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Interview:
Rachel Pollack:
The Kabbalah Tree
by Robbie G. |
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Kabbalah is Hebrew for "to receive knowledge." Referred to as "The Mystery of Mysteries," Kabbalah, the 4,000 year old esoteric study, and mystical tradition and center of Judaism, is one of the most difficult, and probably the most misunderstood of the spiritual studies. Students and Torah scholars alike, spend entire lives in deep contemplation and study, in the attempt to uncover it's secrets in regard to GOD, Universe, and all Manifestation.
In her latest book, "The Kabbalh Tree," Rachel Pollack explains the basic concepts behind the mystical diagram, "The Tree Of Life," a map of All Emination, the attributes of GOD, and of the Reincarnation and Transmigration of the Soul.
In "The Kabbalah Tree," Rachel creates a multi-cultural bridge by discussing The Tree of Life as it is seen in Judaism's Kabbalah, as well as in a variety of other cultural and religious belief systems throughout human history. This is what makes her book so unique,
The Meta Arts: How did this project come about?
Rachel Pollack: Hermann Haindl had painted this magnificent painting of The Tree of Life, and asked if I would do a book about it. I said to Hermann, that I felt that there were people who knew The Tree of Life much, much better than I, had studied it longer than I, and had devoted their entire lives to it. I had not.
But Hermann said I knew his art better, and he had had an experience with a previous book, of someone coming in, knowing the subject very, very well, and basically saying nothing about Hermann's art. So, he really was not happy about that.
I had worked with him so closely on the Haindl Tarot. He felt that I knew his art fairly well, and so originally, I did it largely as a favor for Hermann, and in the course of it, I got very deeply into it. And, I was very happy that I did.
The Meta Arts: So, what do you get out of his canvas?
Rachel Pollack: What I get out of it, is The Tree of Life, is a Tree of Life, and not an abstract diagram of official correspondences. It is filled with life and a living universe.
The Meta Arts: One thing in particular that we liked about this book, is that you tied in many cultures that also have a Tree of Life, or a concept similar to it. You tied people together through it, and created a bridge.
Rachel Pollack: Well, you know, one of the things that people do, especially all of us in this Western culture, is to insist that our belief systems are unique, and are special and true. Everyone else's belief systems are just stories.
It is interesting the effect this has. As an example, I was in a class, just last week, about the opening of Genesis. The Rabbi was trying to get people beyond their literalism, and so he said, "It is important to remember, this is not meant to be a scientific account, it is a story." And someone got all upset, and she said, "Well, I think it is literal and not just a story.
So, I kind of jumped in, I always do, (warm chuckle) and pointed out that she added the words "just a" and that the stories are very powerful. We have been taught that our stories are true, and that other people's stories are just stories.
If you look at Eliade's great work on Shamanism, there is incredible detail about the letters and the trees that divide Heaven and Earth, and there is Jacob's Ladder and there is The Tree of Life- with different steps and pathways.
We just don't see that there is a connection. So, I was very interested to make that connection, to hopefully demonstrate to people, that these things do not just come out of a vacuum. There is a basic human nature that sees these symbols.
The Meta Arts: Where do you think these symbols surface from?
Rachel Pollack: I think that to a large extent, they surface from the fact that we are basically flat. That we walk on earth, cannot go into the bottom of the ocean, and go up into the sky.
(Laughter)
The Meta Arts: Another thing we liked about the book is that you introduce and explain basic concepts in a way everyone can relate to and understand. You successfully eliminated the more complex concepts, and elements that overwhelm, confuse, and even scare those interested in Kabbalah. What was your thinking in regard to this?
Rachel Pollack: I read something very interesting the other day. It was in a book called, "The Hebrew Book of the Dead." I wish I had read before I did this work. A lot of it is based upon Kabbalistic ideas-about the soul's journey after death, as outlined in the Torah and the Book of Joshua.
In the appendage, it talks about The Tree of Life, and says that the most important thing that we can learn from the Tree of Life, is that it does not exist. It is something that people made up. And, if you start believing and memorizing all the stuff that people place on it, then we are worshiping a golden calf. I think that is a fascinating concept.
The Meta Arts: Kabbalah is again resurfacing from behind closed doors. Every few centuries it seems to do this, and with each time, it opens the door a bit wider, revealing a little more. What do think this is about?
Rachel Pollack: I think that we're in great times, and have the advantage of a lot more information. So, as Kabbalah resurfaces in our time, we are able to have someone like Gershom Shalom, who was able to bring together the very early stuff, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance stuff, and make it available to us, so we can benefit from it. We can grow.
As I wrote in the book, Shalom began his work to resurrect Kabbalah to Jews, and for the study of Jews/ Judaism. Not many knew of it. I had never heard the word, "Kabbalah." The only people who kept Kabbalah alive, apart from groups like the Chasidim, were the occultists. People like The Golden Dawn- the Tarot people.
The Meta Arts: How long have you been studying Kabbalah?
Rachel Pollack: I became interested in Kabbalah, when I first learned of it, and that was when I was learning Tarot in the early '70's. I have been fascinated with it since then. I first read Gershom Sholom, and then other books. But, I was never drawn to studying all the details, and so I never did the whole Golden Dawn thing.
I was recently teaching with Mary Greer, We do a yearly teaching together. She has all this information at her finger tips, as she is an initiate of the Golden Dawn. Remember her wonderful book? Women of The Golden Dawn. Listening to her, it reminded me of how much it is not really my direction.
It is very, very valuable, but it was not what I was trying to do in this book, which was to give an overall sense of the meaning of things.
The Meta Arts: So what was your first "Aha!" moment? That moment where it all came together?
Rachel Pollack: That there was such a study at all. That behind all the prayers that I learned in Synague, there was actually meaning. I had pretty much abandoned Judaism- and I come from an Orthodox family, but it always was so empty to me. I got very deeply involved in stories, mythology, and the spiritual traditions of different cultures, including Judaism. But when I came across the ideas of Kabbalah, I realized that all that stuff I love was there. It was just not being taught.
The Meta Arts: How has it affected Tarot for you, if at all?
Rachel Pollack: Well, for me, I approach Tarot as a gateway to many, many things. So even though I see the wonderful connections between Tarot and Kabbalah, I don't see them as overpowering. I see each card as its own special quality and one of the things, is the connections to the Sephiroth.
I'll tell you something I did recently, that was very exciting. I was teaching with Mary, and we wanted to have ways to do something where people can participate in the whole subject of The Tree of Life and the Tarot. So I took the Shinning Tribe Cards. I laid out the four suits, Ace through Ten, in the four corners of the room, to give a sense of dimension, in the pattern of The Tree of Life- where you can see what The Tree of Life looks like.
The first thing that Mary and I noticed, and this was remarkable, was that although I had not deliberately designed The Shinning Tribe's Minor Arcana under a Tree of Life system, it actually works incredibly well. It has an amazing flow from Kether to Malkuth in each of the suits.
What we did next, was to "travel" to each of the Four Worlds, by traveling through the suits that represented that world. There are four worlds in Kabbalah- four levels of Creation and they correspond to the four suits.
In each world, we had people take a minor arcana card, from their own deck, that they would choose at random, and this would identify where they were in that world. It did not matter what suit it was, but if you got a six, and you had the Suit of Rods, you would be at the place of Tifereth, which is at the center of the tree, in the world of Azuluit- the world of fire. Then, we chose a Major Arcana card for what your task was. It was really very exciting, because it made it really alive this way.
The Meta Arts: For those of our readers who are not familiar with the Four Worlds, can you give us a description, or the definition they would find in your book?
Rachel Pollack: Sure. In writing this book, part of my method, as I said, was to compare things to many sources. I compare this to the ideas in Central American Mythology of the world-of several worlds that have been created and this one, is the 4th one, and to the Hindu Mythology of the four Yugas, in Greece, it was the Four Ages.
In many places, including Kabbalah, there is a human tendency to believe, that the world, as we know it, could not possibly, have just come into being. There had to be a different version-a prototype, a beta version.
In Kabbalah, there are different worlds created in different stages, and they do all exist at the same time. The world of Atzilut, is Emination. This is the world of just pure energy, in which everything is contained.
Then you have the world of Creation, Beriah, where things start to separate. There are different polarities of energy, and that is associated with water.
Then you have Yetsirah, which means Formation, and that is where you have everything distinguished. That is trees, lions, and human beings. But, they are not individual trees, or lions; they are the archetypes- The Maple Tree, The Lion.
The final world, Assiyah, the world of action, the world we know of. This is the world of the actual details of existence. This is where everything happens. A lot of Kabbalist teachings state, not to think of Assiyah as a terrible place that we are stuck in. Think of it as a place where everything is possible. Where everything takes place.
The Meta Arts: In your book, you also discuss Tikkun Olam, restoring /healing the world, which is of the greatest importance in Kabbalah. And, you discuss Shiverah, the "Breaking of Vessels" in relation to the Big Bang Theory. Tell us about that.
Rachel Pollack: This was definitely on of my "Aha!" moments early on, in my reading of Kabbalah, when I read Gershom Sholom. It was back in the 70's, around the time when the Tao of Physics had all this association with Eastern mythical traditions, with contemporary ideas of physics and relativity and quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics, in particular, I suppose.
It struck me that in many ways, the closer version to Kabalistic thinking was Issac Luria's concept of the Shattering Of Vessels, in which GOD wishes the Universe to have a mirror of Self, but has to make space for it. So, GOD contracts into this basic, unknowable tiny point, which could be said to be the state before the "Big Bang."
Then, Light explodes out of this Being, and it goes into vessels, and the vessels shatter. So, there is a breaking. This would be the Big Bang, itself. Originally, there was nothing but Light. Now there is breaking of things.
This just seemed to be a very close parallel to me. The Lurianic teaching about Reincarnation is also much closer to modern Western thinking. In the sense that we do not just reincarnate endlessly, because of Karma, where we go around and around, going up and down the wheel, but there is a point to it. We are charged with a task, Tikkun Olam- to restore a bit of light, and it takes many lifetimes to do that. But, it is very similar, in a way, to current New Age thinking of Reincarnation. We Reincarnate to learn things, or to perform tasks, or to do things we could not do without a physical body.
However, Luria's idea of Tikkun Olam- repairing the world, is very different from ours. It was not about social consciousness. It was not about doing good and helping others. It was about the kind of Gnostic concept of freeing the Soul from being trapped in Matter. That Matter was seen as evil.
The Meta Arts: How you feel about that? Matter is evil?
Rachel Pollack: Oh, I'm very against that. I just don't believe that you have spirit -good, on one side and, body-bad, on the other side.
The Meta Arts: In The Kabbalah Tree, you also cover the theories of the Universe as a constantly expanding/evolving/ manifesting, living thing.
Rachel Pollack: As part of the Big Bang theory, the calculations have to do with whether or not, the Universe would contract. Would the expansion go to a certain point, and then snap back like a rubber band, or would it continue to expand endlessly?
Then, there is the Anti-Big-Bang theory called "Steady State,"in which the Universe is constantly replenishing itself, and always in the same way. This was eventually discredited, as the evidence pointed to Big-Bang.
One of the followers of the fellow who coined the term, "Big-Bang" said that the Steady State theory was elegant, beautiful, sophisticated, and scientifically complex. The Big-Bang theory is crude and dumb and simplistic. But Unfortunately, all the evidence points to the Big Bang theory.
(Laughter)
The point is, that in Kabbalah, you have the principle of expansion and the principle of contraction. And, you have the principal of harmony, which allows things to exist. So, it is actually more sophisticated in a sense, than the Big-Bang Theory.
The Meta Arts: Another area you explained, and extremely well, was that of the sexual imagery, and metaphors in Kabbalah. This has been an area which has raised more than few eyebrows of those not familiar with the deeper concepts it teaches. There are religions teach that sex is not spiritual, it is bad- lower energy.
Rachel Pollack: That is not a Jewish concept, certainly. Although, during the Middle Ages, many were influenced by that concept, probably from the outside influences - countries surrounding it. Christianity got that from the Greek teachings, in regard to the body, and the denunciation of sex.
But the Kabbalah is filled with sexual metaphors. It teaches the understanding that the energy of existence is sexual and it is Divine. They are not separate, or opposed to each other. Part of the reason why some people see it as opposed, is that they see one as good, and one as bad. The way to have the Divine is to denounce the sexual. The fact is, it is the same energy.
The reason that Kabbalah was viewed as so dangerous is that it reveals this idea. In essence, the power of sex. It is fascinating to the extent Kabbalah is sexual. Among some audiences, it is shocking. In The Tree of Life, Luria and others described the bottom Sephiroth as genitals, and this is shocking to modern audiences. The Zohar is constantly warning people that Kabbalah is "The Mystery of Mysteries" and not to take it literally. You are not to believe that there are genitals hanging in the sky.
(Hysterical laughter)
What is just so wonderful, is that you brought so many of the deeper, and generally misunderstood concepts forward in this book, and made it so much easier to understand. It gives the reader, especially someone new to Kabbalah, or just curious, a very fine, basic understanding of the concept of The Tree Of Life.
Rachel Pollack: Well, that is sort of what I try to do-bring things to people's attention, and put them in a context of wisdom. It is what I call the Wisdom Tradition.
The Meta Arts: We thank Rachel for this interview and close with these comments: Rachel Pollack 's new book, "The Kabbalah Tree" is at the top of our "Must Read" list for anyone interested in Kabbalah and The Tree of Life. It is a wonderful read too, as she takes one of the most complex of esoteric concepts, and makes it easy to comprehend, and simply fascinating to explore.
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Rachel Pollack,
Tarot Grand Master
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Rachel Pollack is a poet, a double award-winning novelist, a visual artist, and a Tarot Grand Master.
Her first book on Tarot, 78 DEGREES OF WISDOM, is often called "The Bible of Tarot readers."
About her SHINING TRIBE TAROT, designed and drawn by Rachel herself, Caitlin Matthews wrote: "The deeper levels of creation run through this pack, with a delightful freedom and wise love."
THE FOREST OF SOULS, sold out its first printing in less than two months.
In 1988 Rachel's novel, UNQUENCHABLE FIRE, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The New York Review of Science Fiction described it as "not only the best fantasy novel of the year, possibly the best of the decade."
In 1997 her novel GODMOTHER NIGHT won the World Fantasy Award. Kirkus reviews wrote of it "It grows inexorably into a magical exploration of the deepest roots of life and death...Tender and disturbing, down-to-earth and wildly inventive."
Rachel's books are sold on six continents, in nine languages.
Rachel first encountered the Tarot in the spring of 1970, when a friend read her cards. She began teaching the Tarot six years later, while living in Amsterdam (where she lived for seventeen years). Since then, she has taught Tarot, and mythology, and creative writing all over Europe and North America. Her monthly class in New York City has been meeting now for eleven years.
Rachel describes her approach to Tarot as "loving the images," a way to constantly return to the pictures, to enter them and allow them to work their magic on us. Her "Wisdom Readings," asking the cards for spiritual truth, have opened the practice of Tarot beyond personal readings to use the cards for what Rachel calls "a navigation system for the soul."
www.rachelpollack.com
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