Sightsee the Tarot is a series on my channel through which I take you on a tour of tarot
books, spreads, techniques and tips, different decks, and more.
Today’s video tutorial will be a hands-on workshop, so please watch while you’re seated
comfortably in front of your reading space with a deck of cards ready to go.
You’re also going to want pen and paper nearby.
A Walk Through the Forest of Souls by Rachel Pollack was first published in 2002 as The
Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot.
It has now been re-released in 2023 by Weiser Books.
This book takes you on a journey with the tarot beyond how to tell fortunes or card
by card listing of meanings.
Instead, let’s present big questions to the cards, like “How do I open my heart?”
or “What nourishes the soul?” and “What reading did you, the tarot, give God to create
the universe?”
How do we utilize the tarot as a means to explore unknown territory, both in ourselves
and the world beyond us, in the sacred mysteries and in the riddles of existence.
In this installment of Sightsee the Tarot, let’s walk through one tarot thought exercise
found in Pollack’s A Walk Through the Forest of Souls.
In the chapter “The Tarot Before Creation,” we explore the parallel between the tarot
and the I Ching Book of Changes, a system of divination that is also said to be the
oldest book in the world, yet one that isn’t confined to a linear, nor confined to four
corners, but rather, is a circle, representative of cycles.
Much like the tarot, writes Pollack.
Let us imagine a tarot existing beyond space-time, which the Creator of the universe uses to
design the blueprint of our universe.
And so the physical existence of our world was designed by a tarot reading.
That is the hypothetical.
Today we’re going to play with that idea.
You may find it helpful to download the accompanying worksheet for this reading exercise.
Links in the video description box.
You’ll also want your favorite tarot deck on hand and ready.
If it can be revealed to you what tarot reading provided the Creator with the blueprints of
the universe with which the Creator designed their Divine Plan and purpose, then we might
be able gain what Rachel Pollack describes as “the key of keys and become masters of
creation.”
Imagine that the Divine Creator has taken the four suits of the Minor Arcana and set
them out to lay the foundation of the four metaphysical corners of the universe, the
square to be circled.
And then our Creator pours spirit essence into the Major Arcana and it is that spirit
essence that causes the universe—physical matter—to come alive.
You’ll now be guided step by step through a 13-card God’s Reading found in the chapter
by the same name from A Walk Through the Forest of Souls.
“If the Creator consulted the Tarot to create the cosmos,” writes Pollack, “how did
the cards come out?
Can we say to the Tarot, show us the reading that God received in order to create the world?
Obviously the question is fanciful, even absurd, but there is an interesting parallel, again,
to the Tarot’s Chinese sister, the I Ching.”
That’s the card reading you’ll be doing today, receiving a mythology, but one that
will reveal important truths about the universe, and about you.
This is a mythology that endows you with what Pollack called, “the key of keys.”
Now let’s begin.
Shuffle your deck and present this petition to your cards: Show me the design plan and
blueprints of Creation.
Repeat these words after me: Show me . . . the design plan and blueprints . . . of Creation
. . . Keep shuffling your cards and as you shuffle,
visualize the layout plan of the spread you’ll be drawing the cards into.
In a spiral sequence, you’ll be setting the cards down into a cross, three cards in
each of the four directions, and a 13th card at the end.
Repeat once more: Show me . . . the design plan and blueprints . . . of Creation . . .
Draw Card 1: This is the card of Mystery, the first movement from the Source.
Pause the video here to log your reading, take down your notes, and first impressions.
Draw Card 2: This is what emerges, from the depths of that Source.
Pull out all your favorite books on the tarot and look up what every book has to say about
this card.
Gather and reconcile that collective knowledge.
Pause the video here and take that journey, that walk through the forest of souls.
Draw Card 3: This is the first spirit to ascend from the emergence.
Think about the pantheon of gods and goddesses you’re familiar with.
Which divine personality does your Card 3 embody?
Remember that there are no wrong answers.
This is about how you specifically and uniquely connect to the various facets of divinity.
Draw Card 4: This is the result from the Beginning.
Don’t be impatient with yourself.
The answers should not come easy.
It should be taking you some time to think and reflect, to process, to tap in to your
intuitive knowledge.
Before proceeding consider a big picture overview of this spread of four cards and spot the
patterns, any recurring theme or symbolism emerging here.
Think numbers, astrology, iconography, color schemes, and even emotional values.
Pause the video and take as much time as you need.
Draw Card 5: This card reveals a Mystery of Physical Matter.
Take your time to free-write.
Be patient with yourself.
Stay open and receptive to what is coming to you.
Draw Card 6: This is what begins to emerge from that Physical Matter.
Remember to pause the video as needed.
This workshop should be a dedicated time for meditative self-reflection and journaling.
Draw Card 7: This is the halfway point of Creation, and this is what expresses Creation
itself.
Don’t be afraid to consult the books, to look up card meanings and see what passages
grab your attention.
Integrate bibliomancy.
Draw Card 8: This is how Creation begins to Evolve.
Take a pause here to consider the prominent themes and any synchronicities in this second
ring or cross of cards.
Draw Card 9: This is the Mystery of what the Universe will become, where our World is headed.
What prophetic download are you receiving?
Pay close attention to every psychic signal you’re getting.
Channel it.
Transcribe it.
We are now getting into the realm of prophecy and divination, to see into the future, to
contemplate possibilities.
Draw Card 10: This is the spiritual emergence to come.
If you had to personify this card as a deity, which deity would your Card 10 be a calling
card for?
What powers, what values are associated with this card you see before you?
Free-write and take note.
Draw Card 11: This is a future possibility for us to consider.
Lean in to your emotions.
How does seeing the imagery of these cards make you feel?
Write down keywords that express your feelings.
Describe the energies you’re sensing.
Draw Card 12: This is what will come to be.
Visualize your mind assertively reaching out into the future beyond and pulling back into
your present an artifact of the future, and reconcile that psychic hit with what you see
in Card 12.
Consider what stands out to you about this third and final ring of cards.
Final card.
Draw Card 13: This is our Return to Divine Mystery.
This card will hold a double meaning.
For now, think about what your Card 13 is telling you about our Return to Divine Mystery.
Remember to pause the video if you need more time, and stay patient, stay calm, relaxed,
open, and receptive.
Now let’s reflect on the Source.
To form the ouroboros, the serpent swallowing its own tail, the final Card 13, in addition
to revealing our Return to Divine Mystery at the end of this cycle of life, also signifies
some core truth about Creation.
As above, so below, as within, so without.
This Card 13 also signifies some core truth about you.
At this time, pause the video and reflect on how your Card 13 reflects a core truth
about who you are and your connection to Divine Source.
To close out this reading, pick up the remaining pile of cards in the deck and cut into three
card piles.
Flip each pile over so the bottom-most card is now facing up.
These three cards are your Teachers.
This triad of Divine Teachers are like your three primes of internal alchemy.
They represent three main spirit guides, and the triple energies to invoke as you navigate
Creation for yourself, as you embody the role of a Creator.
Survey your reading results.
You could easily devote the writing of an entire book to this reading result.
Each and every card on your reading table right now is itself a gateway for further
pathworking or meditation.
Consider your fiction, the mythology behind this spread of cards: This spread represents
the cards God drew in order to create this world.
Also, the specific layout of cards in answer to this question is exactly the cards you,
yes you, need to see to get the answer that you seek.
What you see will be different from what I see for the question presented because the
cards that I need from the Universe to best understand the answer is different from the
layout of cards that you need from the Universe to best understand the answer.
I’ve scanned in my own handwritten notes filling out the worksheet documenting my own
reading.
Perhaps it might help offer some direction on how you’d want to approach your reading
result.
To conclude, I’d like to direct you to a YouTube playlist of clips from a 2019 interview
and conversation with Rachel Pollack.
You’ll find the link in the video description box below.
For context, the whole conversation was an hour long, though it’s never been aired
in full before.
To close out this video, in light of the cultural syncretism that Rachel talks about in A Walk
Through the Forest of Souls, and because this particular clip is sentimental to me, I’d
like to share a 3-minute clip from that conversation between Rachel and I that didn’t make it
into the 2019 video series.
This little clip that I’m sharing also reveals a glimpse into just how much Rachel meant
to me as a mentor, meant to us all.
Recording started…
Okay.
Can you see me, too?
Perfectly.
Okay great, oh wonderful, okay.
I hope you're not offended by my calling it real Buddhism versus American Buddhism.
(Nope.)
Yeah, (laughter) you know what I mean.
America—American-- my American Buddhist friends always seem to make it an intellectually
rarified kind of thing, which I'm sure, you know, Catholicism would be in some Asian countries,
and not what American Catholics experience, you know, same with Judaism, you know.
I'm now struck by this incredible idea, and I could never do it, only some kind of genius
syncretist person could do it, which, by which I mean you.
(laughter) Which is to do a book about that-- a comparison of those different things, you
know?
So hoodoo and Chinese folk practices, but also things like, um, you know, the connection,
of say you know, the merging of say, you know, Chinese traditional religion and Taoism and
Buddhism and even Confucianism compared to Afro-American, you know, Santeria and Vodun--
I think it would be an amazing book, to compare those two things.
So how these different syncretistic traditions, you know, East and West compared to each other.
Here's a great example: There’s Ivo Dominguez who writes a lot about Latin American—(I
know him, yes, yeah)—and so at PantheaCon he gave this lecture once about divine possession,
and he said this really important thing.
He said, um, if you look throughout the world, at world cultures, divine possession is far,
far, far more common than demonic possession.
(Yes.)
You know, so he talked about, you know, African divine possession, um, Asian divine possession,
demonic divine possession, and so on and so on, you know.
So I think there's a lot-- but I think specifically that whole idea of syncretism, without saying,
you know, that the Chinese is like the, um, Haitian, you know, because obviously it's
not.
It’s very distinct.
But then you can say, you know, yeah but they're both doing something similar but here's how
they're doing it in their own special way.
I would love to read that and I would actually like to be a part of it in terms of just conversations
now and then, if you were going to do it.
(Yeah!)
I think it'd be wonderful to have these kinds of conversations now and then, about stuff
like that, you know.
(I would love that!
I would absolutely love that.)
And in general I think it’d be great to have conversations with you now and then,
because I think, you know, I just get so much from talking with you, and I hope that you
do, too.
(I feel like I get more!
I think I'm the one getting the better deal!)
No, no, you're so modest you know, it's like (laughs)…
Anyway…