Enough Already!
Sep. 7th, 2006 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarSo....I've been reading the books on the Haindl Tarot by Rachel Pollack. Well, the one on the major arcana so far anyway. And I was doing just that around 4 oclock this morning...and then I just couldn't anymore.
For some reason a lot of problems really escaped me when I was reading the books the first time, back when I first got them.
So the deck...if you haven't seen it, the symbolism and all is a pretty decent balance of male/female and various other dichotomies. But Pollack's books, I dunno what's up with this woman, but everything...EVERYTHING is symbolic of the patriarchy overthrowing the goddess. Everyhting in the deck, everything in mythology, everything in...well, just every fricken thing. And everyhting else is a symbol of fertility and female genitalia. A pebble on the ground? Oh, that symbolizes girly bits. A couple of blades of grass? Yeah, they do too. Okay, so I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.
But it's insanely irksome.
What makes it worse is that she can't seem to decide if she wants women to be considered superior on general principle, or if there needs to be a male/female balance in the world.
The actual descriptions and discussion of the imagery of the deck is great, and the delving into various myths...but great scott, I don't think I can continue to read this book.
Oh...and no bibliography.
I kinda have to wonder what Hermann Haindl thinks of what she's written into these books about his deck...but I read somewhere that he authorized the books, so I'm guessing he's ok with it.
For some reason a lot of problems really escaped me when I was reading the books the first time, back when I first got them.
So the deck...if you haven't seen it, the symbolism and all is a pretty decent balance of male/female and various other dichotomies. But Pollack's books, I dunno what's up with this woman, but everything...EVERYTHING is symbolic of the patriarchy overthrowing the goddess. Everyhting in the deck, everything in mythology, everything in...well, just every fricken thing. And everyhting else is a symbol of fertility and female genitalia. A pebble on the ground? Oh, that symbolizes girly bits. A couple of blades of grass? Yeah, they do too. Okay, so I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.
But it's insanely irksome.
What makes it worse is that she can't seem to decide if she wants women to be considered superior on general principle, or if there needs to be a male/female balance in the world.
The actual descriptions and discussion of the imagery of the deck is great, and the delving into various myths...but great scott, I don't think I can continue to read this book.
Oh...and no bibliography.
I kinda have to wonder what Hermann Haindl thinks of what she's written into these books about his deck...but I read somewhere that he authorized the books, so I'm guessing he's ok with it.
