Rachel Pollack > Quotes

“To learn to play seriously is one of the great secrets of spiritual exploration.”
― Rachel Pollack, The Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot

“Marion: What is all this? What's going on?
Clint: The same thing that's always going on. The end of the world.”
― Rachel Pollack

“Do not confuse the 'subconscious' with the 'unconscious', whose attributes include courage as well as true knowledge. A great deal of confusion has resulted from the use of these two terms as synonymous. I am using the term 'subconscious' here to stand for material -desires, anxieties, fears, hopes - repressed by the conscious mind as it deals with the outer realities of life. 'Unconscious' means the absic energy of life, that area of being beyond the ego. The subconscious, despite its hidden qualities, is really an extension of the ego. In a sense, it embodies the ego's absolute domain, that realm where it makes no compromises with reality. Because it does not concern itself with consequences the subconscious will walk you in front of a truck to avoid an unpleasant conversation. The unconscious on the other hand, balances and supports us by joining us to the great surge of life beyond our individual selves. The Hanged Man in the Major Arcana gives us a powerful image of this vital connection.”
― Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot

“Nihilism is not the last word. The last word is imagination.”
― Rachel Pollack, Unquenchable Fire

“When we react with extreme emotion to some innocuous comment, the subconscious is acting out. When we get a sense of the wonder of life and can’t explain it, we are touching the unconscious”
― Rachel Pollack, Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom: Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings

“Here is a great secret—we ourselves are myth, we ourselves are stories. Not light imprisoned in gross, dense bodies, but light shaped into stories. A Hasidic proverb runs, “Why did God make humans? Because God loves stories.”
― Rachel Pollack, Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom: Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings

“God," in these pages, becomes a way to express our universal desire to know and to comprehend the sacred.”
― Rachel Pollack, The Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot

“Innocence’ is a word often misunderstood. It does not mean ‘without guilt’ but rather a freedom and a total openness to life, a complete lack of fear that comes through a total faith in living and in your own instinctive self. Innocence does not mean ‘asexual’ as some people think. It is sexuality expressed without fear, without guilt, without connivance and dishonesty. It is sexuality expressed spontaneously and freely, as the expression of love and the ecstasy of life.”
― Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (Hardcover Gift Edition): A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness

“Divination” derives from
the Latin word divinatio, to
divine. Whatever the method,
when we do a divination we seek to
understand, in some small way, the spiritual
patterns that underlie our lives. Divination
systems, especially the more elaborate ones,
almost always reflect a religious or
philosophical system. We may read the Tarot
as a party game, but the game works because
the symbols on the Tarot cards describe the
deeper truths that give meaning to our lives.
And it works because the Tarot consists
of pictures rather than words. While it is true
that people have written hundreds of books
about the Tarot, and that most people who
want to use the cards in a reading look up
their meanings in a book such as this one,
the Tarot remains first and foremost pictures
- mysterious, evocative, suggestive of whole
worlds of meaning.”
― Rachel Pollack, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Tarot AND The Original Rider Waite Tarot Pack

“At any moment, we think, we are free to do whatever we want. But our supposedly free choices are governed by our past actions. If we do not understand ourselves, how can we expect to make a free choice? Only by seeing and accepting the past can we free ourselves from it.”
― Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (Hardcover Gift Edition): A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness

“It is not enough just to foresee a likely outcome for us to change or prevent that event. We must understand why it is coming, and we must work on the causes within ourselves for the things we do and the ways we react. Free will certainly exists. We just do not know how to use it. The most important thing we can learn from Tarot readings is just how little we exercise our freedom.”
― Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (Hardcover Gift Edition): A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness

“Carry shadow on your back, embrace light in your arms,” the Tao Te Ching tells us)”
― Rachel Pollack, Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom: Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings

“Frightening delusions would seize her, such as knives coming through the walls and fear of people wanting to kill her. The psychiatric profession might describe such a condition in terms of brain chemistry. In esoteric terms, we might say that the borders were breaking down between three levels—the archetypal world of principles, the lower realm of dreams, and the world of daily life.”
― Rachel Pollack, Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom: Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings