts of Africa, the for ‘ ‘readings.”
