Rachel Pollack is a world authority on the modern interpretation of Tarot cards and a tarot card artist. She is a poet and an multi-award-winning novelist and has published 12 books on tarot, including the modern classic Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom often called “the Tarot readers’ Bible”. She lives in New York U.S.A.

For her book and Tarot Deck, The Shining Tribe Rachel has drawn symbolism from six continents and fifty thousand years of human spiritual images, as well as her thirty years as a leader in the Tarot movement, and created a visionary deck.

The Forest of Souls: A walk through the Tarot Rachel takes the reader on a magical walk through the mysteries, archetypes, and dream-like images of the Tarot. While the most common use of the Tarot is for divination, she shows how to use the cards for readings of an entirely different nature. Asking improbable, even impossible questions, she plays with the sacred possibilities and answers that the Tarot gives us.

We are fortunate to have the opportunity to meet Rachel Pollack and benefit from her knowledge and insights into the Tarot in the 21st century.

Master Class plus Dinner with Rachel
For more confident readers. Intense work using specific techniques. $140
Masterclass without Dinner $100
Weds 23rd July 3pm – 6pm at The Oval Room Grey Lynn Community Centre 510 Richmond Rd.

Wisdom Readings
Using the tarot to ask the bigger questions about life and death. Creating powerful readings for people in difficult situation. Using tarot to explore myths and other significant stories and teachings. This is an approach Rachel invented, and part of what she calls the Wisdom Tradition. In Wisdom readings we ask the cards questions beyond our personal concerns, questions about existence, and mystery, questions such as “What is the soul?” or “What is evil?” Rachel's book, Forest of Souls contains possibly the archetypal Wisdom reading, when she asks the cards to “show me the reading you gave God to create the universe.”

A second type of Wisdom reading creates personal spreads out of quotations and teachings. For example, two thousand years ago the great rabbi Hillel asked three questions: If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when? We can create a powerful reading for people in difficult relationships (with a partner, a child, a boss, etc.) How do I need to be for myself in this situation? How do I need to be for others? What do I need to do right now?

Still a third type of Wisdom reading uses the Tarot to explore myths and other significant stories or teachings. We might do a spread, for example, based on the Sermon on the Mount, with one card drawn for each of the statements. Or the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. Or more playfully, for the characters and events of Cinderella.
Cost: $150.
Saturday 26th July 26th 10am – 4pm at Fernndale House 830 New North Rd. Mt Albert.

Rescuing the Tarot from Psychology
Expanding the recent psychological perspective of tarot using a number of approaches and techniques that find new ways to experience the images. In the early 80s a small group of writers and teachers—Mary Greer, Angeles Arrien, Gail Fairfield, James Wanless, and Rachel Pollack—“rescued” the Tarot from fortune telling, that is, the clichéd way people had come to look at the cards and readings. To a large extent they did this by psychologizing the cards, seeing how the pictures showed us emotional states and held up a mirror to who we are. Maybe this has become the new orthodoxy. Sometimes we can only look at the cards as psychological mirrors. So a number of my approaches and techniques attempt to find new ways to experience the pictures, to rescue the Tarot from psychology, without just going back to old ways.
$150.
Sunday 27th July 10am -4pm at Ferndale House 830 New North Road. Mt Albert

Combo Discounts for booking more than one Workshop
Combo A-1: All 3 Workshops + Weds dinner $352.
Combo A-2: All 3 Workshops $320.
Combo B-1: Master Class + Saturday Workshop $200 (add $32 for dinner)
Combo B-2: Masterclass + Sunday Workshop $200 (add $32 for diinner)
Combo C: Saturday and Sunday Workshops $240.

Current Tarot Guild Members deduct $10.
Early Bird Discount if booked and paid by May 28th - deduct 10%

Cash, Cheque or Direct Credit.
Direct Credit: 38-9001-0634225-00
Cheques made payable to: Tarot Guild of Aotearoa.
Post to Tarot Guild of Aotearoa,
15 Manuka Rd. Titirangi Auckland 0604
Phone Paula 817 3177 or Email paula.fd8@gmail.com

Rachel is available for private readings
$140 for an hour. $75 for half hour – Phone Paula 817 3177 or Email paula.fd8@gmail.com