Books about Tarot and Jung

Teheuti

Here's an example of one of Jung's brilliant concepts that can be used with Tarot. Note: others use active imagination/visualization, but his is used within and as a part of his whole understanding of the psyche:

Active Imagination— a creative technique using mental imagery for working with the unconscious and getting in touch with archetypes [read: Tarot Majors].

“In Active Imagination the important thing is to begin with a particular image...Consider the image and carefully observe how it begins to unfold or to change. Avoid all attempts to bring it into a particular form; simply do nothing other than observe which changes take place spontaneously. Every psychic image that you observe in this fashion will sooner or later change shapes on the basis of spontaneous association, which leads to a subtle change of the image. Impatient hopping around from one theme to another is to be carefully avoided. Stick with the image that you have chosen, and wait until it changes of its own accord. You must carefully observe all of these changes and then you yourself must enter into the image. If you meet a figure that speaks, say what you have to say as well, and listen to what he or she says. In this fashion, you not only analyze your own unconscious, you can also allow the unconscious to analyze you. Thus you gradually achieve a consensus between consciousness and unconscious, without which there is no individuation.” Jung, C.G. Briefe Bd. 2, S. 76.

“The best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way. Create for instance a fantasy. Work it out with all the means at your disposal. Work it out as if you were it or in it, as you would work out a real situation in life which you cannot escape. All the difficulties you overcome in such a fantasy are symbolic expressions of psychological difficulties in yourself, and inasmuch as you overcome them in your imagination you also overcome them in your psyche.” —C.G. Jung, 25 November 1932.

Marie-Louise von Franz called it a "creative act of liberation."
 

daphne

Fascinating!!! Thank you!

Man and his symbols is on the way too.
 

gregory

The Robert Wang book that comes with his Jungian deck isn't half bad, as I recall. (I don't have it here with me, so excuse me if I had misremembered it...)
 

Richard

The Nichols book concentrates on the therapeutic aspects of Jungian psychology. It is a veritable textbook on the subject of Jung and tarot: no nonsense, authoritative, exhaustive, and a very slow read (at least for me). The trumps are illustrated by the wonderful Tarot de Marseille, probably a Conver reconstruction. (My favorite deck. :D)
 

greatdane

My Psychology classes didn't really cover Jung and tarot :)

Even though I got into tarot indirectly through Jung, and I do see a correlation between psychology itself and tarot, I think some writers have "expanded" on what Jung actually thought about tarot. I also think that some readers have different ideas about what the Shadow Self or Shadow Work really is. I am not saying any perspective is right or wrong, merely that I think there are different definitions out there.

I think this is interesting. If you scroll down it talks a bit about Jung and tarot. This is obviously over, and I wish I could have attended, but was unable to.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jung-a...he-cloud-of-cognition-registration-7902908813 I am thinking our own Mary Greer :), wrote this(?) as she was the keynote speaker. I think this is a great concise definition.
 

Teheuti

If you scroll down it talks a bit about Jung and tarot. This is obviously over, and I wish I could have attended, but was unable to.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jung-a...he-cloud-of-cognition-registration-7902908813 I am thinking our own Mary Greer :), wrote this(?) as she was the keynote speaker. I think this is a great concise definition.
Yes, this is a workshop presentation I gave at the San Francisco Jung Institute a few months ago. It started with a power-pt talk and then I took everyone through an interactive tarot process that i think Jung would have liked. A couple of the organizers told me it was one of the best presentations they had ever had at the Institute (Tarot does that to people!).

There are only a few, brief comments by Jung directly on Tarot. You can find them here and in a second post that is linked at the bottom.

http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/carl-jung-and-tarot/
 

greatdane

Thanks Teheuti

Since Jung brought me into this melee of decks :), I have read what has been attributed directly to him. He was always one of the wild cards in our psych classes and they kind of sanitized him, I think. His life and perspectives were interesting to say the least.