Rachel Pollack

Rachel Grace Pollack (August 17, 1945 – April 6, 2023) was an American science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot.

Early life and education
Pollack was born on August 17, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York. She earned an honours degree in English from New York University and a master's in English from Claremont Graduate University.

Tarot reading
Pollack wrote the 1985 book Salvador Dali's Tarot, an exposition of Salvador Dalí's Tarot deck, comprising a full-page color plate for each card, with her commentary on the facing page. Her work 78 Degrees of Wisdom on Tarot reading is commonly referenced by Tarot readers. She created her own Tarot deck, Shining Woman Tarot (later Shining Tribe Tarot). She also aided in the creation of the Vertigo Tarot Deck with illustrator Dave McKean and author Neil Gaiman, and she wrote a book to accompany it. Gaiman sometimes consulted Pollack on the tarot for his stories.

Comics
Pollack wrote for the comic book Doom Patrol, on DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, from 1993 to 1995. Her run of issues (64–87) was a continuation of a 1960s comic which had recently become a cult favorite under Grant Morrison. Pollack took over the series in 1993 after meeting editor Tom Peyer at a party, telling him it was the only monthly comic book she would want to write at the time, and sending him a sample script. Towards the end of Morrison's run, Pollack began writing monthly "letters to the editor" in what she describes as a "gee-whiz fangirl" voice asking to take over the book when Morrison was finished. In the final letter, she claims that she had already told her mother that she had been given the job. Peyer then used that response to that letter to officially announce that Pollack was, in fact, taking over the book. As a result of these letters being printed in the letter column of Doom Patrol issues, some people seem to believe that the letters are the way she actually got the job.

During her tenure, Pollack dealt with such rarely addressed comic book topics as menstruation, sexual identity, and transsexuality. Her run ended two years later, with the book's cancellation.

In addition to Doom Patrol, Pollack wrote issues of the Vertigo Visions anthology featuring Brother Power the Geek (1993) and Tomahawk (1998), the first 11 issues of the fourth volume of New Gods (1995), and the five-issue limited series Time Breakers (1996) for the short lived Helix imprint.

In 2019, it was announced that Pollack was reuniting with Doom Patrol artist Richard Case and letterer John Workman to create a short story—titled "Snake Song"—for the Kickstarter funded "music-themed horror anthology" Dead Beats.

In 2024, DC Comics published "DC Pride: A Celebration of Rachel Pollack" reprinting issue 70 of "Doom Patrol" and issue 1 of "Vertigo Visions: The Geek #1 'Homelands of the Dolls'" as well as an introductory tribute by Stuart Moore and a new story, "Shining Through the Wreckage" revisiting Pollack's Doom Patrol character Coagula written by Joe Corallo.

Fiction
Three of Pollack's novels won or were nominated for major awards in the science fiction and fantasy field: Unquenchable Fire won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award; Godmother Night won the 1997 World Fantasy Award, was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature; while Temporary Agency was nominated for the 1995 Nebula Award and the Mythopoeic Award, and shortlisted for the Tiptree.

Her magical realism novels explore worlds imbued with elements pulled from a number of traditions, faiths, and religions. Several of her novels are set in an alternative reality that resembles modern America, but an America of Bright Beings, where magic and ritual, religion and thaumaturgy are the norms.

Her short work "Burning Beard: The Dreams and Visions of Joseph ben Jacob, Lord Viceroy of Egypt" was published in 2007 in the anthology Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman. It was reprinted online in Lightspeed in May 2014.

Nonfiction
Pollack's book The Body of the Goddess is an exploration of the history of the Goddess and her relation to locality and landscape. Pollack uses the image of the Goddess in many of her works.

Teaching
For 32 years, Pollack taught seminars with tarot author Mary K. Greer at the Omega Institute, in Rhinebeck, New York. She also did seminars for several years in California in conjunction with Greer, and she co-presented a breakthrough seminar with author Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman on tarot and psychic ability, using her own Shining Tribe Tarot and Gargiulo-Sherman's Sacred Rose Tarot. Pollack was also a popular lecturer at tarot seminars and symposiums such as Los Angeles Tarot Symposium, Bay Area Tarot Symposium, and the Readers Studio.

She was a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts program of Goddard College. She taught English at State University of New York.

Influences
Pollack was Jewish, and frequently wrote about the Kabbalah, most notably in The Kabbalah Tree. She was a trans woman and wrote frequently on transgender issues. In Doom Patrol she introduced Coagula, a transsexual character. She also wrote several essays on transsexualism, attacking the notion that it is a "sickness", instead saying that it is a passion. She emphasized the revelatory aspects of transsexualism, saying that "the trance-sexual [sic] woman sacrifices her social identity as a male, her personal history, and finally the very shape of her body to a knowledge, a desire, which overpowers all rational understanding and proof."

A Secret Woman features a police detective who is transgender and Jewish. The detective utters the prayer, "Blessed art thou oh G-d who made me not a woman. Double blessed is Doctor Green who has." Pollack created the characters known as 'the bandage people' for her Doom Patrol run. The bandage people are 'sexually remaindered spirits' who died in sexual accidents. The initials SRS came from the medical term 'sex reassignment surgery'. Pollack's essay "The Transsexual Book of The Dead: Osiris and the Trance Man", written for the anthology Phallus Palace, addresses the Osiris myth and "reconfigures Egyptian mythology into a multi-layered map for transsexual experience."

Fairy tales such as the Brothers Grimm influenced many of Pollack's writings. Her book Tarot of Perfection is a book of fairy tales based on the tarot.

Personal life
In July 2022, Pollack revealed via Facebook that, after seemingly overcoming Hodgkin lymphoma several years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a different variant of lymphoma and would be undergoing chemotherapy. In August, Pollack's wife Zoe Matoff and Patricia Nolan announced that Pollack was in an intensive care unit and started a GoFundMe fundraiser for her medical expenses. Those who shared the fundraiser on Twitter included Neil Gaiman, Shelly Bond, Gail Simone, and DC Comics editors Chris Conroy and Andrea Shay, while prominent donors included Rachel Gold, Al Ewing, Kieron Gillen, Kim Newman, Brett Booth, and Cliff Chiang, ultimately raising over $28,000 against a $15,000 goal by September.

On March 12, 2023, Gaiman announced on Instagram and Mastodon, at the behest of Pollack's wife, that Pollack was in hospice care and nearing the end of her life. This led some outlets to mistakenly report that Pollack had already died. She was 77 years old.

Pollack died from Hodgkin lymphoma on April 7, 2023, at the age of 77.

Awards and memberships

 * 1997 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel winner for Godmother Night
 * 1994 Nebula Award for Best Novel nominee for Temporary Agency
 * 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award winner for Unquenchable Fire
 * Certified Tarot Grand Master (CTGM) with the Tarot Certification Board of America
 * Tarot Sage (TS) with the American Board For Tarot Certification
 * member of the American Tarot Association (ATA)
 * member of the International Tarot Society (ITS)
 * member of the Tarot Guild of Australia
 * member of the Tarot Association of the British Isles.

Non-fiction books

 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986
 * Pollack, Rachel (1993) Shining Woman Tarot. U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1855380986

Poetry

 * The Wild Cows (1993)
 * Fortune's Lover (May 2009). A Midsummer Night's Press

Essays

 * "Introduction: A Machine for Constructing Stories" (1989)
 * Read This (The New York Review of Science Fiction, October 1991) (1991)
 * Read This (The New York Review of Science Fiction, July 1995) (1995)
 * Read This (The New York Review of Science Fiction, August 1996) (1996)

Reviews

 * The Book of Embraces (1991) by Eduardo Galeano
 * Outside the Dog Museum (1992) by Jonathan Carroll
 * Coelestis [vt Celestis](1996) by Paul Park