The Burning Serpent

Rachel Pollack, the most important tarot writer of her era, turned late in her career to Lenormand, and the Burning Serpent Oracle is the result: a thirty-eight card Lenormand-family deck made with artist Robert M. Place, whose Alchemical Tarot this catalog also holds. The archive's reviewer could hardly put the set down, text and cards both, and that is the correct response to the pairing: Pollack's depth-psychology reading of a system usually taught as keyword grammar, Place's emblematic line giving the old symbols mythic weight. The deck's project is to prove Lenormand can carry soul as well as syntax, the serpent of the title burning through the parlor politeness, and for readers who found the tradition efficient but shallow, it is the strongest available counterargument. It suits Lenormand readers ready for depth, Pollack's readership following her anywhere, Place collectors, and students of what happens when two masters take a humble system seriously.