Jung and Tarot |
Jung and Tarot: An archetypal Journey, by Sallie Nichols, with an introduction by Laurens Van der Post.
This is a particularly interesting book and I've copied out the second chapter both for the summary and as a commercial to encourage you to get a copy.
After some thought I've left the references to the pictures and diagrams in this copy to preserve the integrity of the chapter, and to let you know what you could be viewing if you were reading it from your own copy of the book.
Before setting out on a journey, it is a good idea to have a map. Figure 3 is such a map. It shows the territory we shall be covering in this book. Pictured here are the twenty-two Trumps as they appear in the Marseilles Tarot which, as already indicated, is based on some of the earliest surviving designs. The way the cards are arranged in this map offers us a preview of the kinds of experiences we may expect to encounter along the way.
The best way to get at the individual meaning of these cards for oneself is to approach them directly, as one would the paintings in an art gallery. Like paintings, these Trumps are so-called projection holder, meaning simply that they are hooks to catch the imagination. Speaking psychologically, projection is an unconscious, autonomous process whereby we first see in the persons, objects, and happenings in our environment those tendencies, characteristics, potentials, and shortcomings that really belong to us. We people the exterior world with the witches and princesses, devils and heroes of the drama buried in our own depths.
Projecting our inner world onto the outer one is not a thing we do on purpose. It is simply the way the psyche functions. In fact projection happens so continuously and so unconsciously that we are usually totally unaware it is taking place. Nevertheless these projections are useful tools toward gaining self-knowledge. By viewing the images that we cast onto outer reality as mirror reflections of inner reality, we come to know ourselves.
In our journey through the Tarot Trumps, we shall be using the cards as projection holders. The Trumps are ideal for this purpose because they represent symbolically those instinctual forces operating autonomously in the depths of the human psyche which Jung has called the archetypes. These archetypes function in the psyche in much the same way as the instincts function in the body. Just as a healthy new-born babe arrives with a built-in tendency to suckle or to startle at a loud noise, so his psyche also shows certain hereditary tendencies whose effects can be similarly observed. We cannot of course see these archetypal forces, as indeed we cannot see instincts: but we experience them in our dreams, visions, and waking thoughts where they appear as images.
Although the specific form these images take may vary from culture to culture and from person to person, nevertheless their essential character is universal. People of all ages and cultures have dreamed, storied, and sung about the archetypal Mother, Father, Lover, Hero, Magician, Fool, Devil, Savior, and Old Wise Man. Since the Tarot Trumps picture all of these archetypal images, let us look briefly at some of them as they appear on our map. By doing so, we can begin to familiarize ourselves with the cards and demonstrate how powerfully these symbols act in all of us.
In our map, the Trumps from number one through number twenty-one are set out in sequence to form three horizontal rows of seven cards each.
THE FOOL, whose designation is zero, has no fixed position. He strides along at the top, looking down on the other cards. Since he has no pigeonhole, The Fool is free to spy on the other characters and can also burst unexpectedly into our personal lives with the result that, despite all conscious intentions, we end up playing the fool ourselves.
This archetypal Wanderer, with his bundle and his staff, is very much in evidence in our culture today. But, being a product of our mechanized world, he prefers to ride rather than walk. We can see his present-day counterpart, with beard and bedroll, standing by the roadside, extending a hopeful smile and a thumb in our direction. And if this character represents an unconscious aspect of ourselves, we are bound to react emotionally to him in one way or another. Some may instantly feel moved to stop and give the hitchhiker a lift, recalling how they, too, in their younger days once enjoyed a period of carefree wandering before settling down into a more stable pattern of living. Others, who never played the fool in their youth, may reach out to this wanderer instinctively because he represents an unlived aspect of themselves to which they feel unconsciously drawn.
It can happen, though, that another person might have a negative reaction to this young fellow-a reaction so instantaneous and violent that he suddenly finds himself literally trembling with rage. In this case the driver may jam his foot down on the accelerator, clench his teeth, and literally flee the sight of this innocent bystander, muttering imprecations about his "slovenly ways." He may wish he could get his hands on this "young fool," chop off his hair, give him a good bath and shave, and then set him down in a forty-hour week "where he belongs." "Such irresponsibility makes me sick," He mutters. As a matter of fact his hostility is so overpowering that he may actually begin to feel sick. When he arrives home, he may find himself drained of energy and unaccountably weary. But next day, when )and if) the obsessive chattering in his head has somewhat abated, a small space may open up within which a question can find whispering room: "Why shouldn't this young hitchhiker wander about if he likes? What harm is he doing?" But the "harm" to the observer is already done. The mere sight of this fellow has opened up a can of worms. And these come wriggling and tumbling out as a dozen questions, each demanding an answer: What would it be like to live like that fellow-to smash one's alarm clock-to throw away one's possessions-to spend this entire spring and summer just roving under the wide blue sky- and so forth.
There being no way to stuff these worms back into the can, our driver may find himself immobilized at home trying to answer these questions and dreaming impossible dreams. Perhaps, with luck, he may find ways to make some of his dreams come true. Strange things can happen when one confronts and archetype.
Reactions to the Fool will of course be as many and varied as the personalities and life experiences of those who confront him. But the point is that being touched by an archetype will always evoke an emotional reaction of some kind. By exploring these unconscious reactions, we can uncover the archetype that is manipulating us and free ourselves, to some extent, from its compulsion. As a result, next time one meets this archetypal figure in outer reality, his response need not be so irrational and automatic as the one described above.
In the instance just cited, the emotional turmoil that seeing "the fool" touched off and the self-examination that ensued may not have eventuated in any dramatic change in the life style of the person in question. But, after seriously considering other possibilities, he may well conclude that the life of a vagabond is not for him. He may find that, all things considered, he prefers the stability band convenience of a home, and that he likes a car and other possessions enough to sweat it out at the office in order to buy them. But, through examining other possibilities, he will have come to choose his life style more consciously, and having made friends with his hidden impulse to play the fool, he may find ways to express this need within the context of his present life.
In any case, the next time he passes a happy wanderer on the road, he will feel more empathy for him. Having now chosen his own life he may be more willing to let others choose theirs. And having come to terms with the renegade in inner reality, he will no longer feel so hostile and defensive when such a figure presents itself in outer reality. But, most important of all, he will have experienced the power of an archetype. The next time he speeds along in his car he will realize that he does not sit alone in the driver's seat. He will know that mysterious forces are at work within him which can guide his destiny and absorb his energy in unforeseen ways. And he will be on the alert for these. The Fool is a compelling archetype and, as we have seen, one very much in evidence today. But all the figures of the Tarot have their own kind of power, and being ageless, they are all still active in ourselves and our society. By way of illustration let us now look at the seven Trumps pictured in the top row of our map.
The first of these is called The Magician. It pictures a magician about to perform some tricks. He calls them tricks, and that is exactly what they are. He is getting ready to trick us. His seeming magic will be done with mirrors, specially constructed cards, top hats with false bottoms, and sleight of hand., We know this is the case, and our intellect is a-chatter with epithets like "charlatan" and labels like "rubbish." But to our dismay we observe that the rest of our body is already moving in the direction of this magician, and our hand is now surreptitiously reaching into our pocket to extract a coin for admittance to this magic show. Iit is stealing our money to subject us to swindle.
And later, as we sit in the audience waiting for the show to begin, we notice that our heart is beating faster than normal and that we are holding our breath. Although our mind knows that what we shall see will at best be a demonstration of skill and manual dexterity, the rest of us behaves as if something truly miraculous were about to happen. We behave this way because, in the deepest levels of our being, we still inhabit a world of true mystery and wonder- a world that operates outside the limits of space and time and beyond the reach of logic and causality. We are attracted to this outer magician so compulsively and irrationally because within each of us there exists an archetypal Magician even more attractive and compelling that the one before us, one who stands ready to demonstrate for us the miraculous reality of our inner world whenever we feel ready to turn our attention in his direction.
No wonder our intellect skids to a stop and digs its heels in at the mere idea of magic. If our mind admits to this kind of reality, it risks losing the empire which its reason has built brick by brick throughout the centuries. And yet the compulsion of the Magician is so strong in our culture today that many bridges between his world and ours, over which reason can begin to walk with some assurance, are at last being built. Various para-psychological phenomena are being examined under scientifically controlled conditions. Transcendental Meditation is attracting thousands of followers by offering objective proof of the salutary effects of meditation on blood pressure and anxiety states. Through the use of biofeedback machines and other devices, various other forms of meditation are being explored, and convincing research is in progress on the effects of meditation on cancer. In our century, it seems, the worlds of magic and reality are becoming one. Perhaps by studying The Magician we can bring about a new unity within ourselves.
The second card in the top row of our map is La Papesse, or Lady Pope, sometimes called The High Priestess. She may be seen as symbolizing the archetype of the Virgin, a familiar one in the myths and sacred writings of may cultures. The virgin birth is a motif frequently observed in the beliefs of so many peoples, separated in both time and geography, that its origin can only be explained as an archetypal pattern inherent in the human psyche. (ok-the woman betrays her Christian roots, and hasn't a clue what virgin means to a Pagan…sigh, well no bodies perfect)
The Virgin archetype celebrates a humble receptivity to the Holy Spirit and a dedication to its embodiment in a new reality as the Divine Child, or Savior. In our culture, the biblical account of the Virgin Mary dramatizes this archetype. La Papesse is a somewhat crude representation of the Virgin of the Annunciation as she is depicted in Catholic art. There she is often pictured seated, with the Book of the Prophets spread open before her, as in the Tarot.
The Virgin archetype has caught the imagination of artists and sculptors for centuries, and for every woman the fact of pregnancy marks her as one singled out to be the carrier of a new spirit. But today she has become active in a different way. For it is the Virgin, it seems, who has inspired what is most truly feminine and courageous in the women's liberation movement. Just as the Virgin Mary was chosen for a destiny uniquely her own for which there was "no room at the inn," so woman today is called to fulfil herself in ways to which our collective society still closes it's doors. As the Virgin was forced by her vocation to forego the comfortable anonymity and security of traditional family life, carrying her burden alone, (excuse me--anyone forgetting a man called Joseph--a man who accepted her story, stayed with her through everything, and raised the child as his own? Truly an incredible man, generous and loving and remarkable for his time.) and bringing her new spirit to birth only in the most humble of circumstances, so women today, for whom the new annunciation has sounded clearly, must sacrifice their security and endure loneliness and humiliation, often in circumstances more trying than the routine of housewifery and motherhood in order to bring into reality the new spirit that stirs within them.
(The woman is great through the rest of the cards, but her interpretation of the Virgin is so very much at odds with the free spirited woman, owned by no man, who is in charge of her own life and her own happiness, that we as Pagans understand the Virgin to be. Loneliness and humiliation my eye- proud and strong and if need be alone in her choices-but never lonely.)
In this endeavor the Virgin might well be accorded a special niche for veneration, because she still shines forth today as a unique symbol of the pervasive force of the feminine principle. Although dedicated to the service of the spirit, the Virgin has never lost touch with her own femininity. It seems significant that Mary, one of the most powerful figures in our Judeo-Christian heritage, should have remained in our culture a paradigm of the utterly feminine woman.
The next two cards in our Tarot sequence, The Empress and The Emperor, symbolize the Mother and Father archetypes on the grand scale. Little need be said here about the powers of these two figures, for we have all experienced them in relation to our personal mothers and fathers or other human beings who stood for us as their surrogates. As children we probably all saw our parents enthroned as the "good," "nourishing," "protective" mother, and the "omniscient," "courageous," "powerful" father. When, being human, they failed to enact these roles according to our script, we often then experienced mother as the archetypal Black Witch or Bad Stepmother and father as Red Devil and Cruel Tyrant. It took many years of outlandish projecting before we could finally see our parents as human beings who, like ourselves, possessed many potential for both weal and woe.
Even as adults, if our parents are living we may still discover some areas in which we revert to the habit patterns of youth and play "child" to their parenthood in a variety of ways. When this happens, we may feel moved to go to our parents and "have it out" with them, if possible. But from the Jungian point of view, the proposed confrontation with the parents, even if possible, is not necessarily the first step toward clarification of our problem. For here too (as in the case of the driver and the hitchhiker) the archetypes are at work. Quite apart from the personalities and actions of our parents (however limited and unconscious these may be), we would be having similar problems with whoever stood in their shoes as long as we had not come to terms with the Mother and Father archetypes within ourselves. Chances are that both we and our parents are puppets in an archetypal drama, manipulated by giant figures operating above and behind our conscious awareness.
As long as this is the case, however much good will, determination, confession, or whatever takes place in a confrontation between the puppets themselves, the result can only be further entanglement in the strings. Obviously the first thing to do is to turn around and face the puppeteers so that we can see what they are up to and, if possible, untie or loosen some of those strings. In later chapters we shall confront the Empress and the Emperor and suggest some techniques for freeing ourselves from the hidden wiles of these master manipulators. The discovery of this archetypal layer of the unconscious and the presentation of techniques for confronting it is one of Jung's great contributions to psychology. For without the concept of the archetypes, we would forever be caught in a never-ending circular dance with persons in outer reality. Without techniques for separating the personal from the impersonal, we would endlessly project on our parents, or others in our environment, archetypal behaviour patterns which no human being can possibly embody,.
Tarot Trump number five is The Pope. In Church dogma the pope is God's representative on earth. As such he is infallible. He represents an archetypal authority figure whose power surpasses that of father and emperor. In Jungian terms he represents the archetypal Old Wise Man. Obviously, to project such superhuman wisdom and infallibility on any human being-even the pope himself-might be questionable.
The archetype of the Old Wise Man, dramatized in the biblical Hebrew prophets and Christian saints, is still a powerful one today. He appears in our society frequently as a beturbaned guru or an elderly bearded wanderer in white robe and sandals. Sometimes he has undergone training in some spiritual discipline, Eastern or Western, and sometimes he appears without portfolio. If we receive such a new acquaintance on sight with overwhelming adulation or turn our backs on him in instant rejection, we can be sure that the archetype is at work. But coming to know such a person as a human being can help us to see that spiritual illumination is, after all, a personal rather than an institutional matter.
The Tarot, being itself both old and wise, has pictured the archetypal Old Wise Man in two ways. The Pope of card five shows him in his more institutional form, and The Hermit of card nine pictures him as a mendicant friar. When we come to study these two cards, we shall have a chance to contact these figures as forces within ourselves. Coming to know these archetypes will help us to determine to what extent the qualities they symbolize are embodied in ourselves and in persons of our acquaintance.
The card that follows The Pope is called The Lover. Here a young man stands transfixed between two women, each of whom seems to claim his attention, if not his very soul. Surely the eternal triangle is an archetypal situation vivid in our own personal experience. The plot pictured in The Lover needs no elaboration here for it is the basis of about ninety- percent of the literature and drama extant in the world today. Anyone who wishes to refresh his memory on that score need only turn on his television more or less at random.
In the sky above and behind the Lover, a winged god with a bow and arrow is about to inflict a fatal wound that may resolve the young man's conflict. The little god, Eros, is of course an archetypal figure, and so is the young man. Her personifies a youthful ego. The ego is technically defined as the center of consciousness. It is the one in us who thinks and speaks of itself as "I." In The Lover, this young ego, having to some extent freed himself from the compulsive influence of the parental archetypes, is now able to stand alone. But he is still not his own man, for, as we see, he remains caught between two women. He is unable to move. The principle action in this picture is taking place in the unconscious realm of the archetypes hidden from his present awareness.
Perhaps the poisoned arrow from heaven will fire him up and set him in motion. If so, we shall observe with interest what happens next because, from now on in our Tarot series, this young ego will be the chief protagonist of the Tarot drama. In this sense we shall often refer to him as the hero, for it is his journey along the path of self-realization that we shall be following.
In card seven, called The Chariot, we see that the hero has found a vehicle to carry him on his journey, and it is piloted by a young king. When a young king appears on the scene in dreams and myths, he usually symbolizes the emergence of a new guiding principle. In the fourth card, The Emperor appears as the authority figure. He is an older man, seated, and drawn so large that he fills the entire canvas. In The Chariot the new ruler is in motion and drawn to human scale, meaning that he is more active and approachable than an emperor; and, more important, he is not alone. He is seen to function as part of a totality with which the hero begins to feel a connection.
But the king pictured here is as young and inexperienced as the hero himself. If our protagonist has crowned his ego king and placed it in command of his destiny, his journey forward will not be smooth.
With The Chariot we come to the last card in the top row of our map. This row we are calling the Realm of the Gods because it pictures many of the major characters enthroned in the heavenly constellation of archetypes. Now the hero's chariot carries him down into the second row of cards, which we will call the Realm of Earthly Reality and Ego Consciousness because here the young man sets forth to seek his fortune and establish his identity in the outer world. Freeing himself increasingly from containment within the archetypal "family" pictured in the top row, he sets out to find his vocation, establish a family of his own, and assume his place in the social order.
Having discussed "the gods" of the top row, we shall now run through the cards in the next two rows much more rapidly in order to get an overall view of the general plot that follows. The first card in the second row is Justice. The hero must now evaluate moral problems for himself. He will need her help to weigh and balance difficult questions. Next comes The Hermit, who is carrying a lantern. If the hero no longer finds the illumination he seeks within an established religion, this friar can help him to find a more individual light.
The card following The Hermit is The Wheel Of Fortune, symbolizing an inexorable force in life which seems to operate beyond our control and with which we must all come to terms. The next card, called Strength or Fortitude, pictures a lady taming a lion. She will help the hero to confront his animal nature. Perhaps his initial confrontation will not be wholly successful, for in the following card, The Hanged Man we see the young man hanging upside down by one foot. He appears to be unharmed but he is, for the moment at least, completely helpless. In the next card he faces Death, and archetypal figure before whose scythe we all stand helpless. But in the final card of this second row, Temperance, a helpful figure appears. She is an angel, and she is engaged in pouring liquid from one vase into another. At this point the hero's energies and hopes begin to glow again and in a new direction. Heretofore he has been engaged in freeing himself from the compulsion of the archetypes as they affect him personally in the world of human beings and events, and in establishing an ego status in the outer world. Now he is ready to turn his energies more consciously toward the inner world. Whereas before he sought ego development, his attention now turns toward a wider psychic center which Jung has termed the self.
If we define the ego as the center of consciousness, then we might define the self as the all-encompassing center of the entire psyche, including both conscious and unconscious. This center transcends the puny "I" of ego awareness. It is not that the hero's ego will no longer exist; it is simply that he will no longer experience this ego as the central force which motivates his actions. From now on his personal ego will be increasingly dedicated to service beyond itself. He will become aware that his ego is merely a small planet revolving around a giant central sun -the self.
All along his journey the hero will have had flashes of this kind of insight; but as we follow his fortunes through the archetypes of the bottom row we shall see his awareness widen and his illumination increase. For this reason we call the bottom row on our map the Realm of Heavenly Illumination and Self-Realization.
The first card in this bottom row is The Devil. He represents Satan, that infamous fallen star. Whenever this fellow drops into our garden he brings with him, willy-nilly, a flash of light, as we shall see when we come to study him later on. The next four cards in sequence are called The Tower Of Destruction, The Star, The Moon, The Sun. They picture various stages of illumination in an ascending order. The card that follows these four is called Judgement. Here an angel with a trumpet bursts into the hero's awareness in a glorious blaze of light to wake the sleeping dead. On the earth below, a young man rises from the grave as two older figures stand by in attitudes of prayer and wonder at this miraculous rebirth.
With the final card of the Tarot series called The World, the self, now fully realized, is bodied forth as a graceful dancer. Here all the many opposing forces with which the hero has been struggling are united in one world. In this last Tarot figure, sense and nonsense, science and magic, father and mother, spirit and flesh, all flow together in a harmonious dance of pure being. In the four corners of this card, four symbolic figures stand witness to this ultimate miracle.
Now we have completed our quick preview of the twenty-two Trumps as set forth on our map. As we follow the hero's fortunes through these cards, we shall be observing their interconnections on the horizontal axis - how each experience encountered along the way evokes the one that follows it. When we come to study the cards in the bottom row, we shall also be making connections on the vertical axis between these Trumps and those directly above them on the map.
Let us illustrate what we mean. As the cards are arranged in our map, they can be seen not only as three horizontal rows of seven cards each but also as seven vertical rows of three cards each. As we shall discover, the three cards in each vertical row are connected with one another in a significant way. For example, the first vertical row presents The Magician at the top, The Devil at the bottom, and Justice sitting as mediator between the two. Many connections can be made between these three cards, but one of the more obvious might be that the seemingly benign Magician of card one and the Magical Devil of card fifteen must both be taken into consideration in our lives. For if we don't "give the devil his due" he'll take it anyway; if we ignore him, he will operate from behind in a destructive way. So the cards of this first vertical row may be saying that as long as we use both pans of Justice's scales, there will be less chance of either magician playing tricks behind our backs.
As we shall see later on, the cards in the second horizontal row, the REALM OF EARTHLY REALITY AND EGO CONSCIOUSNESS, often act as mediators between the REALM OF THE GODS above and the REALM OF ILLUMINATION AND SELF-REALIZATION below. In fact all the Trumps in the second row like it's first card Justice, are specifically concerned with equilibrium. For example; Strength is engaged in establishing equilibrium between herself and a lion, and Temperance is absorbed in creating a balanced interaction between the two urns she holds. In more subtle ways, all the other cards in this row can be seen to symbolize some kind of harmonious balance between opposing forces. For this reason it might be useful to sub-title the second horizontal row the REALM OF EQUILIBRIUM.
From what has already been said, it is easy to understand why Jung chose to call this kind of self-realization individuation. By confronting the archetypes and freeing oneself somewhat from their compulsion, one becomes increasingly able to respond to life in an individual way. As we have seen, the behaviour of those with little awareness of the archetypes is predetermined by unseen forces. It is almost as rigidly programmed as the instinctual behaviour of the birds and bees who always react to certain stimuli in a preordained way, so that mating, nest building , migration, and so forth, are carried on in identical patterns throughout the generations. But when a human being has achieved some degree of self-awareness, he is able to make choices that are different from those of the flock and to express himself in ways that are uniquely his own. Having contact with his own true self he will no longer be prey to the chatter of other selves, inner and outer. What "they" are doing and saying will have less influence upon his life. He will be able to examine current social customs and ideas and adopt them or not as he chooses. He will be free to act in ways that fulfill his deepest needs and express his truest self.
It is important to not here that as a person gains the independence to be a nonconformist, he also gains the self-assurance to be a conformist. As Jung has often stressed, and individuated person is not the same as some-one who is individualistic. He is not driven to conform to custom, but he is equally not driven to defy it. He does not try to see himself apart from his peers by affecting peculiar dress or by exhibiting outlandish behaviour. On the contrary, because he so truly experiences himself as a unique expression of the godhead, he is under no compulsion to prove it.
Whenever we meet such a person, he is usually indistinguishable at first glance from others in the group. His overt behaviour and dress may be in no way remarkable. He may be actively engaged in conversation or he may be relatively quiet, but almost instantly some indefinable quality in his way of being may attract us to him. It is as if everything about him- his clothes, his gestures, his way of sitting or standing- belongs to him. Nothing about him is superimposed. Everything he says or does appears to arise from his deepest center, so that even his most ordinary remark shines forth with new meaning. If he is silent, his silence, too, seems to belong. It is a comfortable silence both for him and for us. Often such a person in silence will seem more present and active than those who are participating in more overt ways. Because he is in contact with his deepest self, our deep self responds, so that sitting in silence with this kind of human being can open up new vistas of awareness. Being at home with himself, he is instantly at home with us- and we with him. We feel as if we have known him forever. The communication between us is so open and easy that we understand him, and yet, he puzzles us. On the one hand, he is the most unusual person we have ever met, and on the other, he is just like us. He is a paradox.
The self is indeed the most paradoxical and elusive of all the forces operating in the deep unconscious. It is the self which will propel the hero forward from the parental womb to seek his destiny in the outer world; and it is the self which will bring him home at last to the realization of his own uniqueness. As we follow the hero along his journey, we will share vicariously in his experiences as they are pictured in the Trumps.
There are many techniques for putting ourselves in touch with the cards. Each person will find his own way into the pictures, but we offer here a few suggestions that others have found useful. For example; some like to keep a Tarot scrapbook. They find that the Trumps jump to life when relevant material is collected about them. Once attention is paid to them, the Tarot characters have a way of popping up in unexpected ways. It often happens, for instance, that related news items, photographs, prints, and references to the Tarot begin to appear quite magically and with amazing frequency.
Also, studying a specific card seems to unlock hidden stores of creative imagination so that sudden insights and ideas can burst forth into consciousness- seemingly from nowhere. These wispy creatures of the imagination are as ephemeral as butterflies. If we don't catch them instantly, they may disappear forever. But when such bursts of creativity occur, often we don't have time to sit down and give them our full attention. It is helpful to have some fixed place ready to capture and hold them safe for future reference: a place where we can jot down the bare plot of a story, draw a quick sketch for a future painting, or let down the opening lines of what may become a poem. If we have some aptitude in the arts, we may want to develop these ideas later. If not, we may wish to refer to them again in connection with our personal Tarot trop. In either case, a scrapbook or loose-leaf notebook with several pages devoted to each Trump offers convenient storage for this material and a ready-made filing system for easy access.
All of us react differently to different cards. Some cards attract us; some repel us. Some cards remind us of people we know or have known in the past. Some are like figures in dreams or in fantasies. Others bring us entire dramatic episodes. Perhaps the important point here is that when we really focus on a Tarot card and then follow as the card itself leads, we become open to new and exciting experiences.
The Trumps are best studied in sequence. Their numerical order creates a pattern, our imagination will provide the passport. There are many ways to stimulate the imagination. Included here are a few ideas that others have found useful.
Approach each card directly before reading the chapter about it. This offers you a chance to react freely and naively to whatever is pictured there. It is a good idea to study the card for a few minutes, and then jot down "off the top of your head" any reactions, ideas, memories, and associations (or even four-letter words) that come to mind. Remember, these notes are for your eyes alone, so let fly with the pen. Don't censor anything, however farfetched it seems, for it may connect you with important insights later on.
Since, as with human personalities, first impressions are often more significant than they appear at the time, jot down everything verbatim. Please don't attempt to analyze, evaluate, or label whatever you have written. Just file it away for future consideration. Later, when you have come to know this Tarot Trump, it will be interesting to compare your first impressions of it with your later reactions. Whatever turns up, just muse on it as you go about your daily affairs. Hold these happenings in your heart as you might do with a poem- but keep your reason at arm's length. The Tarot people are creatures of the imagination. The spotlight of intellect will send them scurrying underground.
Since the Tarot characters cannot tell us verbally about themselves, we must use every sensory means to feel into their essence. One surprisingly effective way to do this is to color the cards. The Marseilles deck is not available in any uncolored version, but one can easily create an uncolored set of Trumps by making Xerox reproductions of those in the regular deck. Invariably, students who have made and colored their own cards in this way find that doing so adds a new dimension to their understanding.
Whatever you do (or don't) in relation to the cards, remember that all suggestions presented here are offered simply "pour le sport". They are chiefly useful as devices to warm up our imagination and lure the Tarot characters out into our world where we can get a better look at them.
It is axiomatic that symbols and the feelings or intuitions that they inspire do not come labelled "right" or "wrong". As will be repeatedly demonstrated in this study, it is characteristic of symbolic material to embrace many opposites and to include seeming paradoxes. Living as we do most of the time in an Either / Or world of fixed opposites, it may be some comfort to know that in the world of feelings, intuitions, sensations, and spontaneous ideas that we are about to enter, we can pretty much discard the Either / Or yardstick we generally use to make practical choices in everyday life. We are about to step into the land of imagination, that magic world whose key words are Both/And. In reacting to a given Tarot Trump, we can't be "right" if we try- and by the same token we can't be "wrong". So let us react to the Tarot in any way we like with a light heart and a free hand. Allow room for everything; expect nothing. Let your imagination play. Enjoy - enjoy.
These, then, are some of the ways to explore the meaning of the cards. From time to time we shall add other do-it-yourself suggestions for any who are interested. In the following chapters we shall amplify the meaning of each Trump by presenting themes from myth, literature, drama, and the pictorial arts which seem to enrich its message. These are not offered as conclusions but rather as springboards for the imagination. The final dimension of this study, the dimension of depth, is one which only the ready himself can fully explore; only he can relate these findings to his individual life.
Each must discover his own way into the non-verbal world of the Tarot. Although we shall follow certain signposts along the way, the cards themselves, as we have seen, are not signs; they are symbols. No precise definitions can be given to them. They are pictorial expressions which point beyond themselves to forces no human being ever completely understands. Today, man is at least beginning to realize that the more he remains unconscious of archetypal forces, the more power they have to rule his life.
So let us contemplate the symbols. Let us watch them move, connecting us with the deepest roots of our history and with the seeds of our undiscovered selves.
