Rachel Pollack: A “Best-Case Scenario” Reading
Author’s Note: It may be presumptuous of me to do this without being asked, but those of us who have ever met Rachel are deeply concerned about her condition and I wanted to capture that interest in an appropriate appeal to the tarot. It seemed fortuitous that I have her Shining Tribe deck.
UPDATE: This was not well-received by the community. Some think that it’s insensitive and not warmly conceived in the sense of “prayers and best wishes for recovery.” As a non-religious person, prayers are not my style, but I do think it’s sympathetic, even-handed and professional. Also, it’s remarkable how eloquently the Shining Tribe Tarot spoke to it’s creator, particularly since I’ve used it so seldom over the years. Anyway, I’ve pulled this from other online outlets but will leave it here since a blog post is less personal and a blog audience is typically less judgmental.
As most of you know by now, internationally-acclaimed tarot master and author Rachel Pollack is suffering a health crisis and is in intensive care. I haven’t heard anything in a couple of days (“No news is good news?”) so I decided to apply my new “Gatekeeper and Keymaster” Best-Case Scenario spread to her situation to see what the most favorable outcome might look like. As others have done, I pulled out my copy of the Shining Tribe Tarot for this attempt.
The first step was to select a “Key” card, which I decided to do intentionally rather than randomly. This sort of thing must be done with sensitivity, but it didn’t seem entirely honest to use a hopeful “wishful thinking” card like the Star even though that is what we all want for her. So I chose the Wheel (Spiral) of Fortune as an indicator of change since a state like hers can’t stay static for long, and Aleister Crowley did say about this card “This generally means good fortune because the fact of consultation implies anxiety or discontent.” I thought, “Fair enough.”
The second step was to lay out the five-card arc of “Gate” cards. In this deck, Fire is represented by Trees, Water by Rivers, Air by Birds and Earth by Stones. The series I pulled was the 7 of Rivers (Cups) as “Gate #1;” the 10 of Rivers as “Gate #2;” the Knower (Knight) of Stones (Pentacles) as “Gate #3;” the 4 of Stones as “Gate #4;” and the Speaker (King) of Trees (Wands) as Gate #5.
Finding the synergy between the Key card and the most sympathetic Gate card was interesting. Traditionally (at least in the Golden Dawn system of correspondences), the Wheel of Fortune is associated with Jupiter and the element of Fire, which would have made the Speaker of Trees the right match. However, in my previous “rethinking” of the astrological assignments for the Major Arcana, I swapped Jupiter to the Chariot as a symbol of “triumph” and moved the Water sign Cancer to the Wheel as befits that cards cyclical oscillations. Consequently, I was looking for the best “Water-card” match. I had two options, the 7 of Rivers and the 10 of Rivers. The 10 of Rivers was the obvious choice because it is also a “numerological counterpart” to the tenth trump, and thus an expression of numerical “dignity.”.
A brief aside. The number Ten suggests completion and fulfillment, an ending or closure but also a new beginning as implied by a turn of the elemental wheel. In Pythagorean terms, it represents the sum of the first four numbers (1+2+3+4=10) and is reflected in the symmetry of the first tetractys. When I pulled the two “Path” cards, I came up with another Ten — the 10 of Trees — as the “end of the road” for this particular evolution.
The image in the 10 of Rivers is a joyous one that conveys “crossing the river” and “going home.” The implications are rather obvious, but paired with the Spiral of Fortune it could also be read as successfully negotiating the “crisis” and achieving comfort in the midst of changing circumstances.
The Ace of Stones gives a sense of focused intervention, perhaps the renewal or replacement of something of a physical nature. It’s also notable that Ace follows 10 in the regenerating “spiral” of numbers (even though the suit of Birds/Swords was skipped in this case, perhaps meaning that surgery is not an option). To me, it seems to offer a “recharge” and a “new lease on life.” To me, it seems to offer a “recharge” and a “new lease on life.” In esoteric number theory, the Ten and Ace share a strong bond since 10=1+0=1; as such, this Ace depicts stubborn “tenacity” or “true grit” after the “river is crossed.”
The 10 of Trees imparts a feeling of “stabilized energy;” in the Lenormand system the Tree is a symbol of health and an illuminating parallel to the tree in this card. The “bottom line” looks like the energy burns at a modest rate but the flame is steady, so successfully “turning the corner” might be assumed as a consequence of the next (implied) “Ten-to-Ace” transition. Although the diagnosis is justifiably unknown to me at this point, the projected evolution from Fire to Water could mean a “cooling” or “dampening” of any low-grade fever or inflammation, or perhaps it echoes the line from the Eagle’s Tequila Sunrise: “Take another shot of courage” (as in regroup emotionally and don’t just “get numb” as the rest of the verse goes).
Remember that this spread is designed to put the “best face” on what is undeniably a difficult scenario, so I’m reading it as such, and the cards seem to support a cautiously optimistic outlook as far as they go. There is the feel of a sustainable “holding pattern” to it, although the perturbations of Fortune can be notoriously fickle.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on August 23, 2022.
