Jung & Tarot POLL

A huge part of us are shaped by our experiences. I came to tarot by way of trying to understand my dreams which persisted for 15 years. By the time I came to tarot I have had a dream journal for 10 years. Tarot has always been a tool to understand myself, others, and my surrounding, based on what my mind picks up about myself, others, and their and / or my own surrounding. Not so much divination. So I am very Jungian. History, mythology, and symbology are there as a given because I see these as the baseline.

Jungian psychotherapy is a very specialised area of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is not tarot reading session. So from that perspective I understand where the other poster earlier in this thread is coming from. Jungian application to tarot reading isn't synonymous with Jungian psychoanalysis / psychotherapy.

firecatpickles said:

I don't know anything about Jung. it seems rather odd to superimpose a modern psycology over a deck of cards used in gaming that originated in the 16th century, anachronistic.

My taste in tarot leans more toward historical decks.

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Not if you think of his idea of the universal unconsciousness for example. Or the archetypes.

The Happy Squirrel said:

Jungian application to tarot reading isn't synonymous with Jungian psychoanalysis / psychotherapy.

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Thank you for such a clear statement of the situation.

yes ,

I think personally that the Jungians concepts can only help a person understands themselves though the tarot with it. and may help a person in their tarot readings.

i did study the Jungian tarot by Robert wang a bit earlier on so some concepts that he put forth from Jungian help me to understand the lower numbered major arcana. (that being said i stop studying it after he moved the astrology planets to reflect what he thought so it wasn't really the Jungian approach put over the tarot system as it existed in gd)

i think that line of the poll "A Jungian approach to tarot is very dangerous when applied by who is not a licensed therapists."
could apply to any of the counselling techiques that have been to the tarot like the gestalt approach in" Heart of Tarot: An Intuitive Approach"

or for that matter any tarot reading can be dangerous for the client if not done properly. like the tarot reader not doing any study before using it.. or if the client puts to much power over their lives into the tarot and not take responsibility for their decisions afterwards.

Jungism is very fashionable again currently. I got into it in the last year! A friend of mine has given up religion in her life for reasons that her beliefs have changed and she is a tarot reader. She made a statement recently that Jungism is her equivalent to religion these days. I thought that was really interesting, it probably is for me too! Agree with Happy Squirrel!

slightly weirdly I have had a lot of different therapies and counselling and never had any professional therapy with Jungian ideas (not obviously based on his psychology anyway). I have seen it far more used in dreams and divination context in modern times.

HOLMES said:

any tarot reading can be dangerous for the client if not done properly.

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Precisely. So what would help a person to read better for themselves and for clients?

well

I was assuming that was a rhetoric question, but just in case.

to expand on studying the tarot there are many routes to go as you wrote in your book in the 21 ways to read the tarot to get better. the main thing is for the tarot reader to practice and listen to the feedback to get better.

it is sure to judge a tarot reader ability to be good or bad since tarot readers skills are different and their talents. so I think it boils generally though if a tarot reader builds up their strength meanwhile being mindful of their weakness they can get better so they can read for their client properly.

and it sure is easy to tell if a reader is just trying to make a buck for we who are tarot readers that is, for someone who comes blindly for a reading, perhaps fearful that they don't know what to expect. (I get that today so I am sure the rest of you get that today as well ).

then there is your tarot for yourself that is still on the market that is useful for a person to learn to read the tarot for themselves to grow from their concepts and other workbooks like that.

but in the context of the topic of jung and tarot, if we add them to the reading without trying to be a therapist but just to add more colour to the reading I think that is fine. the main problem for tarot readers to know their limitations and realize that we are not psychologists, counsellors so we can counsel people to deal with their issues. for the client has to have be responsible in the end for their own lives.

I know that astrology, qabalah, is weak points for me, when trying to relate them to the tarot for a long while I thought it was just there to spread out the tarot reading for I like a reading to be concise and not waste any time unless it is very revelant to the issue.
but now that I am older I am appreciating intuition more and I can relate to some of the Jungians concepts I seen in the tarot books while keeping in mind that I haven't read one therapist book I think it can be useful in the long run , if studied and applied if one understand the concepts.

for in the end, as I think I am reading with spiritual help that the message will come through and it may not even use Jungian concepts, but it could be useful for when we are confusing the message,, I know myself I use the extended numerology association for when I get stuck, other people who understand the Jungian concepts may use that as well to get though the wall.

I guess to summerize time, practice, and searching for knowledge and applying that will helper a person read better for themselves and clients.

I don't really fully understand...!

Sorry I didn't partake in the poll because I didn't fully understand what it was getting at...?

We are talking about Carl Gustav Jung right?

I use his ideas yes but only to the point of identifying Court Cards and giving them personality...

We read cards right?

So why would anyone without proper qualifications psychoanalyse another?
And how can you do this with Tarot?

There are psychiatrists out there that have used tarot cards to help their clients come to a better understanding of their archetypal inner-selves, I have a book all about this By Dr Arthur Rosengarten Ph.D Called Tarot and Psychology, Spectrums of Possibility. As far as I am aware though this book is mainly to be used by a means of self discovery but it also sheds a little more light on to the different roles of the archetypes within the tarot to point out differences in personalities to maybe help point out when the tarot was trying to talk about your querent and parts of their personality that they either have or lack, or someone else in their lives. Such as archetypal patterns like in the court cards each one can be either a person in our lives or a personality trait yeah?
This gives the court cards four facets as in Supporter / Detractor (people) & Resource / Challenge (personality trait)

This can only be used to help with reading... Can't it?

I can't really understand how you can use the tarot to Psychoanalyse and without being properly qualified to do so I can't understand why anyone would even want to...!


Aeon

For me, there are three ideas that I got from Jung that I find most helpful (and not at all harmful). First, that a symbol can mean infinite things (so a mother-symbol could be both comforting and threatening -simultaneously- or paradoxically). Second, we are engaged in a sort of ongoing "conversation" or even power-struggle with the unconscious, like being on a see-saw with a somewhat uncooperative, occasionally hostile partner. Third, life is a quest for something "sacred" and if you read Arthurian literature, it overlaps with alchemy (i.e., the search for the sacred "essence" which connects us to Eternity).

However, there is one idea that is (I wouldn't say "harmful" but) a bit misleading, taking you on a roundabout path where, if you stop to rest, you end up in error. And that is the idea of the Self. Of course Jung had no misconception but the word might be unfortunate. It seems each person has to experience first-hand that the "Self" is really strangely, beautiful but exceedingly strange.

Just as an anecdote, one day (I'm in my 50's) I looked outside my window, and saw what seemed to be the planet Saturn, and it was so striking and beautiful, big and round with the rings. It was huge, taking up much of the sky, and of course not "really there" (my wife couldn't see it). Each of the rings was a road or highway, busy with trucks and cars driving along, carrying on whatever business, seemingly so close and so far from where I stood in my little house. It was just over the trees.

Somehow I knew I was witnessing this "Self" that I had cluelessly sought for so long, but it was so bizarre and oddly impersonal. It seemed "out there" and had no regard for "personal me," the overweight guy in the mirror, the one paying the mortgage, the one struggling with morality, the one consumed and confounded by all the little snares of a very average middle-class life. It was so utterly detached from "me" and yet I felt it was compassionate somehow, "merciful" because it showed itself to lowly, imperfect me. Words fail to capture even a miniscule slice of this strange joy. My life was changed forever. But outwardly, exactly the same and even today, my heart still leaps just to recall.

Long story short, there is no "personal self" but there is -something- that we see which is simultaneously "out there" and "in here" which has a luminous, numinous, mystical quality. And that is the Goddess, the Grail, Eternity, redemption, Heaven, "wholeness," or as Jung called it, the Self.

So the quest to discover the Self leads us to something so very opposite to what we expect. Jung laid it out so clearly but how can anyone understand this until it happens? A thousand books and 30 years of grasping brought me no closer. It came on an ordinary day, on its own, no asking.

The best friend of a repeat-client of mine from the eighties, once wrote a book called "Jung and Tarot", so the title of this thread grabbed me immediately. (Her name is Sallie Nicholls, if anyone is interested - it is an excellent work for its time).

I suppose my understanding of Tarot is Jungian only insofar as I subscribe to the theory that when I read for clients, as I have no access to their memories and personal symbolism, the cards make sense because I tap into some kind of shared inner reality, which Jung referred to as "the collective unconscious".

I know that Jung had a deck and was fascinated by it, but that is all I know.