The Nature of Tarot: A Visual Map of Consciousness
The Tarot is a visual map of consciousness and a symbolic system that offers insight into professional contribution, personal motives, and spiritual development of each individual. As a map of consciousness, the Tarot represents a facet of the total life experience, incorporating the “practical-everyday world” with the spiritual growth and evolution of each person. Basically, the Tarot reflects the opportunity that each individual has to visually see that life is a process of “walking the mystical path with practical feet.”
The Tarot operates primarily through the symbolic, nonrational aspects of consciousness — the same state from which dreams communicate. The quality and accuracy of Tarot interpretation depends solely upon the querent’s own ability, because it is only a reflection of the focus or level of consciousness of the inquirer. The Tarot is an excellent teacher, for as the user advances in expanded awareness, it reflects this expansion and responds uniquely to each individual, never teaching more than the person is capable of receiving.
Origins and Structure of the Tarot
No one knows the origin of the Tarot cards. Teachers of metaphysics often refer to the ancient Egyptians and the Hermetic School as the originators, but the earliest decks thus far discovered are either Egyptian or European.
- The Tarot deck consists of the Minor Arcana and the Major Arcana:
- The Minor Arcana has four suits, each with fourteen cards (ace through ten, knight, queen, prince, and princess)
- The Major Arcana has twenty-two cards, bearing the zero and Roman numbers I through XXI
The Major Arcana reveals life principles, universal laws, or collective experiences that all humankind have. Just as the I-Ching is the Eastern Book of Changes, the Tarot is the Western Book of Changes. The I-Ching hexagrams represent changes in literary and nature metaphors; whereas the Tarot is a visual representation of internal and external changes that are possible for an individual to experience.
Symbol and Ritual: Bridging the Inner and Outer Worlds
Tarot is symbolic behavior or vision consciously performed. Those who participate sense that they are doing an act that has symbolic meaning, and they consciously seek to transform that act into an active, dynamic symbol which is represented in the Tarot symbol reflected back to them. The meaning thus attributed reflects a movement that has the power of making “a symbol-in-motion” carry or bridge an inner world into a visible and physical form (Johnson, 1986).
Without thinking about it in psychological terms, ancient and primitive cultures have always understood instinctively that ritual and symbols had a true function in their psychic lives (Johnson, 1986). They understood symbol and ritual as a set of formal acts and visuals that brought them into immediate contact with the gods. Symbol served many purposes: it allowed them to show respect and reverence to the great Powers; and it permitted them to touch the Power. The Power did not overwhelm them or possess them because the exchange was contained within the safe limits of symbol and ritual. Symbols allow us to reclaim the language that enables us to approach the soul, which is reflected to us in our dreams and contemplative states.
The Psychological Perspective: The Four Suits as Psychological Portraits
The Tarot deck psychologically reveals different visual portraiture of psychological states. For example:
- Swords mirror what is happening with mental beliefs, ideas, and quality of thinking. Swords are pictures of our thoughts.
- Cups represent the emotional psychological factors, including our responses, reactions, and feelings. All of the Cups indicate different qualities of love and emotional states that range from happiness and satisfaction to disappointment, anger, fear, and inertia.
- Wands represent quality of vision, insight, perception, energy, vitality, and spontaneity.
- Disks (or Pentacles) represent the external reality or ability to manifest what we want in the outer world in the arenas of health, finances, work, creativity, and relationships.
Psycho-Mythology: Tarot as a Visual Map of Wellness
Just as psychological and spiritual information is revealed to us in our dreams or in contemplative states, the Tarot functions as an outer mirror of external experiences and internal psychological states as well. In using the Tarot from a humanistic and psychological perspective, these symbols can teach us a great deal about our own psycho-mythology.
Psycho-mythology understands the psyche as comprised of two components: Logos and Eros. Logos is the inherent wisdom within the psyche; Eros is the inherent love nature in the psyche; and mythos (mythology) is associated with the inherent life purpose or life myth. The Tarot has the opportunity to reveal to us individually, collectively, and therapeutically the quality of our current Logos and Eros, and how we are using both in actualizing our own life purposes or myths.
Within the Tarot there are only thirteen symbols out of the seventy-eight that are seen as shadow-states, neurotic states, or psycho-pathological states. The inherent value of Tarot, if used within a therapeutic context, could be as a counterpart to the DSM diagnostic manual. While the DSM is a psycho-pathological diagnostic manual defining categories of dysfunctional behaviors, the Tarot could be used as a psycho-mythological manual. It reminds us that the thirteen challenges or shadow aspects are countered by sixty-five states of love (Eros) and wisdom (Logos).
The use of Tarot as a psychological and mythical portraiture of oneself is validated by the ancient saying of Novalis: “The seat of the soul is there, where the outer and the inner worlds meet.” When an individual selects a Tarot symbol, the card itself represents an outer mirror of an internal process. In that moment, one could say that the seat of the soul or the human psyche is revealed in the connection between the outer portraiture of the Tarot and its synchronistic appearance reflecting back an internal process.
Reference
- Douglas, A. (1972). The Tarot: The origins, meaning and uses of the cards. Victor Gollancz.
- Johnson, R. A. (1986). Inner work: Using dreams and active imagination for personal growth. Harper & Row.
- Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and his symbols. Doubleday.
- Von Franz, M. L. (1964). Conclusion. In C. G. Jung (Ed.),
