The Haindl Tarot: The Major Arcana

273 Pages·2008·2.26 MB·English

by  Rachel Pollack

T
HE
H T
AINDL AROT
M A
THE AJOR RCANA
R E
EVISED DITION
Rachel Pollack
NEW PAGE BOOKS
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Franklin Lakes,NJ
Copyright 2002 by Rachel Pollack
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The Haindl Tarot—The Major Arcana,Revised
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Cover design by Diane Y. Chin
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pollack,Rachel.
The Haindl tarot,the major arcana / by Rachel Pollack.—Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-56414-597-2 (paper)
1. Major arcana (Tarot) I. Title.
BF1879.T2 P64 2002
133.3’2424—dc21
2002022231
Dedicated
to
Maeve Moynihan

CONTENTS
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Introduction to the Major Arcana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
0 The Fool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
I The Magician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
II The High Priestess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
III The Empress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
IV The Emperor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
V The Hierophant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
VI The Lovers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
VII The Chariot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
VIII Strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
IX The Hermit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
X The Wheel of Fortune . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
XI Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
XII The Hanged Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
XIII Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
XIV Alchemy (Temperance) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
XV The Devil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
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CONTENTS
XVI The Tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
XVII The Star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
XVIII The Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
XIX The Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
XX Aeon (Judgement) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
XXI The Universe (The World) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Major Arcana Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Readings (& Spreads) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Painter’s Notes and Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
FOREWORD
Artistic vision registers and prophesies the expanding consciousness of
man. I am not speaking only of works of art,but the artistic vision wher-
ever it imbues living acts. Artistic imagination creates what has never
before existed. To live artistically is to embody in social forms the unique
individual and the intuitions of union.
M. C. Richards
The Haindl Tarot captures the essence of artistic vision and hon-
ors the true meaning of the word craft, which comes from the
German word Kraft,meaning power and strength. The collabora-
tive team of Rachel Pollack,award-winning writer,and visionary
artist Hermann Haindl demonstrates the power and strength of
two people committed to the combined craft of Tarot.
Artful in their respective crafts,Pollack and Haindl live with
a special immediacy to the questions of technique and the ques-
tions of meaning and how they apply to Tarot. Through art,Haindl
addresses the questions of technique; through writing, Pollack
addresses meaning. Using different means to achieve a combined
result, Pollack and Haindl illustrate how perennial and ancient
wisdoms can be applied in contemporary times. Haindl, through
his contemporary style and Tarot deck, renders traditional arche-
types with modern symbols. Pollack skillfully interprets the many
layers of meanings found within the symbols. She brings together
multiple spiritual and esoteric traditions and demonstrates their
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FOREWORD
relevance and varied applications in modern themes of ecology,
politics, and ways of developing human resources.
The Haindl Tarot and Pollack’s interpretations reveal the
power of the creative arts in their capacity to bridge visible and
invisible worlds. The rich matrix of the Tarot provides a symbolic
map of consciousness which can serve as a visual affirmation and
synchronistic mirror of an individual’s experience and life
process. Combining the oracular tradition of the I-Ching, Runes,
astrology,and the influence of ancient cultures and the Kabbalah,
these two volumes synthesize multiple doorways in which main-
stream people and scholars can access invaluable information.
The challenge of the twenty-first century is how to integrate
ancient and modern themes that will create synergetic visions and
applications which can further the expanding consciousness of
humankind. Perhaps Cezanne described this process best when he
said: “Any craft is a harmony parallel to nature.” Rachel Pollack
and the Haindl Tarot remind us that symbols provide a harmo-
nious mirror of our own nature and craft,and that it is time,as M.
C. Richards states, “to live artistically . . . to embody in social
forms the unique individual and the intuitions of union.”In many
ways, Pollack and Haindl have paved the way in their joint effort
in bringing forward the Haindl Tarot.
Angeles Arrien
San Francisco, California
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The word Tarotis French for a card game known also as Tarocchi.
Nobody really knows the Tarot’s origin. Many people have put
forth theories, some of them mundane, others esoteric or frankly
legendary. At one end of the scale we find the idea that the Tarot
began simply as a game with no deeper meaning until occultists
invented fantasies about it in the eighteenth century. At the other
end, we read of magicians from ancient Egypt, or secret congre-
gations of Atlantean masters who wanted to encode their wisdom
for the dark ages after Atlantis’s destruction. Historical informa-
tion tells us, however, that the Tarot first appeared in Italy in the
mid-fifteenth century. Contrary to what we might expect,cards of
any kind do not get mentioned in European documents until the
late fourteenth century. Among the earliest Tarot cards that have
come down to us are those painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the
aristocratic Visconti family of Italy.
In recent years a third alternative has developed, contrasting
the extremes of encoded wisdom and of an empty game. This
view accepts the historical evidence that the Tarot originated as a
game in the Italian Renaissance, but it looks at the game, and
especially its pictures,as allegories of spiritual ideas. These ideas
have their origin, the theory goes, in metaphysical concepts that
do in fact go back as far as Egypt, in the great days of the
Alexandrian library several hundred years before Jesus. Thus,
according to this theory, the Tarot was not a conscious Egyptian
invention, but has roots in Egyptian mystery religions.
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