I wanted to share a paper I wrote as an ‘argument’ for Tarot in psychotherapy. It was a result of a presentation I gave for my Jung class. It’s written mainly for ‘new to Tarot’ people but can also be appreciated by more experienced Tarot readers. I also want to thank Mary K Greer and her blog which was a major source of inspiration and guidance on this paper.
Tarot: The Archetype of Transformation
Paul LeBars
TPC 5172 Jungian Psychology B
John F. Kennedy University
Winter 2012
The Universe is infinite potential, possibility and expansion representing the potential we also have within as we explore our Self. As early as the human race began, we were looking outside ourselves for meaning in nature and the cosmos in a ‘language’ we could understand, that surpassed verbal communication. Our early oracles and symbols were those sentient beings who surrounded us. Animals and nature were one of our first archetypal representations as depicted in early cave drawings, later the planets and the stars began representing changes and internal shifts that we experienced. As humans became more conscious we began recognizing patterns and looking even further outside our world to the stars for messages and meaning, and our symbols and their meanings progressed through time. We’ve come a long way since those days and we can now use oracular tools such as the Tarot, oracle cards, and the archetypes they represent for deep healing, introspection, and finding meaning in our seemingly chaotic world.
Around the time of the Egyptians, and as early as six centuries ago a divination system was created called the Tarot. While the Tarot has a reputation for being just an ‘old card game’, or something gypsies use to tell the future, we will come to see its much more than that. While there’s no proven history of the Tarot, it carries time within its content like a tumbleweed through time, absorbing wisdom through imagery. It’s said that as the Egyptian empire was beginning to crumble Thoth placed secrets from the ancient wisdom Book of Thoth into the first 22 cards of the Tarot called the Major Arcana (1997, Schuler). As time has passed many cultures have imprinted their lessons and wisdom in the cards that compose the Tarot. The most well known and forward thinking leader in the field of psychology who took notice of the Tarot and its usefulness in psychology was Carl Jung. He noted that the images of the cards that composed the Major Arcana “descended from the archetypes of transformation”. The Tarot is perhaps the single most collection of archetypes which makes it an archetype of its own, that of transformation and creating a ‘container’ for the depths of the collective unconscious.
Although Tarot’s history is mostly a mystery it can be tied to several groups and especially mystery schools, further enhancing its mystique. As it left the hands of the Egyptians it was also influenced by the wisdom of Kabbalah as we will see is very apparent in some of the major arcana cards. The major arcana is the first 22 cards of the Tarot and are the major ‘soul lessons’ of life and create story in themselves starting with the Fool to the last card The World. It is most likely though in more recent times, these lessons of the Kabbalah were placed in symbolic form of the artwork of Tarot, in its more popular modern form. The Kabbalist’s most likely used it as more than a divination tool, especially since their doctrine denounces oracular tools in Judaism, the religion Kabbalah derives from. These contributors most likely shaped meaning in the cards to reflect the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (which depicts the emanation of Light into our world as well as what we would think of as dimensions of conciseness). This concept was most likely further carried out by a secret occult group in England known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which Aleister Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite were members, and who both created two of the best known Tarot decks of our day, the Thoth Tarot deck and the Raider Waite Tarot. Again, the lineage is all myth passed down by many Tarot experts, but as we will see later in the Major Arcana there are many signs that there could be actual historical meaning in these myths.
Even though Jung didn’t use the Tarot extensively, or exclusively, he noted his thoughts about it through some lectures given and very brief notes (Greer, 2011), and did recognize them as a tool for healing. The notes although brief are worth noting as they give clues to how the Tarot can be used as a psychological tool. Jung was noted however as having, and using, the I-Ching, an oracle tool derived from Eastern wisdom. Since Jung already created such a vast language and system for Archetypes I believe thats why he didn’t find too much interest in the Tarot, not to mention he was busy exploring the realms of thought way beyond where Tarot or oracle systems currently were. He was interested though, and studied extensively eastern thought and mystical systems and practices. I believe this is possibly why he favored the I-Ching and as pointed out in Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny (Progoff,1973) even kept them in his pocket at times. Through this interest in I-Ching he left a great guide of how to use oracle such as Tarot and the I-Ching as a tool for transformation.
Jung wasn’t satisfied with just using any system without knowing the ‘why’ of it. He didn’t settle for any esoteric reasoning, he tested his ideas with the great scientists of his time and therefore coined the term synchronicity. Synchronicity, a concept and phenomenon Jung discovered, was based in his study of the Self. It is the meat of how Tarot ‘works’ and is why, I believe, besides of archetypes, Jung is often associated with Tarot. As Progroff states:
The concept of Synchronicity was originally suggested to him by his observations in studying the deep levels of the Self, especially as he noted the correlation between the movement of events within dreams and the style of interpretation that he found in certain ancient, especially oriental, scriptures and commentaries with respect to changes of destiny in the course of a human life. The immediate impetus to formulate the details of his hypothesis, however, came from his contact with physicists Nils Bohr and Wolfgang Pauli and from his early friendship with Albert Einstein. In the course of his discussions with them, he noted the equivalence of the atom as the basic unit of physical world and the psyche of the human being. The correspondence is especially strong when the atom is compared tot he conception of the psyche that Jung had developed as his distinctive approach to the depths of man. (Progoff, 1973, pg.8)
In this paragraph we got a view of the birth of synchronicity, and what we might arguably call in modern times, Law of Attraction. We can also see how this concept could be used to explain how the Tarot works in regard to mirroring patterns in the querrant and allowing messages to emerge from his unconscious Self, much like a dream.
In the process of Jungian therapy dreams are an integral part of the process with clients. The clients subconscious messages that need to surface and want to be heard, can be expressed through dreams, as well as hidden life meanings. The Tarot could be used as a tool in this regard as well, allowing a story to surface and seeing the clients world through the eyes of symbolism as one would through their dreams. Jung saw the Tarot as a system that allowed someone to explore the depths of their Self and as more than a tool for divination which it is mostly known for today. In The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 1) Jung states:
If one wants to form a picture of the symbolic process, the series of pictures found in alchemy are good examples…It also seems as if the set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly descended from the archetypes of transformation, a view that has ben confirmed for me in a very enlightening lecture by professor Bernoulli. The symbolic process is an experience in images and of images. Its development usually shows an enantiodromain (a Greek term used by Jung to mean ‘things turning over into their own opposite.’) structure like the text of the I-Ching, and so presents a rhythm of negative and positive, loss and gain, dark and light. (Jung, CW, 1984, Vol. 9:1, para 81)
Here we see an example of Jung looking towards the unconscious to find meaning in the events of life, and his suggestion that the Tarot is a system that can assist with this exploration.
As stated, Jungian therapy is driven by symbols and meaning and we will now dive deeper into explanation of how this works with the Tarot. With a trusted guide, the therapist, the client can explore their own journey through life, through the cards. As Psychotherapist and Tarot expert Gerald Schueler, Ph.D. stated:
The Tarot deck contains archetypal symbols that can be related to the analytical psychology of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. The Tarot deck, especially the major arcana or trump cards, can be used effectively in therapy. The client, with the assistance of the therapist, conducts a reading or uses several cards to tell a story and then discusses possible meanings of the symbols in his or her own words. The therapist then relates the symbolic meanings given by the client to the client’s problem in much the same manner as in Jungian dream analysis. This therapeutic process can be explained by using a chaos model. Using a chaos model of therapy, a period of psychic instability is deliberately induced by the therapist through stimulation of the imagination via the Tarot symbols. Concentration on the Tarot symbols induces bifurcation points that the therapist then uses to direct change toward desired attractors. This is similar to the well-known techniques of paradoxical communication, paradoxical intervention, and prescribing the symptom, all of which induce a temporary condition of psychic instability that is required for a bifurcation. (Schueler,1997, W.W.Web)
Beyond that which is just outside ourselves, man’s consciousness led him to the greatest frontier of all, the Archetypes within, and the Tarot captures these Archetypes as a mysterious art work of ancient wisdom.
We will now explore the Major Arcana of the Tarot, the first twenty two cards, and look into the symbolism as it relates to archetypes. A chart of the Major Arcana from the Rider Waite Tarot is located at the end of this paper for reference as you read. I will not be fully reviewing every card of the Tarot, or even the Major Arcana as it would take this paper into the form of a book, which there are a great many written already, from about every angle you can think of. Instead we will look at general interpretations that fit into the category of significant archetypes, or archetypes that are the most popular and seen in many places in our lives or are found in many myths and cultures and focus on the Tarot as a journey within and the transformation of the ‘hero’s journey’. As stated in Jung and the Tarot, An Archetypal Journey:
The pictures on the Tarot Trumps tell a symbolic story. Like our dreams, they come to us from a level beyond the reach of consciousness and far removed from our intellectual understanding. It seems appropriate therefore, to behave toward these Tarot characters pretty much as we would if they had appeared to us in a series of dreams picturing a distant unknown land inhabited by strange creatures. With such dreams, purely personal associations are limited value. We can best connect with their meaning through analogy with myths, fairy tales, dreams, paintings, events in history, or any other material with similar motifs which universally evoke clusters of feelings , intuitions, thoughts, or sensations. (Nichols, 1980, pg.7)
So we will look at the characters of the Tarot through this lens, as beings we may meet in a dream, or possibly our favorite movie or myth since you will recognize their essence as many of these very characters you’re familiar with. On a deep level every archetype is known to us.
As we begin our journey we meet The Fool. The Fool card marks the beginning of the journey of the Major Arcana, the journey of the Soul. He marks new beginnings and possibly a warning that there is much to learn on our journey and not to get too ahead of ourselves. This Archetype as been said to resemble Jung’s archetype of the trickster. The archetype is also said to be represented by the next card of the major arcana, The Magician. The Fool is more of a dreamer and represents the wanderlust within us, where as The Magician holds more knowledge but has more possibility in misusing his power. The Magician is our balancing act, and a card that really represents the summation of the Tarot, the Archetype of transformation. As Hermetic wisdom states, as above, so below, and this is The Magicians great lesson.
The High Priestess follows and represents the Divine Feminine, our intuition and the virgin daughter archetype. Here we see some blatant coding of information from the Kabbalah as she holds the Torah scroll in her lap. She is seated in front of two great pillars representing the gate to the ‘other side’. She represents our mysterious side, our unconscious and intuition. Following her is another strong feminine archetype, The Empress. The Empress represents more of the ‘sun’ aspect of this energy as opposed to the High Priestess ‘moon’ energy. The Empress represents the mother archetype as well as abundance, healing and feminine activity.
As we explore these aspects of ourselves we now move into the male energy of The Emperor. He represents the Father aspect, the Animus archetype as opposed to the Empress Anima archetype. He has a strong presence and as the rams on his thrown indicate, he can act without hesitation. Exploring these first few cards is a good way of discovering which of these energies effects us the most, which of them brings up the strongest feelings? After The Emperor we meet The Hierophant. As Nichols (1984) states:
The difference between the Emperor and the Pope (Hierophant) are clearly indicated in the way each of these archetypal figures is pictured in the Tarot. The Emperor is shown gazing out toward distant horizons: his eye encompasses the totality of his empire. The Pope looks toward the individuals before him; he grants them an audience- he communicates with them. This interaction between the archetypal and the human marks an important step in the historical development of human consciousness. It is at this point that man emerges as a separate entity and begins to experience his own human beingness in relation to the suprapersonal powers. Heretofore in this Tarot series, the archetypal figures have occupied the entire canvas; they held full sway. (Nichols, 1984, pg.122)
As Sallie Nichols noted the artwork of the cards have strong meaning. These dominate figures we have met take up a large portion of the face of the cards artwork and represent deep rooted archetypes within us. Not all cards carry such presence and this dynamic takes their meanings in other directions.
Now that we have explored some primary figures and parts of ourselves we meet The Lovers card where we must make a choice. Adam and Eve are the focus of this card as well as an archangel that stands above waiting for their call. This card suggests a decision must be made, good or bad, right or wrong, but also that there is Divine intervention just waiting. Our next move is to decide and take action, this is represented by The Chariot. He is the warrior and he’s on a conquest. We again see a more dominate figure in this card led by two sphinx who could pull him in either direction if he does not stay firm to what he has learned on his journey.
The Chariot card with its sphinx symbols also nods to the wisdom of ancient Egypt and suggests our character has gained much wisdom from his early explorations.
We now begin our journey of balance as we meet The Strength card. It’s depicted with a feminine character who is taming a lion with her bare hands. This is a message about balancing our spiritual nature with our physical (animal) natures, as well as a suggestion of using gentle force. As we move forward, we meet The Hermit, who now takes us back within to reflect on where we’ve been and where we are going. He represents the Old Man Archetype and introversion. Balance comes into play as to know how much time to spend in this state, the reverse meaning of the card can be a warning of too much isolation.
Our first part of the journey is complete and we now meet The Wheel of Fortune card representing Karma and good fortune, or bad fortune, depending on the choices we’ve made up until now. This is a sort of mid life marker on our journey as we begin to measure what is important to us, what has meaning. We then meet the Justice card, another card of balance and this time law and order as well. Justice is another dominate figure and is representing the need to ground our lessons in real life. The sword represents the realm of thought and is a reminder not to act too impulsively on our journey.
The Hanged man is an archetypal figure of letting go, especially for spiritual gain. As we can see these later cards hold a more expansive consciousness and the challenges are more mature in nature. He represents the sacrifices we sometimes have to make. Even though he’s upside down he has a smile on his face, which shows he is possibly aware of his divine reward. As we meet this spiritual depth we meet the ultimate card of transformation, The Death card. This card is one of the cards that holds the most charge and has frightened some people away from the Tarot. It does represent the shadow but is mostly there to represent transformation and big changes in life, a sort of rebirth. This card also ties into the energy of the sign of Scorpio and the image of the phoenix rising from the flame, letting go of what is unhealthy and not needed anymore.
The Temperance card is the follow up to the Death card and blesses us with Grace. This is another card about balance but here its being given freely to us. The angel in the card balances water which is another symbol of healing. This card has more life energy in it and is foreshadowing the Sun card to come. As we find relief with Temperance we then meet another shadow archetype of The Devil. The Devil card is another that turns some people away from Tarot with its strong shadow aspect. This card represents our bondage, our addictions, represented by the two figures, possibly another Adam and Eve, who are chained to their darkness. This card is rich in symbolism and meaning, and as with all the cards of the major arcana, could be written about in an article all of its own.
We now meet The Tower card which depicts a burning tower with two figures falling out of it. In more recent Tarot decks since September 11, 2001, many artists have chosen to not depict this card with people falling, which is a great example of how Tarot morphs with the times and carries collective history. The meaning of this card is that of collapse and potential for awakening. It’s a lesson in, if we don’t change ourselves the Universe will then give us the opportunity and it may be a shock to us. But even if we feel we’ve fallen we are given hope with The Star card. Just like with Temperance, The Star card is a pillar of hope, inspiration and renewal.
As we move forward we now look out into the Universe again with The Moon and The Sun cards. The Moon card has a feeling of fear in it and represents the unconscious and instinctual side of ourselves. Nichols brilliantly describes the Moon card:
This is the hero’s moment of truth, a time of terror and awe. The experience of the crossing is a familiar one to all who have made the journey into self-realization. The mystics called it the “Dark Night of the Soul.” In myths and legends it appears as the “night Sea Journey.” There, traditionally, the hero, like Jonah in the whale’s belly, must overcome the monster which can devour his consciousness and hold it captive. In psychological terms, this symbolizes his victory over the devouring aspects of the unconscious, which would otherwise engulf his ego consciousness, resulting in psychosis. (Nichols, 1984, pg. 314)
As Nichols describes the Moon card we can see why it can represent fear as the ego fends for its life not to be absorbed into the cosmos. Directly after the Moon card we find The Sun and once again the Tarot is showing this balance between dark and light sewn through out the deck. The Sun represents success, fulfillment, and illumination, the archetype of enlightenment.
As our journey comes to a close we meet Judgement, the card of rebirth, resurrection and metamorphosis. The Tarot carried early beliefs of reincarnation with cards such as Judgement and The World, our last card, showing a cyclical nature to life. Judgement is another very Judea Christian image of judgement day but its hidden meaning is that of birth of the Self and our real consciousness. The last card, The World, is the archetype of conclusion, completion of a cycle, the end of the journey. The World card has a cyclical aspect to it, much like The Wheel of Fortune card and suggests, life is never really over, it only changes, and we become The Fool once again.
As we have seen the Tarot allows us to look at life as a journey, and like any story, it can change and shift at any time given the choices we make. It can also heal on very deep levels as we come to balance and understand our dark and light, all the archetypes that influence our world. The Fools journey represents life’s ever unfolding ever expansive nature, and suggests we learn to enjoy the ride. This message of life being a journey can be healing in and of itself, but the Tarot also allows the opportunity for us to look deeper within, as we would with a dream, and see what our psyche’s may be wanting us to know. As we continue to expand our consciousness as human beings and continue to dive deeper into our depths, new symbols will be created, and perhaps new ways to access the divine. Tarot will continue to be an accurate depiction of our collective unconscious because we, its viewers, interpret the cards and archetypes based on where we are in the evolution of our own consciousness, which is always expanding in creative potential.
The Major Arcana of The Rider Waite Tarot
An extra special thanks and appreciation to Mary K Greer for her wisdom and contribution to the Tarot world and this paper. Hers was the most academic material I could find on Jung and Tarot.
References
Greer, M. K. (2007-2011) Jung and Tarot. Available from:
http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/carl-jung-and-tarot/
Jung, C.G, (1981). The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 1). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Nichols, S (1984). Jung and Tarot An Archetypal Journey. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Progoff, I (1973). Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny. New York, New York: Julian Press Inc.
Schueler, G, Ph.D. (1997) Chaos and the Psychological Symbolism of the Tarot. Available from: http://www.schuelers.com/chaos/chaos7.htm.
