Zoe Matoff

A tarot reading lies open before us, all of its images laid out on the table. Yet at the same time, they form a labyrinth, not simply a puzzle to be decoded but also a complex pathway deep into ourselves. In Tarot: The Open Labyrinth, Rachel Pollack presents interpretations and commentaries on a collection of readings. The approach is exhaustive yet specific, going steadily deeper into the person’s concerns in a context of light and dark, the Magician and the High Priestess. Through a recognition of this context, the subject and the reader open up their lives. In her classic Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack described how we can form meditation patterns—tarot mandalas—to help us go beyond the reading itself. In this book, she gives examples of these mandalas and describes how people involved use them and their experiences. First published in 1986 by the Aquarian Press and long out of print, Tarot: The Open Labyrinth is for readers who wish to take their reading to the next level by learning from the master. Rachel Pollack writes that this book is intended to tell us “how the Tarot can help us answer specific questions, act as a tool for psychological analysis, and tell us how to overcome problems.”