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The method
1945 – 2023
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
Two volumes, 1980 and 1983; one volume from 1997. Generally described as the most intellectually serious tarot text in English.
“If we can use anything for fortune-telling, why use the Tarot? The answer is that any system will tell us something; the value of that something depends on the inherent wisdom of the system.”
Pollack came to tarot from a direction most tarot writing avoids. Not the card as a fortune-telling device, and not the card as a prompt for a memorised keyword, but the card as an autonomous image — something that speaks before interpretation organises it into an answer. She had already published novels by then; Unquenchable Fire won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Godmother Night the World Fantasy Award. She brought Jung, comparative mythology and Qabalah to a field that had been largely lists.
Her book changed what a reading was allowed to be. Before it, tarot writing gave you meanings to memorise. After it, the reader’s job was to look — at which way the figure faces, at what is under their feet, at what they are holding and what they have set down — and to let the picture stay unresolved long enough to say something true.
Two of her positions shape everything on this site. The first is about reversal: she wrote that treating an upside-down card as the opposite meaning turns the reading into an intellectual exercise, because you leave the image and enter a concept of it. Her instruction was to look again, because a reversed card is a new picture. The second is about authority: you do not tell someone "this is you". You say "think about this — is this something you do?" A reading offers a description to test, not a verdict to accept.
We write inside that method and we name it. We do not pretend she is typing. She died in 2023, and putting a real person’s name on generated text would be a lie whether or not anyone were left to object.
What the method holds
Pollack’s first move was to stop treating a card as a prompt for a memorised meaning. Which way is the figure facing. What is under their feet. What are they holding, and what have they put down. Say what is in the picture before you say what it means — and if you could write the same paragraph for a different card, you have not looked at this one.
This is the position that separates her method from almost every other. She wrote that treating an upside-down card as the opposite meaning turns the reading into an intellectual exercise, because you leave the image and enter a concept of it. Her instruction instead: look again, and say what catches your eye now that the picture is upside down.
Her phrasing, more or less: you don’t say “this is you”, you say “think about this — is this something you do?” A reading offers a description to test. A verdict gets resisted, and it deserves to be.
The Fool is not walking toward accomplishment. He is walking toward an encounter with figures the ego did not choose and cannot control. When majors dominate a spread, that is what the question is about — not a promotion, an initiation.
You pull the cards yourself from a shuffled deck. A model writes the reading against your spread and your question, following the four rules above — the image first, reversal as a new picture, description instead of prediction, no telling you who you are. The method is hers. The writing is generated. We would rather be plain about that than have you find out later.
Where this comes from
If the readings here do something for you, the book does it better and at length. Buy a copy — it is the source, and she wrote it.
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