A review by lauraglovestoread
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness (a New Edition of the Tarot Classic) by Rachel Pollack

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom is a tarot classic. This new publication of the book includes a new (2018) preface but otherwise, as far as I can tell, faithfully reproduces older editions.  Seventy-Eight Degrees first appeared in 1980. 

Pollack provides extended discussions of all of the cards in the Smith-Waite deck, going well beyond keywords found in many ‘little white books.’ I actually prefer Pollack’s explanations of the minor arcana cards to her explanations of the majors, which is rare for a tarot book – so many give extended treatments of the majors and almost nothing about the minors, but here Pollack provides nuanced descriptions of the minors that situate them within the trajectories of their suit. 

Inevitably, reading a book like this as an experienced tarot practitioner, some of Pollack’s understandings align with or resonate with my own while others don’t – this will vary for every reader, I’m sure. While I found some aspects of the book unhelpful and/or not particularly of interest, I also learned quite a bit and found some new ideas I quite like. 

While I understand reproducing an older text as-is, I do feel like there are some comments in here that really should have been edited out, or at the very least given clarifying contextual footnotes. There is absolutely no call for using language like the ‘g’ word to refer to Romani people – perhaps the harmfulness of this language was not quite so well understood forty years ago, but it certainly is now, so it is disappointing to see this simply reproduced. There are some other aspects to the text do certainly mean it reads as dated in 2021, at least for me. 

Finally, since I make a point of mentioning this for any books I read in this and adjacent genres: I appreciate that the book contains a short bibliography and a solid index, but wish that citations were included as well.