Intro to Tarot: Humanity’s relationship to symbols

Editor’s Note: Regular participants in this page are familiar with the contributions of Sarah Taylor. For years I’ve been wanting to run a feature on tarot, and when I found out that in addition to being an excellent writer, Sarah is a professional card reader, I asked her to step up — and she did. This is her first article, which introduces the tarot and some of the concepts behind it. Future editions will cover how to work with cards on your own, how to choose a deck and specific cards. We will take direction from readers who comment, so please let us know what you think. You can visit Sarah’s website at this link. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ll go one step further than that: everything is a symbol. There is nothing in life that is not a symbol, and which does not serve as a representation of something else. Not one thing. This is a new series on Planet Waves, designed to provide an introduction to the tarot. The tarot is a set of symbols, usually presented on cards, that contain a core set of ideas that represent different people, situations, ideas and stages of growth. So it seemed wise to begin the discussion of the tarot with a discussion of symbols.

Objects, spaces, and spaces between spaces – all of these are fingerprints of the presence that informed them, and all offer ways of communing with it and the wisdom that it holds. Creation is a hologram, where every small, separate part contains the whole. Or, at least this is true for a mind that is in some way connected to the whole; to the holos.

Symbols are doorways to greater meaning, and all doorways ultimately open to the same destination, which is reconciliation with ourselves. But they do it in different ways, and each of us will find some more effective than others. Many of us are, by nature, visual people. We communicate and commune through images. Our ancestors told their stories and expressed their beliefs on rock faces. Artists today may call on the muse to speak to them through paint, pastel, clay. Our dreams are worlds of visual metaphor where the unseen comes out to play.

Through images, consciousness – our waking lives – is spoken to by the unconscious – the unseen. And they are effective, because we tend to identify with images to a degree that isn’t reached by words. Images feel visceral, often transcending the interference of intellect.

And this is where I believe tarot holds its greatest power: it is based on, and draws from, a rich well of archetypal imagery and symbolism. An archetype is a kind of proto-idea or image. We’re familiar with them, though we don’t always know we’re encountering one. For example, we know the difference between “the presidency” and “the president.” We know that certain presidents fill the presidency better than others, at least in our personal experience. The presidency is an archetype. The president is a person.

A passage from the Wikipedia entry on archetypes gives a helpful introduction:

The archetypes form a dynamic substratum common to all humanity, upon the foundation of which each individual builds his own experience of life, developing a unique array of psychological characteristics. Thus, while archetypes themselves may be conceived as a relative few innate nebulous forms, from these may arise innumerable images, symbols and patterns of behavior. While the emerging images and forms are apprehended consciously, the archetypes which inform them are elementary structures which are unconscious and impossible to apprehend. Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, etc. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behavior on interaction with the outside world [emphasis added].

Archetypes, therefore, are ways of being that are common to everyone within a society, sometimes going much further than a single culture. Archetypal images have been found to transcend borders, cultures, beliefs, age and gender. Their influence is unconscious, until we find a means of bringing them to light. Tarot holds the ability to connect us to this realm.

Tarot’s origins are shrouded in mystery. There are written references to cards that date back to Europe in the 15th Century, but other sources cite their origins as being earlier than that, with links to ancient Egypt. Whatever the truth, I have come across tarot decks that resonate to the point where I can literally feel their spiritual heft. The symbols in a deck are older than the deck itself. The concept of The Emperor is a lot older than the tarot card called The Emperor.

Typically, the tarot is a deck of 78 cards, divided into 22 major arcana, and 56 minor arcana. An arcana is a deck within the deck. The minor arcana are similar to playing cards in that they run from Ace to King – but with one extra court card – and they are made up of four different suits, traditionally cups, coins, swords and wands. The minor arcana represent people (the court cards) and situations (the numbered cards). At first they look unfamiliar and strange; with a little practice we see that they are scenes and people from everyday life.

It is when we come to the major arcana, however, that we really start to see the power of the tarot’s archetypal symbols to access the unconscious. These 22 cards have crept from the shady recesses of the mind into the vernacular. They tell a story, which is the evolution of the individual through the many stages of life, on several planes of reality. Some represent obvious stages; others are more complex. They have names like The Magician, The Lovers, Justice, Death, The Hanged Man, The Tower, The Sun, The World. They carry images that many of us identify with strongly – sometimes with awe, sometimes with joy, sometimes with trepidation and fear – but each with a sense of recognition, no matter how faint.

Tarot is a portable, yet potent encyclopedia of symbols that simultaneously reaches back into the past, forward into the future, and finds a point of connection in the present. It’s also able to leap out of the realm of time to explore what lies outside. While the major arcana mirror the prevailing themes in our lives, the minor describe the supporting plots. Together, they tell us the story of our lives – what happens on the surface, and what lies beneath. As we work with the cards, we discover their meaning, and we discover ourselves. We draw the lines between inner and outer experience. We learn that little, if anything, is purely random; drawing cards “at random” and having them make sense demonstrates this again and again, and may be the miracle that lives inside our journey with the deck.

This process of discovery takes patience and dedication. The unconscious, by definition, is not easy to know. We excavate it in increments, and in layers; it plays hide-and-seek, and it often makes itself visible to us when we are looking the other way. We, after all, provide ourselves with endless convenient distractions to avoid acknowledging its existence. We keep it at bay with repetitive thoughts and patterns of behaviour; we numb it out with alcohol and drugs; we cover it with neurosis and good intentions. All this becomes static on the line so that we cannot hear it calling to us. Or, when we do, we often ignore it because we fear what will happen – or what won’t – if we heed that call.

The good news is that this invisible dimension doesn’t disappear. It remains a constant, if mutable, presence. All it asks of us is that we turn away from the distractions to see what is already there. How? By getting ourselves out of the way, being cognisant of and receptive to the emotions it brings up in us, and by opening ourselves to the possibility that there is a part of life beyond our five senses that plays a huge role in who we are and what we do.

How do we know when the doors of communication stand open and the flow is clear? Because tarot, like all other symbolic languages, tends to bring messages to us in ways that are designed to surprise and delight. We are caught out by a trick of our own making. Unknown to us, a part of us has been plotting behind the scenes to catch us unawares, but in a form that seems so familiar. We often know it because we either let out a guffaw of incredulity and satisfaction, or a sob of release. The unconscious is made manifest.