Communicating Authentically

I am constantly amazed at how much I “know” is wrong. Before learning about it, I’d been told and had believed that the Tarot is either a sin – a form of fortune-telling that draws power from evil forces in the universe – or that people who use the Tarot are just plain silly.

This week, I discovered that Carl Jung, the father of modern analytical psychology and protégé of Sigmund Freud, spoke of the Tarot cards as a way to explore our inner selves and the hidden forces that our motivate behavior.

Jung believed in the transformative ability of symbols and myths, and viewed the Tarot as a collection of universal human archetypes and paradigms. While a standard tarot reading focuses on divination, a Jungian reading explores the meaning behind the archetypes to better understand the conditions of our present situation; or, “an intuitive method that has the purpose of understanding the flow of life.”

This is an exploration that might not take place without the Tarot, and one that often provides insight into how our unconscious selves might be driving our reactions. It also often points toward responses that might serve us better. 

I personally have found myself interpreting my Tarot drawings based on what’s going on in my life, which has inspired new ways of looking at old problems; new solutions to try. The Tarot has reminded me to focus on the present vs. worrying about the future or bemoaning past events I can no longer change. 

There is nothing silly about that. As for being sinful, the meaning of the Tarot is whatever we give it. There’s nothing supernatural or demonic about it, unless the practitioner chooses. 

Of course, Jung was also a proponent of shadow work, or exploring the needs of one’s inner child, and if you listen to some people, apparently that’s a sin also. But then some people believe anything that helps people enjoy the life we’re living now is a sin. Or at least, they want other people to believe that. If you can focus people on what happens after they’re dead instead of what’s happening right now, they’re easier to exploit. 

One of my favorite quotes comes from C.S. Lewis, a prodigious author of deep Christian faith. In his book The Screwtape Letters, the Devil gives advice to his nephew on how to corrupt humanity. “In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time — for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays… We (Satan and his followers) want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”

For me, Tarot and witchcraft are simply tools that can help make sense of this crazy life, and spend more time living in the present, which, says Lewis, “is the point at which time touches eternity.”

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