Jung and Tarot

originally posted by Marion
Hi, Like the rest of you, I am bit hesitant about the unpublished lectures. I thought one of the other posts said that they were a record of lectures given by someone else (not C.G. Jung) applying his ideas to the Tarot.
Here is the only reference I can find: from "The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious".
"If one wants to form a picture of the symbolic process, the series of pictures found in alchemy are good examples, though the symbols they contain are for the most part traditional despite their obscure origin and significance. An excellent Eastern example is the Tantric chakra system, or the mystical nerve system of Chinese yoga. 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 been 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 and enantiodromian structure like the text of the I Ching, and so presents a rhythm of negative and positive, loss and gain, dark and light."
Anyway, that is the sole reference in his entire published works, including letters and he certainly wasn't shy about discussing areas in which he had an interest, including a good many that brought him ridicule at the time. He did clearly know they existed, but then his knowledge of esoteric imagery was staggering.
There are several references to AE Waite, none about the Golden Dawn or Waite's tarot studies though. They refer to Waite's studies on the Kabala, alchemy and the Rosicrucians. Don't know if this helps, but I think that most links between Jung and the Tarot are from others applying his ideas to the Tarot.
I did notice in the quote above though that he says *the* set of pictures in *the* tarot cards so he is referring to a specific set. Since he knew the work of Waite... I suppose it is not unreasonable that he could have been referring to the deck Waite commissioned.

Click to expand...

I quote Marion from the previous thread

Arthur Rosengarten in Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of possibility Paragon House, 2000 also refers to the passage Marion quotes. He comments:

“While Jung was an accomplished scholar and enthusiast of a great range of esoteric and metaphysical topics (alchemy, astrology, Eastern religion. Gnosticism, I Ching, comparative mythology, quantum physics, and though he claimed throughout his career that interest in these matters. Above all else, was essentially of an empirical and phenomenological nature it is quite surprising that Jung himself by all indications was never adequately schooled in Tarot. In fact, throughout his voluminous writings addressing so many related topics, only one mention of Tarot is ever made to wit (in The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious paragraph 81) Jung wrote:

It also seems as if the set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly descended from the archetypes of transformation, a view which has been confirmed for me in a very enlightened lecture by Professor Benoulli.

Serious Tarot study would fall more to his later adherents, though indirectly, as Jungian ideas were to filter more generally through ever-widening circles of psychological and spiritual exploration of which Tarot is but one manifestation.”

Freud sniped at Jung for his interest in what he described as ”……the black tide of mud…..of occultism” as opposed to his (Freud’s) sexual theories, whereas Jung saw the sexual theory as ” ……just as occult, that is to say, just as unproven a hypothesis as many other speculative views” (Rosengarten, P.69).

Just an observation:

The RW was produced in the early 1900's. I wonder what he thought of it? Or if he somehow didn't see it?

A misreading might also suggest

Jung wrote about tarot directly when I read an Ed Edinger passage about Jung's Answer to Job paper. Ed Edinger was describing Jung's views noted in the Answer to Job article in Psychology and Religion:West and East, C.W., Vol. 11.

Edinger used an illustrated sample first from William Blake, a painting from a patient from C.G. Jung's Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, then a tarot card and another painting by Durer to illustrated his concepts. The painting that Jung chose was a lightning bolt hitting a sphere and a perspective of a toppling top of an edifice seen from a lower perspective looking up.

Edinger's description is as follows:

"In the picture, which began a decisive phase of individuation, the lightning from heaven is blasting a sphere out of its surrounding matrix--the Self is being born (this is the painting from the patient). The tarot card XVI (Plate 23-Tower) emphasizes the destructive aspect. When the ego is particularly inflated, as represented by the tower, the breakthrough of energies from the Self can be dangerous. Th appearance of the Self inaugurates a kind of "last judgment" (Picture 24, picture by Durer). Only that survives which is sound and based on reality."

Edinger pulls the Tower card using the Tarot of Marseilles.

What interesting perspectives. I've not read Edinger's full commentary and will look for it.

Danubhe, I am not aware of Jung's having an acquaintance with the RWS deck (though he well might have) -- the only references I've seen are to the Marseille deck selected for him by Hanni Binder and Gret Baumann-Jung.

The Ed Edinger book that this passage

appears is Ego and Archetype, the Shambalah Books edition, p. 76-81. Hope that helps.

Regards,

Cerulean Mari

Thank you! I actually have that book, I bought it at a yard sale and haven't had a chance to read it yet -- what a boon! Thanks again, Mari.

Another book that might be of help:

"Apparitions: An Archetypal Study of Death Dreams & Ghosts", by Aniela Jaffe, Jung's protoge' , and my own personal "Bible" for years...

Thank you for the recommendation!