Tarot: The Open Labyrinth—40th Anniversary Edition

Rachel Pollack (1945–2023) was the leading light and foremost influence on modern tarot. Her bestselling book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, first published in 1980 and never out of print, is widely described as the “Bible of Tarot.” She was also a great influence upon the science fiction, fantasy, and comics communities, as well as being a trailblazer within the transgender community.A master of many genres, Pollack is renowned for her run of issues #64–87 of Doom Patrol (Vertigo Comics), where she created the first transgender superhero. A prolific author of both fiction and nonfiction, her other books include A Walk through the Forest of Souls, Unquenchable Fire, Godmother Night, and The Fissure King. She was the creator of the Shining Tribe Tarot and wrote the guidebooks for numerous other decks, including The Vertigo Tarot and Salvador Dali’s Tarot. Pollack taught at the famed Omega Institute for over thirty years.

“Rachel Pollack approached Tarot as a living exchange between the reader, the subject, and the images. In Tarot: The Open Labyrinth, she brings us inside that exchange, revealing a mind at work—curious, disciplined, and open to surprise. Each reading unfolds with a depth and immediacy of lived experience, where interpretation becomes an art of attention and discovery. What emerges is not a method to imitate, but a way of seeing that deepens with practice and returns, always, to the self.”—Amber Highland, author of The Oracle of Knotty Weave, publisher of The Cartomancer“Rachel Pollack’s curious and intelligent approach to Tarot has been a gift to readers for decades. How lucky are we that Tarot: The Open Labyrinth is back in print! This unique book takes the reader on a journey that goes beyond traditional meanings. Detailed examples and insightful meditations turn average Tarot readings into deep, meaningful experiences for both querent and reader. If you’re ready to go further with the cards, this book deserves a place in your Tarot library, right next to all of Rachel’s books, including the much-loved 78 Degrees of Wisdom.”—Theresa Reed, author of Tarot: No Questions Asked“Rachel Pollack continues to be my Tarot mentor and the leading voice in our Tarot-verse with the rerelease of Tarot: The Open Labyrinth. She reminds us to look deep into the cards, that it’s okay to change your mind about the Tarot, and that it’s a game, after all. It’s good to play sometimes, too.”—Melissa Cynova, author of Tarot Elements“Rachel Pollack’s Tarot: The Open Labyrinth gives us permission to get lost—and the getting lost is the point. Rachel doesn’t deliver tarot as a sequence of keywords and positions; she walks it as a labyrinth, layered and associative, where cards speak to one another simultaneously rather than in order. She holds intellectual rigor and ethical seriousness in the same hand as care. Come get lost only to be found, as the labyrinth is waiting, but only if you’re willing to veer off in an unexpected direction.”—Jenna Matlin, author of The Tarot Book of the Dead“Rachel Pollack’s Tarot: The Open Labyrinth will have you falling in love once again, or for the first time, with the cards and their symbols and stories. ‘A Tarot reading lies before us like a labyrinth,’ she writes in the introduction, and, yet, as always, Rachel is like the lamp in The Hermit card: a wise, shining light through the darkness.”—Aliza Einhorn, author of Tarot of the Unconscious and The Little Book of Saturn“Another tarot classic! With Tarot: The Open Labyrinth, Rachel Pollack guides us through the Daedalian architecture that unfolds within a tarot reading. Her great gift is not to serve as our Ariadne’s thread—an imposed path through her own vision—but to place the spool itself in our hands, the Naxian bobbin, so that we may move with true autonomy. This remains one of my favorite works; at once poetic and rigorously practical, it allows us to witness how she navigated the cards—welcoming disorientation with a kind of gleeful intelligence, as an essential gesture of the art. To lose oneself, and in doing so, to discover the way anew.”—Laetitia Barbier, author of Tarot and Divination Cards