MY USELESS PSYCHIC POWER

For some time I’ve been noticing that I predict, or at least anticipate, things without knowing I’m doing so. I’ll think about something, for no particular reason, and then it will happen. The problem is, the thoughts do not feel any different from all the other things that dash through my mind in any given day, so I don’t realize it’s something I should pay attention to.

They don’t happen very often, but lately they seem to be a little more common. So, here are three examples, all within the last two weeks.

1. December 16th I was riding in my friend’s car and she turned on the classical station, which was playing Da da da dum. So I started thinking about Beethoven and wondering what his sun sign might be.. I suggested Saggitarius, since he had a fiery personality mixed with high ideals. Later I had on some other radio show and they said “Today is the birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven.” Of course, December 16 is indeed Saggitarius. Now, obviously they were playing the 5th Symphony because of his birthday, but I’ve heard Beethoven many times on the radio and never wondered before about his sign.

2. Here’s one from a few days later, We’ve had mouse problems here for a long time, but recently, as part of some renovation work we had mouse-proofing done. Well, there still were signs of mouseage (as a friend of mine says), so we put out live traps for any mice left in the house. Caught one and let it loose in a park a mile or so away, but there signs of another. One night, I thought, What would I do if I just saw one standing in the middle of the floor? This is an odd idea. First, mice come out mostly at night when there’s no one around, and second, they don’t just stand still. Well, the next day I had a friend over and went in the kitchen to get something, and there in the middle of the floor was a mouse, standing stock still, probably hoping I wouldn’t notice it. I pinned it down with the top of the mouse trap, my friend slid a piece of cardboard under it, and I carried it outside to the woods at the end of my driveway. No mice since then.

3. Now today I saw a post from the wonderful Barbara Moore, asking people, if part of what they paid for a tarot deck or book was to go to a health related charity, what would they like it to be. I thought about this for awhile, then suggested Medecins Sans Frontieres, Doctors Without Borders, since tarot crosses borders and boundaries. I sent my reply then looked at my inbox, and the first message was from Doctors Without Borders, asking for contributions.

So there you have it, three examples in exactly two weeks. If only I could harness this!

Here’s a more serious example: Living in the country I have to drive a lot, and every few years you’re likely to have some kind of fender bender. A couple of years I happened to think to myself how I hadn’t had any problem like that in a long time. Okay, so that should have been a warning. But as I said, the thought doesn’t feel any different, doesn’t carry some sort of charge, it’s just a random idea. Or so it seemed. The next day I took Wonder in the car to go for a walk on a quiet road (I live on a branch highway, where people go very fast). When we got home I put on my blinker and waited for the chance to turn into my driveway. Behind me, a man in a pickup truck was lost in thought (he later said his grandson was ill) and didn’t see a car stopped in the road with the blinker on. He plowed into us at about 35 miles an hour. Bless the engineers at Honda, the car frame absorbed most of the contact, and Wonder and I were unharmed, but the car was totaled. Now I have a wonderful Versa named Alice (I asked her and that’s what she said)–and another example of my useless psychic power.

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KWANZAA READING

As I write this it’s the evening of a lovely Christmas spent with friends. And that means it’s also Kwanza Eve, the night before Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa is probably the most remarkable of the holidays held around the Winter Solstice/end of the year, because it was deliberately, consciously, created by a single person, Dr. Maulana Karenga. Dr. Karenga wanted to create something that would strengthen the African-American community, through a connection to traditional African values. He developed a 7 day holiday, from December 26 to January 1, with each day representing a special quality (see below). Candles are lit, each day a different color.

Being white, I know that Kwanzaa is not directed towards me or my background. But then, I’m Jewish, so celebrating Christmas is not exactly my background either! So the interest and respect I have for Kwanzaa is like that which I have for all spiritual traditions. (I have sometimes described myself as a goddess-loving radical Jewish atheist with a Taoist temperament, but recently, when I wondered what I might put down on a form that asked my religion the term that came right to mind was “heretic”).

A few years ago it struck me that Kwanzaa could form the basis of a powerful 7 day Tarot reading, drawing three cards each day (or however many you want) to answer a key question related to the theme of that day.

I hope it is clear that I mean no disrespect to any people who celebrate this marvelous week long holiday. I have been creating readings inspired by sacred holidays and festivals for many years now (my recent book, SOUL FOREST) contains a reading inspired by the coincidence of Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah occurring at the same time). For me the Tarot is more than anything a tool of spiritual investigation. The issues named and defined by Dr. Karenga are obviously of special importance and power to his own community, the people for whom he created the holiday. But at the same time they are universal values, worth consideration by all peoples.

Here then is the statement of themes of Kwanzaa, and the reading to go with it.

NGUZO SABA
(The Seven Principles)

KWANZAA TAROT READING
Rachel Pollack
Based on the work and inspiration of
Dr. Maulana Karenga
________________________________________

Umoja (Unity)
To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)
To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Nia (Purpose)
To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba (Creativity)
To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Imani (Faith)
To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
¬ Maulana Karenga

To be done over the 7 days of Kwanzaa (Dec. 26-Jan.1)
(Candles may be lit for each day, and reading done by the light of the day.)

1. Umoja
How can I promote unity?

2. Kujichagulia
How do I claim who I am?

3. Ujima
How do I help others with their struggles?

4. Ujamaa
How can I help bring genuine prosperity?

5. Nia
How can I encourage the best in myself and others?

6. Kuumba
How do I express my creativity?

7. Imani
How do I deepen my belief, in myself and others?

 

 

You can purchase SOUL FOREST from Tarot Media Company by clicking here.

THE KINDLY ONES, or FIENDS INTO FRIENDS, or HOW TO TRANSFORM PROBLEM CARDS

Recently the wonderful Thalassa, founder of BATS (Bay Area Tarot Symposium), the longest running tarot conference in the world, shared on Facebook that she had to cancel her class on “problem cards” due to laryngitis.

We–the members of her group, Daughters of Divination– started to play with this idea, suggesting that maybe these cards that we all tend to find scary–Death, the Devil, some of the Swords cards–were blocking her from helping people to overcome their fear of what they meant. I suggested placating them by calling them something nice, and billing her workshop as turning fiends into friends.

That got me thinking about the ancient practice, found in so many cultures, of calling frightening forces by pleasant euphemisms. The term “Fairies” is usually said to be derived from “fair folk,” a reference to dark elemental powers that are not evil but certainly not friends of humans.

Possibly the strongest example is “The Kindly Ones,” or Eumenides, a very pleasant term for terrifying beings whose true name, Erinyes, is usually translated as Furies. In Ancient Greece the Furies were seen as creatures of darkness and blood. They came out of the ground to terrorize anyone who broke primal laws, especially the killing of a mother. Calling them Kindly Ones was a way to placate these terrible Furies, in the hope that they would stay away.

But there is more to it than that. In Aeschylus’s great trilogy, the Oresteia, the Furies pursue Orestes, who has killed his mother after she murdered her husband, Orestes’s father. Orestes did this under orders of Apollo, but the Furies couldn’t care less. They hound Orestes into madness until finally he comes to the Goddess Athena, who saves him by holding the first trial by jury, in which Orestes is found not guilty.

Athena then turns to the Furies. Instead of sending them away, or fighting them, she gives them a new home, under Athens, as protectors of the city. They are still frightening–any rites done in their honor were done in silence, without songs, or poems of praise–but their power now goes to a positive purpose. The Erinyes have truly become Eumenides, Kindly Ones in fact and not just as a euphemism.

How can we use this myth in dealing with the cards that scare us in the tarot? First of all, we need to recognize that it doesn’t really address the energy of these cards to simply give them a “nice” interpretation. Take the Death card. It’s too easy to call it simply “Death-of-the-old-self” or jump right to “transformation.” The idea of something dying, of loss, of pain, needs to be addressed. Even if we say it’s probably not physical death, it still has a fearsomeness.

The Five of Cups in the Rider deck is another example. It shows someone cloaked in black looking down at three over-turned Cups, whose liquid has spilled out onto the dirt. Now it happens that two Cups stand upright behind him (some see the figure as a woman, and it’s interesting that the cloak of sadness hides any identification of gender), and many people just want him to turn around, see the unspilled Cups, and pick them up to go on with his life. This may be the goal, but right now the card shows sadness.

So how do we genuinely change these cards?  One thing to do is to identify just what cards they are and what about them scares us.  We can go through the deck and pick out those that cause us to tense up, or we know we’d rather not see in a reading, especially for ourselves.  They might not be the same for everyone.  A card that one person sees as great courage might strike another as overwhelming tension.  A card that many people see as their worst fear might seem reassuring to someone else.  For example, the famous Five of Pentacles in the Rider shows two wretched beggars, sick or inured, making their way barefoot through a snowfall, with a church behind them.  While most fear this card, some appreciate the bond of the two people as they make their way together through hard times.

Once you have identified your Furies you can begin to explore just what it is that scares you about them.  You can write down your understanding of them, perhaps make up stories about them, examine all the details that make up the picture, as well as confront your overall disturbance.  Make sure to really look at what bothers them and not rush to make them safe or comfortable.

Set each one aside and shuffle the rest of the deck to ask such questions as “Where is the energy in this card?”  “What lies underneath it?”  “What does it ask of me?”  Eventually you can ask “What will transform it?” but don’t try to go there right away.  Make sure you understand it first, and what hold it has on you.

And when we think of the story we can realize another vital aspect–the need for justice.  Athena does not chase away the Furies, or overpower them, or even cajole them.  She first must address the crime, and the battle for Orestes’s soul being waged by the dark Earth Furies on one side and Apollo, the Sun God, on the other.  Her invention of a jury trial takes it out of the arena of personal power and into the realm of justice.

So, for our own Erinye cards we need to ask, Where is justice in this card?  Or maybe, what justice can transform it?  What justice does the situation demand?  Now, of course there is a card titled “Justice,” and you might want to set this card on the table when you work with any of your own group of fearsome cards.  Or you might prefer to leave it in the deck, to see if it comes up.  Here is another possibility–if one of your Fury cards turns up in a reading, or if you’ve just picked one out to work with it, search through the deck for the card of Justice.  Then look at the cards on either side of it.  Let these tell you what justice is needed to transform Fury into Kindness.

FREE! STORY IDEAS! ABSOLUTELY FREE!!

Do you want to be a writer? Do you worry people will ask you “Where do you get your ideas?”

Now you can answer: “Rachel Pollack’s blog!”

I get lots of fun ideas for stories with very little chance I will get to actually write them. So, I’m offering them here for anyone might want to take and run with them. The first begins with a title, the rest are just the ideas–you’ll have to make up the titles for those.

1. A Priest, A Rabbi, And A Minister Walk Into A Crime Scene.
The title says it all, doesn’t it? This would be a mystery series, with each story featuring our dauntless trio of clerical amateur sleuths as they battle villains, unruly congregations, and meddlesome hierarchies. Future titles could include A Priest, A Rabbi, And A Minister Walk Into A Kidnapping, etc. This could be a fun project for three writers, each one taking the sections of their appropriate religion–then switching around in later books.

2. “Oh wow,oh wow, oh wow.” Those were Steve Jobs’s last words. Was he seeing all the possibilities to transform heaven with new tech? Imagine a story in which Jobs is stunning the angels, and even God Hirself, with cool devices–until he comes up against Walt Disney. A new war in Heaven!

3. People watching TV notice very strange transmissions breaking into the signal. It turns out that these are television signals from another world. Scientists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists begin a frantic study to make use of this great opportunity. Then they notice odd things about the transmissions–they’re all commercials. All we know of this world is distorted through the lens of TV advertising. And further, they discover that our transmissions are breaking through into their world as well. But only commercials.

4. A time travel series about people who repair breaches in time. Sample titles:
Making Good Time
Time Made Good

5. A man who takes a shamanic workshop and becomes a vessel for the weather. If he gets drunk and falls into a swimming pool a huge rainstorm develops. If he gets sick and has the chills a deep freeze takes over his town. Once he realizes this, the responsibility becomes unbearable. To break a drought he has to drink two gallons of water a day. To prevent a blizzard he has to spend an entire day in a sauna.

6. A safety box belonging to a mysterious old man is left unclaimed after his death. The bank is about to drill into it when a woman bursts in saying she’s his ex-wife and only just heard of his death. By no means must they open that box! But unfortunately she lacks the paperwork and even though they give her six hours she can’t stop them. Turns out the old man was a wizard who trapped a demon in that box, like the bottle in the old Arabian Nights story. Now it’s unleashed, and can the woman trick it back into a new box before the world is destroyed?

TAROT ON THE HUDSON–FROM THE PRACTICAL TO THE MYSTERIOUS AND BACK AGAIN

For those of you who live near Rhinebeck (including those in the city who don’t mind taking the train up the Hudson), I’ve just announced our latest class, to be held on November 12.   Since it was partly inspired by the blog I did on Yes/No questions, and the interesting responses, I thought I would share the description.  After the class I hope to write some posts about the techniques  we developed as well as our discussions.  And the games–I’m looking forward to Hi-Lo.

The workshop runs from 1-5 and costs a mere $40 (people have been telling me I’m not charging enough, but we want to keep it accessible).  For more information, including trains from New York City, contact Zoe Matoff, at zoemaat@hvc.rr.com.  Write Zoe as well if you want to be on the mailing list for future classes and other events.

Here’s the class description:

As we enter full swing into the Holiday Season—Halloween over, Thanksgiving ahead—we will look at Tarot high and low, including just that, a Hi-Lo game to see where the energy is in a situation, and how we might change it.

 

Here are some of the activities:

Yes/No readings.  Recently I did a short blog on this subject then posted it on Facebook where the subject generated some interesting techniques, both to coax a simple yes or no answer from the deck, and how to take it a step further and look at the issues.  We will try out some of these, so think of a question.

 

Creation, creativity and the Tarot.  This week I attended an event very loosely structured around the seven days of Creation, and I realized it’s possible to match these up to the early cards of the Major Arcana.  For example, the Fool embodies the state of chaos before God says “Let there be light” a moment symbolized in the Magician.  We can do the same thing, maybe even more closely, with the scientific myth of Creation, the Big Bang theory.  We will look at both, and then consider how such understanding can translate into readings, and using the Tarot for our own creativity.

 

Hi-Lo.  There are many hi-lo card games, and as we’ve done with Tarot poker, we will adapt one or two to looking at how we can use the cards not just to look at events but take risks to help shape our destiny.  Such games are fun, but they also can be profound, and the more deeply we choose to enter them the more powerful they can become.

 

Saturn Return—many of us know people (possibly including ourselves) who are experiencing this most difficult of astrological transits, when Saturn returns to the point where it was on our birthday.  Saturn moves very slowly so this only happens every 29 years or so, and as a result, a Saturn return can bring in major shifts in a person’s life.  As Tarot readers, how can we use the cards to help people understand and work with such life events?

 

As usual, we will start with questions, stories, sharing of new decks and other Tarot tidbits.  I plan to bring a new alchemical deck by Christine Payne-Towler and a Minchiate recently issued by Lo Scarbeo.  See you all there!

THE HISTORY OF LIGHT–A POEM

Here’s something a bit unusual, a poem I wrote some time ago. I just realized, I could have given it the title of that famous poem many of us studied in college “Elegy Written In A Country Graveyard,” since that’s exactly where the idea came to me, sitting in the car with Wonder, waiting for a friend to come so we could walk together.

THE HISTORY OF LIGHT

Rachel Pollack

The first thing you see is the house,
square, with a low pitch roof,
white, with tan shutters and a black door.

Matter is light slowed down

And then, just in front,
the trees that frame the doorway,
skinny, November bare, young,
just old enough for the branches
to trace a third story
above the two of the house.
Before that, just a step closer,
the patches of lawn,
rusty green before the ice starts,
a whisper of color to soften the dark earth.

Let there be light

On your right the grass ends sharply,
the stone fence of the cemetery
like the hand of a traffic cop.
On the left the lawn gives way
to gravel, the spillover from the church parking lot.
You see all these things first,
before the scattered gravestones
that stand between your car and the rectory.
The stones are the old-fashioned kind,
thin gray slabs that tilt backward,
as if offended by their lofty children
on the other side of the fence.

If we dug them up,
would we find white bone,
the brown and pink of muscles and organs
long decayed, indigestible whiteness
all that’s left?
White is all color blurred together,
reflected back, as if our bones
reject the generosity of light.

Matter is light slowed down

We see first what is furthest away,
what blocks our vision yearning to escape
the limits of bodies and stone,
and return to light.
Matter is light slowed down,
and all we ever want
is to speed ourselves up again.

Let there be light, God says,
as if God pleads for permission,
like a mother who brings her son
to a noisy playground
and silently asks the tumble of kids
to make room for a shy child.

The darkness never needs allowance.
In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth,
and darkness lay upon the face of the deep.
If darkness was the face,
what dead white bones
were hiding underneath?

Let there be light

Matter is light slowed down.
If you could speed up your body,
find a really good spaceship,
break free of gravity and keep on going,
if you could make a run at catching light—
time would slow down,
and you would get shorter and shorter,
and yet your mass, your presence,
would grow and grow, until—
if you could make the jump,
if you returned to light,
you would find yourself
everywhere and nowhere, all at once,
outside of time.

All light is a single flash,
the same photon everywhere and forever,
given permission to exist, that one time,
those four words.
God is speaking them,
right now, to you, to me,
to the damp bones buried
in the cold November dirt.

Matter is light slowed down.

If only we could move fast enough
To finally listen, to know
We are free.

A MYTH OF THE TAROT’S ORIGIN

Today I was going through the book for my Tarot deck, The Shining Tribe in preparation for two exciting developments–an iphone app, and a full scale printing of the “Art Deck” version we’ve been selling as a limited edition of 78 copies (over half sold so far).

As I looked at the intro I was reminded of the origin myth I created for the deck, and for the Tarot in general. I make no claim for the historical accuracy of this story. It’s exactly that, a story. I do hope that it will say something meaningful about Tarot and the way doing readings connects us to the spirit world and to each other.

Here is the story, quoted from the book for Shining Tribe Tarot.

The earliest humans knew the Spirits as seven bright figures of golden light and gleaming darkness. They appeared to those most ancient of ancestors all over the world and were known everywhere as the Shining Tribe.

They could be seen emerging from the walls of caves at night, or in the sky where they outshone the stars. They helped humans understand fire, and what plants to eat, and how to make tools, and how to skin the animals they killed.

Their greatest gift came when they touched certain people with the power to see and understand the world as a parade of images and stories. Inspired by the Shining Tribe, people began to paint on rock and cave walls–magnificent bulls and horses, vibrant people with heads of pure light, bird-headed women, even abstract symbols that would carry wisdom to new generations.

Those whom the Spirits touched themselves carried the radiance of words and knowledge. They became the seers and journeyers and they shone with truth. Though they did not leave their families they too became part of the Shining Tribe.

Many centuries passed. The original images, once alive, hardened into doctrines and rigid rules. The radiance had drained from them. The Spirits decided to give the images in a new way, one that would preserve their purity and at the same time draw people even more deeply into them.

They came to creative humans while they slept and breathed their radiance into the humans’ dreams. Inspired, those people took old images from many sources and placed them on cards.

You could do many things with the cards–play a game, teach lessons, memorize information, code ideas, tell stories, learn about the very structures of existence–even predict the future. Most of all, you actually could use them as doorways back to the Spirits themselves.

And they could never be corrupted, because the Spirits had inspired people in different places and different times, so that there was no single set of images with absolute doctrines, and no matter how many people set out theories about the cards and their meanings, the pictures themselves would always dance away, ready to accept the next person to approach with openness and love of the images.

Those who use the cards to enter the sacred world receive the radiance of the Spirits. They themselves become the Shining Tribe of diviners.

This deck is my small gift to that tribe, through all their generations and in all cultures.

YES? NO? A COUPLE OF FORTUNE TELLING TRICKS

People who want a Tarot reading often want a simple yes/no answer. Often, the modern reader will say that we need to reframe that, the Tarot is for insight and understanding, not to answer yes or no. But suppose that’s really what’s needed?

I was trying to decide something, and not sure how I would put whatever cards came up into a context that would give me a yes or no answer. But then I realized that some of the cards were reversed and it struck me that it doesn’t have to matter which cards came up or what they mean for something so simple as yes or no. I turned the deck face up and separated all the cards into two piles, one, the right side up and two, the reversed. If the right side up pile was greater the answer was yes, if smaller the answer was no. In this case, there were only 25 reversed, and 53 right side up! A resounding yes.

There’s another way to do it that doesn’t involve separating or counting the cards. Choose a card in your mind that would represent a yes.
Say you are wondering about whether to remodel your house (I’m actually having the kitchen done so it’s on my mind). I might choose the 10 of Rivers from the Shining Tribe Tarot. Based on the Rider-Waite-Smith 10 of Cups, it shows a man and woman celebrating their home. Okay, then you mix the cards, again in such a way that some will come out upside down. Now you look through the deck until you come to your chosen card. If it’s ride up the answer is yes, if reversed the answer is no.

If you want some illumination around the issue, and not just yes or no, you look at the cards on either side of the chosen one, and they will tell you something about your issue.

And now a kind of post-post: As I was typing I noticed a crumpled fortune cookie paper to the side of my computer. When I picked it up and opened it, it read “The sure way to predict the future is to invent it.”

TOTH class and Soul Forest book release for September

Some readers of this blog will know that I teach semi-regular classes in my home town of Rhinebeck, NY.  Below is an announcement of our latest class.  I’ve posted it here partly in hopes that some of you will be close enough to come try us out, but also because it celebrates two forthcoming books, including Soul Forest, available Sept 29, from TarotMediaCompany.com.

 Tarot On The Hudson – September 18, 2011

SECRETS OPENED UNLOCK LAWS

Hello, everyone.  I’m just back from San Francisco where I was lucky enough to attend what was probably the best SF BATS (Bay Area Tarot Symposium) ever, with great speakers and a celebratory air, as it was the 20^th anniversary of this longest running annual Tarot conference.

One thing that made it special for me was the official launch of my new book Soul Forest.  This is a collection of the articles I wrote for a web magazine, TheMetaArts.com.  Think of it as a blog collection you can hold in your hands. These articles all explored daring and exciting ways to look at Tarot and to use the cards to explore Wisdom questions.  Each article bore a title that used the word SOUL as an acrostic, thus the title of this description.

But Soul Forest is not in fact the only book I have coming out!  Around the end of October (yes, scary Halloween time) Tarot In Magical Times, written by myself and Johannes Fiebig, will be appearing.  This is one of the most unusual Tarot books I’ve worked on, because it looks at Tarot and the end of the world!  Most of us have heard of the Mayan prophecy (based on the end of their calendar), but there is also a major astrological shift taking place next year—and of course, various religious predictions, and climate change disasters.  So, Johannes and I are looking at the Tarot as both a prophecy of cataclysm and renewal, and a guide for anyone moving through extreme times of disaster and rebirth.

For this class we will be looking at readings from both books, as well as a reading to unite them.  This will be a very exciting TOTH, and I’m looking forward to seeing all of you.

Soul Forest will be officially published on Sept. 29.  It is currently available for pre-ordering from TarotMediaCompany.com

Lovely review of Fortune’s Lover: A Book of Tarot Poems

This review by Robert M. Tilendis was shared with me and it is of Fortune’s Lover: A Book of Tarot Poems, one of my Tarot poem books from A Midsummer’s Night Press.

I loved this review and wanted to share it.

“Anyone who has worked seriously with the Tarot comes to understand quite early on that the cards are starting points: as detailed and specific as the images may be, they are really signposts leading to where we need to go. Rachel Pollack understands that very well, as the poems in Fortune’s Lover demonstrate.

Call this collection a directed wander. It represents a vision that is, first and foremost, a unity, Eden and Manhattan, then and now, Fools and Magicians and Biblical scholars all part of the same continuum. The Fool becomes Pollack crossing 34th Street in Manhattan against traffic, rushing to grab a taxi to make her train, and somehow surviving, as Fools will. The Emperor sparks the beginnings of feminism in a disappointed daughter. Pi becomes a poem itself.”

To read the rest of Robert’s review, go to Robert’s blog, Sleeping Hedgehog.