What is Tarot?
What is Tarot ?
Tarot is a divination system that uses a set of cards to gain insight and achieve greater control over issues involving relationships, opportunities and life changes.
A Tarot reading gives a snapshot of what is going on in the present. It can help you see aspects of a situation that have been invisible to your ego.
It is a tool to give you the insight and advice you need to change your life for the better.
The psychologist Carl Jung identified some elemental symbols that are shared by different societies all over the world. Jung referred to these symbols as archetypes in our collective unconscious. He studied the mysterious inner mental space we all shared, which we can access through cultural symbols that are familiar to us. These symbols evoke connections to the ancient qualities of our primal mind, such as the nurturing mother, wise father, and terrifying shadow.
The commonness of these symbols or archetypes as he called them can be seen in myths and fairy tales, where there is always a hero battling a clear villain (who often represents a personality flaw that the hero must overcome). We know instinctively that these fictional stories, are somewhere connected to truth. It is not so much about the details themselves but about how these details are arranged to form a meaningful (that may or may not be factual) history of human nature.
That being said, maybe the easiest way to understand a society’s collective dreams and fears is through the mythological characters that persist in literature, films, and urban legends. Our systems of thought are attempts to create logic out of the random imagery of the collective unconscious. Through philosophy, religion, and other personal belief systems, we attempt to systematize the inner nonverbal world. By working with archetypes, we are able to go directly to this world of images that reveal our buried frustrations, traumas, desires, needs, fears and childhood dreams. This is where Tarot cards help us.
They provide us with a platform to reveal and get in touch with the hidden aspects of our own selves to promote healing and growth by connecting us to our personal unconscious and the universal unconscious mind. The personal unconscious contains things that are suppressed from our own conscious minds and the universal unconscious contains the past collective experience of humanity.
It is important for clients to understand that Tarot reads energy. It should be used for guidance and getting an insight about a situation to make informed decisions. Even if the information revealed is not what the client wants to hear it is still in the client’s interest to be aware of it. Each of us has free will and so the responsibility of using the information in a wise way to manifest the best possible outcome also lies with us. So my advice to the clients is to use Tarot as a tool for empowerment rather than a tool of future prediction where you give away your power to external circumstances. 😊