TRANSGRESSIONS - CULTURAL STUDIES AND EDUCATION

Human Development and Tarot Hermeneutic

Inna Semetsky
University of Newcastle, Australia

This groundbreaking book brings depth of meaning and intellectual scholarship to the field
of human development while also lifting the human spirit by offering new dimensions of selfformation through the ancient medium of Tarot. It should be of great interest to health and
human service professionals.
JEAN WATSON, Distinguished Professor, University of Colorado Denver College of Nursing;
author of Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring and Caring Science as Sacred
Science.
Semetskys book is a timely antidote for our current crises in education. Drawing on her empirical
research with Tarot and her deep knowledge of Jungian psychology, she offers an approach to
education that stirs the depths of the Self as it deepens mind into soul. Her Tarot hermeneutic
opens a path toward a revolutionary pedagogy that, in its commitment to the complexity,
fullness and fluidity of human subjectivity, recovers the ethical and therapeutic dimensions of
education. A bold book, a daring achievement, a spark of illumination!
ROBERT D. ROMANYSHYN, Senior Core Faculty, Pacifica Graduate Institute; Affiliate Member
of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts; author of The Wounded Researcher:
Research with Soul in Mind and Ways of the Heart: Essays toward an Imaginal Psychology.

Re-Symbolization of the Self

Re-Symbolization of the Self

TRANSGRESSIONS - CULTURAL STUDIES AND EDUCATION

Re-Symbolization of the
Self
Human Development and Tarot
Hermeneutic

Inna Semetsky

This text elucidates the potential of Tarot well beyond its popular usage. It demonstrates how
Tarot can become a pedagogical and counseling tool for enriching human experiences and the
whole of culture with wisdom, integrity, meaning, and spirituality. A must to read!
MARY K. GREER, author of Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for Personal Transformation.

Cover: The White Bird, artist Michail Grobman. Painting, gouache on paper, 1987. Reproduced
with the artists permission.

SensePublishers

TCSE 64

Inna Semetsky

Bringing together popular and academic cultures, Inna Semetsky presents Tarot as a system
of transformative hermeneutics for adult self-education and cultural pedagogy. Her research
is a decisive and intelligent step ahead from the reductive stereotype of Tarot as fortunetelling. The fifteen life stories at the heart of the book exemplify the authors commitment to
alternative modes of education and counseling that transcend individual, cultural or language
barriers. Assembling a rich array of sources, from Hermeticism to Jungian depth psychology,
the philosophies of Noddings, Buber, and Deleuze, and the science of self-organization, this
book opens a new path to personal and social revitalization. It should be widely read across
disciplinary divides by scholars, students, and professionals alike.
PHILIP WEXLER, Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; author of Symbolic Movement:
Critique and Spirituality in Sociology of Education and Holy Sparks: Social Theory, Education
and Religion.

SensePublishers

TRANSGRESSIONS: CULTURAL STUDIES AND EDUCATION

Volume 64
Series Editor:
Shirley R. Steinberg, McGill University, Canada
Founding Editor:
Joe L. Kincheloe (19502008) The Paulo and Nita Freire International
Project for Critical Pedagogy
Editorial Board
Jon Austin, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
Norman Denzin, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, USA
Rhonda Hammer, University of California Los Angeles, USA
Nikos Metallinos, Concordia University, Canada
Christine Quail, McMaster University, Canada
Ki Wan Sung, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea
This book series is dedicated to the radical love and actions of Paulo Freire, Jesus
Pato Gomez, and Joe L. Kincheloe.

TRANSGRESSIONS: CULTURAL STUDIES AND EDUCATION

Cultural studies provides an analytical toolbox for both making sense of educational practice
and extending the insights of educational professionals into their labors. In this context
Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education provides a collection of books in the domain
that specify this assertion. Crafted for an audience of teachers, teacher educators, scholars and
students of cultural studies and others interested in cultural studies and pedagogy, the series
documents both the possibilities of and the controversies surrounding the intersection of
cultural studies and education. The editors and the authors of this series do not assume that the
interaction of cultural studies and education devalues other types of knowledge and analytical
forms. Rather the intersection of these knowledge disciplines offers a rejuvenating, optimistic,
and positive perspective on education and educational institutions. Some might describe its
contribution as democratic, emancipatory, and transformative. The editors and authors maintain
that cultural studies helps free educators from sterile, monolithic analyses that have for too long
undermined efforts to think of educational practices by providing other words, new languages,
and fresh metaphors. Operating in an interdisciplinary cosmos, Transgressions: Cultural
Studies and Education is dedicated to exploring the ways cultural studies enhances the study
and practice of education. With this in mind the series focuses in a non-exclusive way on
popular culture as well as other dimensions of cultural studies including social theory, social
justice and positionality, cultural dimensions of technological innovation, new media and media
literacy, new forms of oppression emerging in an electronic hyperreality, and postcolonial
global concerns. With these concerns in mind cultural studies scholars often argue that the
realm of popular culture is the most powerful educational force in contemporary culture.
Indeed, in the twenty-first century this pedagogical dynamic is sweeping through the entire
world. Educators, they believe, must understand these emerging realities in order to gain an
important voice in the pedagogical conversation.
Without an understanding of cultural pedagogys (education that takes place outside of
formal schooling) role in the shaping of individual identityyouth identity in particularthe
role educators play in the lives of their students will continue to fade. Why do so many of our
students feel that life is incomprehensible and devoid of meaning? What does it mean, teachers
wonder, when young people are unable to describe their moods, their affective affiliation to
the society around them. Meanings provided young people by mainstream institutions often
do little to help them deal with their affective complexity, their difficulty negotiating the
rift between meaning and affect. School knowledge and educational expectations seem as
anachronistic as a ditto machine, not that learning ways of rational thought and making
sense of the world are unimportant.
But school knowledge and educational expectations often have little to offer students
about making sense of the way they feel, the way their affective lives are shaped. In no way
do we argue that analysis of the production of youth in an electronic mediated world
demands some touchy-feely educational superficiality. What is needed in this context is a
rigorous analysis of the interrelationship between pedagogy, popular culture, meaning making,
and youth subjectivity. In an era marked by youth depression, violence, and suicide such
insights become extremely important, even life saving. Pessimism about the future is the
common sense of many contemporary youth with its concomitant feeling that no one can
make a difference.
If affective production can be shaped to reflect these perspectives, then it can be reshaped
to lay the groundwork for optimism, passionate commitment, and transformative educational
and political activity. In these ways cultural studies adds a dimension to the work of
education unfilled by any other sub-discipline. This is what Transgressions: Cultural Studies
and Education seeks to produceliterature on these issues that makes a difference. It seeks
to publish studies that help those who work with young people, those individuals involved in
the disciplines that study children and youth, and young people themselves improve their
lives in these bizarre times.

Re-Symbolization of the Self

Human Development and Tarot Hermeneutic
Inna Semetsky
University of Newcastle, Australia

SENSE PUBLISHERS
ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6091-419-5 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-94-6091-420-1 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6091-421-8 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers,

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3001 AW Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
www.sensepublishers.com

Printed on acid-free paper

Cover: The White Bird, artist Michail Grobman. Painting, gouache on

paper, 1987.
Reproduced with the artists permission.
and:
Illustrations of Tarot pictures are from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck.
Reproduced by permission of US Games Systems Inc., Stamford, CT, USA.
1971 US Games Systems, Inc. Further reproduction prohibited.

All Rights Reserved 2011 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
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for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments.................................................................................................. vii
1. Why this Book? ................................................................................................. 1
2. Doing Bricolage .............................................................................................. 11
3. Myths and Reality ........................................................................................... 23
4. Human Experience and Tarot Symbolism....................................................... 33
5. Personality and Consciousness........................................................................ 49
6. Gilles Deleuze: Learning from the Unconscious............................................. 61
7. Tarot and Projective Hypothesis...................................................................... 73
8. Stories Lives Tell............................................................................................. 85
Case 1. Michael........................................................................................... 86
Case 2. Lola................................................................................................. 91
Case 3. Omar............................................................................................... 96
Case 4. Sam................................................................................................. 99
Case 5. Lina............................................................................................... 103
Case 6. Marina .......................................................................................... 106
Case 7. Renata........................................................................................... 110
Case 8. Pam............................................................................................... 114
Case 9. Ross .............................................................................................. 117
Case 10. Donna ........................................................................................... 121
Case 11. Tess............................................................................................... 125
Case 12. Cathy ............................................................................................ 128
Case 13. Rodney ......................................................................................... 132
Case 14. Gordana ........................................................................................ 137
Case 15. Anita ............................................................................................. 141
9. The Cultural Pedagogy of Tarot .................................................................... 145
10. Tarot and a New Science............................................................................... 157
Appendix: Questionnaire ..................................................................................... 169
Bibliography......................................................................................................... 173
Index .................................................................................................................... 179

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to Shirley R. Steinberg and Michel Lokhorst

for making the intangible idea of this book a reality. I am grateful for the editorial
assistance of Proof This in Melbourne, Australia, during the writing process. I wish
to thank the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle, Australia
for the 5 months special study period in 2010 that allowed me to lead this project to
completion. I am immensely grateful to Nel Noddings whose remarkable scholarship
and care remain a source of intellectual inspiration and emotional support for a
number of my research efforts. Last but not least my thanks go to my sons David
and Eugene and to my colleague Roger.

vii

CHAPTER 1

WHY THIS BOOK?

This book originated as an action-research project conducted between 1992 and

1994 under the auspices of the California Board of Behavioral Sciences when I was a
postgraduate student enrolled in the Masters of Arts degree program in the area of
Marriage, Family and Child Counseling and Human Development at Pacific Oaks
College in Pasadena. Unbeknown to me at the time, my study was to be a type of
research analogous to what Jungian scholar Robert Romanyshyn will have called more
than a decade later research with soul in mind (Romanyshyn, 2007). Yet back then in
1992 I was not only ten years away from the subject matter of my future doctorate
in the area of philosophy of education and cultural studies, but also quite undecided
on the topic of my Masters thesis that was eventually to be called Introduction of
Tarot readings into clinical psychotherapy: a naturalistic inquiry.
Interestingly enough, and once again in accordance with Romanyshyns imaginal
approach, my topic was about to choose me rather than the other way around!
Referring to the imaginal, Romanyshyn emphasizes the role of this third dimension
between the senses and the intellect as enabling an embodied way of being in
the world within the context of complex mind reaching into the whole of nature. It
was Henry Corbin who coined the imaginal world Mundus Imaginalis or mundus
archetypus, the archetypal world as a distinct order of reality corresponding to a
distinct mode of perception in contrast to purely imaginary as the unreal or just
utopian. Yet, it is our cognitive function enriched with imagination that provides
access to the imaginal world with a rigor of knowledge specified as knowing by
analogy.
The method of analogy that mystics around the world have practiced for centuries
defies the privileged role allotted to the conscious subject that observes the
surrounding world of objects from which he is forever detached with the cool
scientific gaze of an independent spectator so as to obtain a certain and indubitable
knowledge, or episteme.
Mystics and poets (from whom Plato used to withhold academic status) historically
played a participatory, embodied role in the relational network that forms an
interdependent holistic fabric with the world thus overcoming the separation between
subject and object. This dualistic split has been haunting us since the time of Descartes,
confining us to what Corbin calls the banal dualism of matter versus spirit.
As for the socialization of consciousness, it pretends to resolve the dilemma
by making, according to Corbin, a fatal choice: either myth or historical reality.
Either facts or fiction! This book avoids the binary fatality of either/or choice: we
will see in Chapter 3 that Tarot renders itself to explication in both mythical and
real historic, cultural, terms.
1

CHAPTER 1

The sociological dimension is significant: Philip Wexler (1996, 2000, 2008),

pointing out the current importance of religion and spirituality for socio-cultural
life, ascribed the status of symbolic movement to sociology of education that aims
to bring spirituality to secular, long-disenchanted and alienated, contexts so as to
satisfy their hunger for meaning.
Wexler emphasizes an approach from within long-standing religious tradition
and focuses specifically on Jewish mysticism. He calls for the broad-scale
revitalizationof the culture of modernity, a re-articulation of ancient religious
traditions, andthe anti-institutional, but religiously-oriented movements of everyday
life that we often referred to as instances and heralds of a new age (Wexler,
2008, p. 9).
I share with Wexler his conviction that our present postmodern age calls for
revision of the pre-modern traditions of theory, interpretation and understanding
and especially in terms of following the new agetendency [by means of] opening
the reservoir of the cultural resources of traditional, religious understanding
[in] mystical, experiential and spiritual aspects: from Hinduism, Tantra; from Islam,
Sufism; from Christianity, mysticism; from Judaism, Kabbalah and Hasidism
(Wexler, 2008, p. 10).
This book will not only have added Tarot as a spiritual, both metaphysical and
practical, system to Wexlers list of multicultural traditions but will focus specifically
on Tarot hermeneutic or on the art of, using the term from popular culture, Tarot
readings. Etymologically, the Greek words hermeneuein and hermeneia for interpreting and interpretation are related to the mythic god Hermes, a messenger and
mediator between gods and mortals, who crosses the thresholds and traverses the
boundaries because he can speak and understand both languages, the divine
and the human, even if they appear totally alien to each other.
As a practical method, Tarot hermeneutic allows us to relate to something
essentially other but nevertheless understandable, knowable and, ultimately,
known. The relation thus established between the generic Self and Other in
our real practical life is significant and has both epistemological and ontological
implications. The dimension of the foremost importance is however ethical,
considering that we live in a time of the multiculturalism and globalization when
different values appear incommensurable and continuously compete, conflict,
and clash!
In our current global climate permeated by diverse beliefs, disparate values,
and cultural conflicts, understanding ourselves and others and learning to share
each others values is paramount for the survival of our species. This requires an
expansion of our consciousness using all available means, including the knowledge
of the symbolic language of Tarot pictures that are worth more, as the saying goes,
than many thousands of words. Classical Russian author Ivan Turgenev pointed out
that a picture shows at a glance what it can take dozens of pages of a book to
expound. Without making grand metaphysical claims concerning Tarot, this book will
focus on its practical side as comprising my empirical research data. Yet, important
theoretical stepping stones will be laid down through chapter 1 to chapter 7 to ground
the empirical data that will be presented in minute detail in chapter 8. Chapter 8
2

WHY THIS BOOK

will comprise the fifteen actual Tarot readings that have been documented as
constituting the core of my research and published with the written consent of all
participants.
So, coming back to 1992, I remember the day when I took the NovemberDecember issue of The California Therapist out of my mailbox and my eyes fell
on the letter to the editor. The author of the letter was interested in learning of
other professionals who were encountering in their practice people who were more
interested in learning about their past lives and going to psychics, as the author put
it, rather than discussing their parents and more recent childhood. The author felt
that she and other therapists working with quite a number of new age clients
needed more publicity.
When I read the letter written by a qualified mental health professional and
published in a respected professional periodical, my first feeling was that of belonging.
Wow! I am not alone in my pursuits! At that stage, being a postgraduate student,
I did not widely publicize the fact that I was a Tarot reader. Yet the very fact of
being a reader is what originally motivated me to want to become a professional
counselor and to invest my time, money, mind and soul into the intensive research
culminating in the book you are now reading.
Many years ago, eager to listen to anyone who would have provided any
guidance to me in my seemingly vicious circle of then current life-tasks, problems
and issues, I turned to readers. Nothing seemed to help, and I found myself going
from crisis to crisis and losing the thread of connection with not only the external
world but myself as well. Moving from one counseling room to another, I did not
feel understood, and more and more doubts about my own integrity started to
occupy my mind, further contributing to the loss of that connection, that fragile
link, which enables one to know oneself.
It was the ancient Know Thyself maxim that was inscribed on the temple of
Apollo at Delphi and, as philosopher of education Nel Noddings (2006) reminds
us, still remains the necessary, even if often disregarded, goal of education. It was
the quest for meanings and evaluation of life-experience an examined versus
unexamined life that Socrates was calling for.
Noddings is adamant about the importance of self-knowledge as the very core of
education: when we claim to educate, we must take Socrates seriously. Unexamined
lives may well be valuable and worth living, but an education that does not invite
such examination may not be worthy of the label education (Noddings, 2006, p. 10,
italics in original). Still more often than not education is equated with formal
schooling (for children) or perpetual training (for adults) thus a priori marginalizing
the realm of lifelong human development and experiential learning situated amidst
real-life situations.
For me, such an informal or, rather, post-formal (Steinberg, Kincheloe, and
Hinchey, 1999) education grounded in an existing cultural practice began when,
on the verge of despair, I found myself sitting opposite a man who was a genuine
Tarot reader. It was his reading that precipitated a catharsis: something that subconsciously I did not want to know or accept, that was repressed and stored away
in my unconscious mind and thus not dealt with, was brought to my awareness,
3

CHAPTER 1

then explored and discussed by my reader and me, becoming in this process a
meaningful reality.
I left that reading session fully aware that I had to deal with the emergent
information as this new knowledge was me, my selfhood that so far has been
denied, displaced, or sublimated. This process of informal guidance by means of
a Tarot reading, that transgressed the boundaries between education and therapy,
facilitated a process of development and personal transformation. This developmental, at once healing and learning, process is still going on, and in this quest I was
and still am accompanied by the wonderful world of Tarot: I became a reader, in
the parlance of popular culture. Or, in terms of academic discourse, a bilingual
interpreter who can translate the language of the unconscious, projected in the
array of Tarot pictures (chapter 7), into verbal expressions; and I consider this one
of the richest and most liberating experiences a person can have in life.
The word education derives from Latin educare that means to lead out as well as
to bring out something that is within. The word therapy derives from the Greek
therapeia in terms of human service to those who need it. Education and counseling
alike involve either implicit or explicit inquiry into the nature of the self and selfother relations. Carol Witherell notices that, ideally, each professional activity
furthers anothers capacity to find meaning and integrity (1991, p. 84) in lived
experience. Importantly both practices are designed to change or guide human
lives (Witherell, 1991, p. 84).
In the area of human development, which is the focus of this book, the rigid
boundaries between those apparently separate, in the contemporary context, disciplines
of education and therapy become blurred: both are oriented to creating meanings
for our experience that includes the realm of the yet unknown and unconscious.
The role of unconscious learning has been systematically addressed by the Australian
higher educator Marian de Souza (2008, 2009) especially as a means for focusing
on emotional and spiritual intelligence grounded in the processes of feeling and
intuiting (de Souza, 2009, p. 681) in the combined context of education and
mental health.
Tarot hermeneutic provides an unorthodox epistemic access to the realm of the
unconscious analogous to Carl Gustav Jungs analytical or depth psychology, to be
addressed in chapter 2, when the effects of the archetypal dynamics comprising the
field of the collective unconscious a theoretical construct posited by Jung is
analyzed in practice. Jungs biographer Laurens van der Post, in his introduction to
Sallie Nichols book Jung and Tarot: An archetypal journey notices her contribution
to analytical psychology by virtue of the profound investigation of Tarot, and her
illuminated exegesis of its pattern as an authentic attempt at enlargement of
possibilities of human perceptions (in Nichols, 1980, p. xv).
Contemporary post-Jungian scholar Andrew Samuels mentions systems such as
that of the I Ching, Tarot and astrology (Samuels, 1985, p. 123) as possible even
if questionable resources in analytical psychology, and quotes Jung who wrote in
1945: I found the I Ching very interestingI have not used it for more than two
years now, feeling that one must learn to walk in the dark, or try to discover (as
when one is learning to swim) whether the water will carry one (p. 123). Irene Gad
4

WHY THIS BOOK

connected Tarot pictures with the stages of human development in the context of
Kabbalistic teachings and alongside the Jungian process of individuation towards
becoming authentic selves. She considered their archetypal images to betrigger
symbols, appearing and disappearing throughout history in times of transition and
need (1994, p. xxxiv). Such historical and socio-cultural value of Tarot hermeneutic
in the context of collective not solely individual, but social consciousness will
be addressed in Chapter 9.
This book will demonstrate that Tarot, as an existing, albeit marginal, cultural
practice traditionally located at the low end of popular culture, plays a significant
role in the process of self-formation or construction of human subjectivity, thus
becoming a means for the re-symbolization of the Self. Philip Wexler introduced
the concept resymbolization as focused on the collective symbolic or cultural
work (1996, p. 115; italics in original) constituting a process of cultural, societal
change due to the reinterpretation of human subjectivity as grounded in the interactive dynamics of relationality (Wexler, 1996, p. 115) especially as it pertains to
Jewish mystical teachings, Kabbalah, which is literally translated as Tradition. It is
a relation as ontologically basic (versus an isolated and self-centered moral agent)
that is also central to Nel Noddings ethics of care in education.
Hasidic philosopher Martin Buber, whose concepts were instrumental for
Noddings, referred to the wordless depths [when we] experience an undivided
unity (1971, p. 24; brackets mine) between the two people at the soul-level in the
form of the famous I-Thou relation. These depths are filled not with words but with
images, and the task of this book is to elucidate the images, to articulate them, to
appreciate their role in the re-symbolization of the relational Self at both individual
and collective levels.
For Buber, it is the lived world that engenders the personality of a particular
individual. It is the world comprising the whole environment, both natural and
social, that educates the human being: it draws out his powers and makes him
grasp and penetrate its objections (Buber, 1971, p. 89). Buber deliberately puts
the word educate in quotation marks to distinguish his new mode of the relational,
shared, erotic educational experience from the old one-sided model based on
the will to power and authority that neglects experiencing the other side (p. 96).
It is the integrative dynamics between self and other, between consciousness
and the unconscious, between I and Thou that constitutes an element of inclusion
comprising education in which educator is set in the midst of the service
(p. 103).
A relational, integrative approach is also a formidable Zeitgest in the area of
another human service profession, that of psychological counseling and therapy
(Corey, 1991). In the early 90s, Corey has been already advocating an integrative
perspective taking into consideration therapists willingness to look into the expansion
of their own outlook and into possibility of widening the range of techniques to
accommodate a diverse population. Including rapprochement, convergence, and
integration in the psychotherapeutic Zeitgeist, Corey envisaged that the current
Zeitgeistwill continue with this trend toward convergence and integration and
that there will also be an increased emphasis on a spiritual perspective (p. 429).
5

CHAPTER 1

Michael Murphy (1993) also called for the integral practices that encompass a
wide variety of domains in human nature in a comprehensive way; including
somatic, affective, cognitive, volitional and, importantly, transpersonal dimensions.
Edward Whitmont (1985), in the context of post-Jungian practices of psychotherapy,
pointed out that solely verbal or reflective methods may not be sufficient. Acknowledging the limitations of just talking therapy, he emphasized that the development
of psychic awareness achieved a new quality in terms of a novel relation to spiritual
meaning. Whitmont pointed out a new developmental phase in the evolution of
consciousness that demands a broader scope of awareness encompassing but not
reducible to intellect alone.
Understanding that human consciousness undergoes evolution, growth, and
expansion is an important premise in the present approaches to education for
spirituality, care and wellbeing (De Souza, M., Francis, L., OHiggins-Norman, J.,
and D. Scott, 2009; Gidley, 2009). Jean Gebser, a French polymath, referred to
the evolution of human consciousness in terms of its intensification by means of
progressively going though the archaic, mythic, magic, and mental structures to
be finally superseded by the integral consciousness, which will have incorporated
a spiritual dimension. Gebser pointed out that mythical bards like Homer are
represented as being blind because their task was not to observe the visible world with
the organ of sight, the eye, but to use insight, a sight turned inward to contemplate
the inner images of the soul (Gebser, 1991, p. 271). It is an insight into the meanings
of Tarot images, as this book will demonstrate, that leads to intensification, expansion,
and re-symbolization of consciousness.
Another memory comes to mind. It is summer of 1993. I am busy working in
my clinical internship in West Hollywood. The client population in the area, and
accordingly in the agency I am working for, consists of mostly gay men. I am having
a counseling session with John, in his thirties, and HIV positive. We are discussing
his outbursts of sudden anger in the relationship with his live-in boyfriend, when
abruptly John switches the issue: I saw my spiritual guru yesterday, he says.
She said she didnt see a speck of death in me.
The impact of that phrase on me, and the timing of it, was like a turning point.
It brought a paradigm shift in my professional relationship with John. The
session became illuminated by what was of paramount importance, significance
and value in Johns painful and uncertain internal world. It redistributed the
weights of issues he was overwhelmed with. It indicated that John was reaching
out to whoever could understand his hopes and fears, acknowledge them, reflect
back and help him in working through his problems. It happened to be his
spiritual guru who cared about him and was able to provide him with the necessary
reassurance.
This emotional desire as the longing to be cared foris manifested as a need for
love, physical care, respect or mere recognition [and] is the fundamental starting
point for the ethics of care (Noddings, 1998, p. 188). Such was Johns internal
subjective reality and this reality was addressed and mirrored in his spiritual quest.
I began to wonder about the ambiguity of my professional role in this situation: what
response or intervention could I, in my capacity as a counselor, provide in agreement
6

WHY THIS BOOK

with the framework of the behavioral-cognitive approach advocated by the agency

I was working for?
What could one do within the limitations of a solely cognitive orientation
aiming to behavior modification for this particular person whose initial assessment,
according to his intake form, indicated an early stage of dementia? Desperate and
overwhelmed by the turn of events in his personal experience, he turned to somebody
outside this formal counseling room, to somebody he perceived as a spiritual guru.
My immediate feeling was: if only I could introduce into our counseling sessions a
spiritual dimension and specifically by means of Tarot readings John may very
well benefit! At the very least his world view, which obviously included spiritual
aspects, would be validated; at the very best, the meanings of the events in his life
and the value of his personal experience, however tragic, would become open to
his awareness.
Slowly the idea emerged. Nothing should prevent an existing phenomenon from
becoming the subject of inquiry. The phenomenon of Tarot readings does exist; the
shelves in the bookstores are crowded with popular publications; there are more
than two hundred and fifty various decks available. There is a variety of advertising in
popular media. TV channels have their own psychic networks; yet all of this
exists mainly at the level of popular culture.
As noticed by Emily Auger (2004) in her research on Tarot and other meditation
decks in the context of aesthetics, Tarot decks represent a popular, or low, rather
than high art forms such as painting, architecture, or sculpture. Yet, it is Tarot
that was to become the subject matter of my postgraduate research in the area of
behavioral sciences, thus transgressing the borders between popular and academic
cultures. Similar to Robert Romanyshyns wounded researcher (Romanyshyn,
2007) I was ready to step into the untapped unconscious field and to explore the
many wounds underlying our perceptions and judgments.
There was no aim to prove or disprove anything, to qualify or disqualify, to
compare or contrast. This study grew out of a desire to bring light to the often
misunderstood realm of Tarot which is so much richer and valuable than its reductive
popular role as a fortune-telling device, yet which is more often than not considered
as such. The main objective of my study was, is, and will remain, the wellbeing
of those who are seeking Tarot counsel.
A Tarot deck consists of seventy-eight pictorial cards, or Arcana. The meaning
of Arcana (or Arcanum, singular) is that creative, but often missing, element in our
lives, which is necessary to know, to discover in experience so as to be fruitful and
creative in our approach to multiple life-tasks situated in the midst of experiential
situations, events and our complex relationships with others. If and when discovered
that is, made available to consciousness it becomes a powerful motivational force
to facilitate a change for the better at our emotional, cognitive or behavioral levels
and thus to accomplish an important ethical objective.
What is called a Tarot layout or spread is a particular pattern of the picturesque
cards with a variety of images that are full of rich symbolism. Each position in the
sequence of pictures constituting a particular layout has some specific connotations
that will be addressed in detail in chapters 7 and 8. Tarot pictorial symbolism
7

CHAPTER 1

embodies intellectual, moral, and spiritual lessons derived from collective human
experiences across times, places and cultures.
As such, Tarot speaks in a mythic format of symbols, the metaphorical
universal language full of deep, even if initially opaque, meanings. The interpretation of Tarot images and pictures indicates a specific hermeneutic, composed
from the juxtaposition of disparate elements, [or] what Freud called pictographic
(Grumet, 1991, p. 75). As a symbolic system of reading and interpretation, Tarot is
oriented toward the discovery of meanings for the multiplicity of experiences that
would have otherwise appeared to lack meaning and significance. Thus the readings
necessarily honor the spontaneity, complexity and ambiguity of human experience
(p. 67).
The educational function derives from the holistic dimension embedded in
experience that transcends the dualistic mind-body split and the scope of which
expands to also incorporate the spiritual, transpersonal, domain. We thus acquire a
better ability for self-reflection, self-knowledge, and a sense of value, purpose and
meaningfulness of our experiences. Importantly we achieve a better understanding
of what may appear to be the otherwise irresolvable moral dilemmas and which
subsequently leads to the choice of right action and developing a better-informed,
intelligent, decision-making ability.
In their monumental study, Crawford and Rossiter (2006) equate young peoples
search for meaning, identity and spirituality with their very reasons for living and
point out that
meaning and identity are the same psychological reality looked at from
different perspectives. From the viewpoint of meaning, it is an explanation of
individual intentionality. From the viewpoint of identity, it is the individuals
distinctive self-understanding and self-expression (p. 33)
Noticing the link between the search for meaning, personal identity and spirituality,
Crawford and Rossiter suggest that teachers should help their students to look on
their experience of education with a greater sense of its value (2006, p. 321).
It is a noble task, indeed, but it should be performed by teachers equipped with
at least an equal if not greater sense of value and meaning of their own professional
practice and their own personal development in terms of what Jung called selfeducation (chapter 2). Nel Noddings (2002) keeps reminding us that the aim of
moral, holistic, education is to contribute to the continuous education of both
students and teachers, in the dynamics between selves and others embedded in the
caring relation.
The attitude of care (Noddings, 1991, p. 161) is characterized by the presence
of attention or engrossment and is especially significant in the context of Tarot.
Noddings refers to the story of the Holy Grail as told by Simone Weil (1951):
In the first legend of the Grail, it is said that the Grailbelongs to the first
comer who asks the guardian of the vessel, a king three quarters paralyzed
by the most painful wound, What are you going through? It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled unfortunate, but as a man, exactly
8

WHY THIS BOOK

like us. This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself
of its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at,
just as he is, in all his truth. Only he who is capable of attention can do this
(p. 115).
Yet, John was not asked the question, What are you going through? within the
agencys behavior-modification approach. Nor that he would have been able to
consciously answer this straightforward question anyway or wanted to engage in
an explicit dialogue so as to intentionally share his pain and suffering with me. The
counseling sessions under the adage of behavioral modification of the agency were
supposed to instruct John to not get into arguments with his boyfriend. Johns
referring to a conversation with his spiritual guru was an indication that he was
looking for an alternative way to be cared for, to get attention especially because
the probability of his early passing was his very reality.
To connect with the Other at the soul level means to connect via corpus subtile
the subtle, spiritual, body of emotions and feelings that are so often difficult to
articulate precisely because they are buried deep in the unconscious, in the psyche.
Their expressive language exceeds and spills over the limitations of our conscious
discourse. It is the Tarot hermeneutic as the metaphorical, symbolic, quest for the
Holy Grail that helps us in articulating what otherwise betrays words. This takes
place because of the symbols functioning to bring the unconscious wounds and
pains to the level of cognitive awareness, therefore engaging with the psyche and
making it whole, healing it.
The psyche becomes filled with the new meanings of experiences and the acquired
sense of not only interpersonal connection but, ultimately, spiritual communion.
The plurality of evolving meanings express themselves indirectly, in symbolic
form, and symbols act as transformers capable of raising the unconscious contents
to the level of consciousness, therefore ultimately performing what Jung called the
transcendent function when the implicit meanings become explicit by virtue of
becoming conscious and by being perceived (Jung in Pauli, 1994, p. 159).
The readings described in chapter 8 of this book were conducted in the spirit of
what Jean Watson (1985) called, in the area of nurse education, the occasions of
caring. Noddings explains that the occasions of caring constitute the moments
when nurse and patient, or teacher and student, meet and must decide what to do
with the moment, what to share, which needs to express, or whether to remain silent.
This encounter needs to be a guiding spirit of what we do in education (Noddings,
1991, p. 168); such a guiding, relational and caring, spirit ontologically preeminent
in Tarot hermeneutic.
Referring to a hermeneutic lag [as] a poor reading of cultural tendencies
(Wexler, 1996, p. 5) that have become frozen in the dominant structures of the
over-rationalization of knowledge, Wexler calls for the cultural, theoretical, and
educational renaissance. His intent is to gather the holy sparks of the Kabbalistic
creation myth told in the mystical Judaism as the vital residue of an uncontainable
supernal light [that] remain glowing in the dross of fragments of worldly vessels unable to contain them. So it is withreinterpret[ing] ancient traditions in contemporary
fields of thought. We have some glimmering, but only within the prevailing cover
9

CHAPTER 1

of opaque and limiting fragments. What I hope foris an opening toward those
premodern traditions, and their inspirational sparks. (Wexler, 1996, p. 113)
To reclaim the divine sparks at the level of human cultural practices is a
challenge that this book intends to meet. The restored light as the central metaphor
will have contributed not to the over-rational Enlightenment of modernity but to a
postmodern spiritual Illumination that would defy pessimism and the frequent
fatalistic resignation currently permeating individual and collective consciousness,
locally and globally.
In the remarkable book Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief, Nel Noddings
(1993a) comments that some of the new age criticism appears superficial and
lacks the intelligence (p. 39) which she encourages in her work. Noddings points
out that this type of education will put great emphasis on self-knowledge that
must come to grips with the emotional and spiritual as well as the intellectual and
psychological (p. xiv). Analogously I encourage an intelligent and open attitude in
the book you are going to read.
Furthermore, you will discover that Tarot hermeneutic paves a road toward such
expanded self-knowledge and that using Tarot symbolic system as an educational
and counseling aid enables us to learn from life-experiences hence becoming
able to acquire intelligence and wisdom, indeed urged by Noddings. Philip Wexler
suggested that many of the assumptions underlying the new age culture should be
deeply deconstructed into the ancient core religious traditions from which they
perform their bricolage. The next chapter 2 will focus on the notion of bricolage
per se as constituting a theory-practice nexus in which the Tarot hermeneutic is
embedded.

10

CHAPTER 2

DOING BRICOLAGE

Addressing a significant role in the process of identity-formation of post-formal

education and cultural pedagogy, Kincheloe (2005; 2008; also Kincheloe and Berry,
2005) conceptualized bricolage as drawing from multiple theoretical and methodological resources, including hermeneutics, phenomenology, and narratology, while
retaining the rigor of the best critical thought. The term bricolage was coined by
French anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss (1966) with regard to spontaneous human
action grounded in the characteristic patterns of mythological thinking and in the
context of structuralism defined as the search for the underlying patterns of thought
in all forms of human activity. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari referred to the
bricolage as a schizoanalytic (1972), transgressive, mode of production.
Deleuzes post-structuralist philosophy, which has been inspirational for expanding
the range of qualitative methods in educational research (St. Pierre, 1997a, 1997b)
and has made a significant contribution to educational theory (Semetsky, 2006;
2008), will be addressed in detail in chapter 6 as it pertains to Tarot hermeneutic.
A bricoleur constructs the object of study paying particular attention to the webs of
relationships, processes, and interconnections among phenomena within which he
himself is situated.
For Kincheloe, doing bricolage involves marginalized practices and the development of transgressive conceptual tools as well as exploring the breadth and wealth
of typically underestimated human cognitive capacities. A bricoleur embedded
in phenomenology of lived experience acts as the first explorer to discover new
territories, trying new strategies, and opening new avenues for research while aiming
to help people in reshaping their lives. While hermeneutics came to connote the
ambiguity of meanings, the bricolage implies the fictive and imaginative elements
present in research methodologies.
From this perspective, Tarot hermeneutic represents the work of a bricoleur.
A bricoleur a genuine Tarot reader makes a creative and resourceful use of
the material at hand that is, the images and symbols on Tarot pictures. My
research was grounded in the broad material provided within the framework of Carl
Gustav Jungs analytical, or depth, psychology. As for the empirical data presented
in chapter 8, they were grounded in naturalistic inquiry employing both phenomenology and hermeneutics.
The essential identity of human experiences reflected in worldwide myths and
folklore led Jung to postulate the existence of the collective unconscious as objective
psyche, which is shared at the deepest level by all members of humankind and
manifests itself through archetypal, symbolic and latent, images. Jung called the
deepest level psychoid and asserted that it is at this level where, in a holistic manner,
11

CHAPTER 2

body and mind, physis and psyche, become united as two different aspects of one
world, Unus Mundus.
The archetypes underlying our subjective perceptions and judgements are
located at the unitary level of objective reality that transcends both the human
mind and the external physical world. Jungs great achievement was his antidualistic and unifying approach to what we today call human sciences. He insisted
on the multiplicity of inner, spiritual, meanings for the unconscious that would
have exceeded its overt, even if latent, meaning posited by Freud as merely
repressed.
These deep evolving meanings express themselves through archetypal images
that act as symbolic transformers capable of making unconscious contents manifest
at the level of conscious awareness. Archetype is seen by Jung as a skeletal pattern,
filled in with imagery and motifs that are mediated to us by the unconscious (Jung,
CW 8, 417), the variable contents of which form different archetypal images. In his
memoirs, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, reflecting on his own development as an
adult and on his own second half of life, Jung said that the years when he was
pursuing his inner images were the most important in his life; it is via images that
the essential decisions were made.
The unconscious is capable of spontaneously producing images irrespective of
wishes and fears of the conscious mind (Jung, CW 11, 745). Typos, as the composite
of the archetype, means imprint, stamp or pattern. As the multiplicity of dynamic
patterns acting in the collective unconscious, archetypes exist in potentia and are
beckoned forth by our experiences. The unconscious archetypes [as] structural
elements of the psyche possess a certain autonomy and specific energy which
enables them to attract, out of the conscious mind, those contents which are better
suited to themselves (Jung, CW 5, 232), thus helping us achieve much wider
scope of awareness than rational thinking, in terms of solely cognitive reasoning
deprived of what Jung called feeling-tones, is capable of providing.
The actualized archetypes are charged with psychic or spiritual energy, exceeding
Freuds solely sexual libido. For Jung, psychic energy is a very fastidious thing
which insists on fulfilment of its own conditions (Jung, CW 7, 76). Archetypes
reside in the dynamic field of the collective unconscious and form an unorthodox
virtual foundation upon which many individual real-life experiences lay down their
own structures. Multiple combinations of innumerable experiences the constellations of the actualized archetypes produce diverse archetypal images that manifest
overtly through their effects at the level of the body in the form of particular
behavioral unconscious patterns.
The activity of archetypal dynamics determines where an individual stands
within the process of individuation, the goal of which, for Jung, is the achievement
of a greater personality culminating in the Self, the archetype of wholeness. Wholeness as the integration of the unconscious into consciousness is marked by a change
of attitude when the centre of the personality shifts its position from the Ego to
the Self. We will see the unfoldment of archetypal dynamics in real-life individual
experiences expressed by the constellations of Tarot pictures in chapter 8 as symbolic
stopovers in the individuation process. We will also see the elements pertaining to
12

DOING BRICOLAGE

the change in attitude and the connection of the latter with the individual ability to
learn from her experience.
Individuation as an analytic and healing, therapeutic, process was defined by Jung
in terms of self-education during which both unconscious and conscious aspects of
life-experiences become integrated. Jung was explicit that education should not be
confined to schools nor should education stop when a child grows up. Presenting
his depth psychology as a method of/for self-education, Jung (1954) was adamant
that self-knowledge remains an indispensable basis of adult self-education and
emphasized an indirect method for attaining such inner self-knowledge by means
of its symbolic mediation in the analytic process:
There aremany extremely psychic processes which are unconscious, or
only indirectly consciousthere is something as impersonal as a product
of nature that enables us to know the truth about ourselves Of the unconscious we can learn nothing directly, but indirectly we can perceive the
effects that come into consciousness (Jung, 1954, p. 49).
To bring the multiple, and often painful, effects of the unconscious processes into
our consciousness is the task of depth psychology and Tarot hermeneutic alike.
While human development potentially tends toward the Self, this archetype is fully
actualized only when the unconscious becomes completely integrated into consciousness. We will encounter multiple archetypes of transformation in the series of
images of the Major Arcana in chapter 4.
Human development engenders itself via the symbolism of the pictures as the
expressions of the unconscious that precedes and exceeds the verbal expressions
of the conscious mind: it is not the personal human being who is making the
statement, but the archetype speaking through him (Jung, 1963, p. 352). Jung
asserted that the real communication becomes possible when the conscious Ego
acknowledges the existence of an unconscious partner. It is through a symbolic
dialogue with this virtual partner represented by the archetype of the Self, which is
present only implicitly, in potentia yet will have been actualized during the journey
through the constellation of Tarot images that we can achieve this critical level of
self-knowledge that forms a threshold for self-education and manifests in the
individuation process.
When I started my project in the early 1990s, Jungs depth psychology as the
analysis of the unconscious has existed not only just on the margins amidst many
theoretical orientations in clinical or counselling practice but also was rather foreign
to mainstream educational discourse. It is only recently that several pioneering
studies (for example, Neville, 2005; Main, 2008; Mayes, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007;
Semetsky, in press) have focused on the implicit value of Jungs analytical psychology for the field of education as a powerful complement to its therapeutic value,
crossing the boundaries between two disciplines, both oriented toward development
and individuation and blurring therefore the absolute line of division between
pedagogical and clinical aspects.
Robert Romanyshyn (in press) addresses Jungian psychology as a mode of
ethical pedagogy and showcases a Jungian classroom modeled on the paradigm of
13

CHAPTER 2

The Wounded Researcher (Romanyshyn, 2007). Undercutting the Cartesian dream

of reason, Romanyshyn weaves together phenomenology, hermeneutics and Jungs
psychology so as to analyze the unconscious dynamics between a teacher and a
student as leading to ethical ways of knowing and being. Romanyshyn points out
that educators indeed have an ethical obligation to take responsibility for their own
unconscious prejudices that form complex characters implicit in the transference
field in a classroom as a deep unconscious connection arising in a genuine relationship.
Laura Huxley, the widow of the famous author and herself an Honorary Doctor
of Human Services and recipient of the World Health Foundation for Development
Peace Prize in 1990, was asked whether she had found any psychological techniques
to be especially valuable or whether the success of a particular method varies for
different persons (Brown and Novick, 1993). Her answer was that, despite many
existing techniques being effective in the hands of a capable practitioner, the most
important factor remains the relationship between the guide and the client. From
this standpoint, the relationship per se as developed with fifteen participants in my
study became a significant therapeutic and pedagogical component. Some of my
participants have benefited from even a single session, as will be seen from their
feedback; some, however, were not yet ready for a therapeutic change.
The effect of any session depends on many factors, a particular modality being
only one of several. I always follow these timeless guidelines (Paul, 1967): what
method, by whom, is the most effective for this particular individual with this specific
problem and under what set of particular circumstances. However the multiple
what and this are being conveyed in Tarot hermeneutic with clarity and accuracy so
as to ensure a professional and ethical approach.
I agree with Romanyshyn that we have to master metaphors in other words, to
become bricoleurs in our very practice, and that education understood as ethical
should become a vocation oriented towards human development, that is, bringing
up individuated and caring human beings who can take up the universal conditions
of human existence in a manner that is transformative both of themselves and
also of those very existential conditions. In order to fulfil Romanyshyns intent to
cultivate a special, even if uncertain, metaphorical sensibility so as to lead us out of
linear and literal ways of thinking, we should learn to read and interpret the metaphorical pictorial language spoken by Tarot images that represent this extra,
imaginal, dimension of real, both actual and potential, human experiences.
Jung observed that a relationship situated in the transference field between an
analyst and analysand can lead to parapsychological phenomena (Bolen, 1979,
p. 33), I Ching and Tarot notwithstanding. As existential psychologist Rollo May
stated, therapists cut themselves off from a great deal of reality if they do not
leave themselves open to other way of communication that human reason (1991,
p. 163). Freud pointed out that a relationship developed in psychoanalysis at times
comes close to a telepathic connection; and Jungs intuition during dream analysis
in his analytical practice bordered on being psychic (Bolen, 1979, p. 13).
A renowned Tarot author Mary Greer1 comments that Jung wrote in one of his
letters, Yes, I know of the Tarot. It is, as far as I know, the pack of cards originally
14

DOING BRICOLAGE

used by the Spanish gypsies and has referred to Tarot cards as the descendants
from the archetypes of transformation. Importantly, for Jung,
The symbolic process is an experience in images and of images. Its development usually shows an enantiodromian structure like the text of the I Ching
Its beginning ischaracterized by ones getting stuck in a blind alley or in
some impossible situation and its goal is, broadly speaking, illumination of
higher consciousness, by means of which the initial situation is overcome
(Jung, CW 9i, 82).
The term enantiodromia (from the Greek enantios, opposite + dromos, running
course) has been used by Jung to refer to the unconscious acting against the wishes
of the conscious mind, but in accord with the psyches grand, yet inaccessible, plan
on the basis of which the unconscious life is constructed.
Respectively, our customary perception of a given situation being impossible
and our lack of control over such an insolvable problem persist. In chapter 8 we
will see many of the initially impossible situations embedded in the Tarot layouts
that become resolved when the transcendent function implicit in Tarot hermeneutic
enables one to get out of the blind alley of habitual narrow ego-consciousness thus
empowering people with the revealed feeling of value and meaning when what
seemed to be an impossible, really problematic, situation has been overcome.
Jung was adamant that the impossible situation produced in the unconscious is
the means to abandon ones personal will reduced to the ego-consciousness and to
begin trusting the impersonal power of the unconscious as the means for growth
and adult development. Jungian psychology postulates that typical situations in life
are the reflections of archetypes as patterns of spontaneous behavior which are
practically engraved in the psychic constitution.
As primordial images embedded in the Tarot Major Arcana (chapter 4), archetypes
can inflict strong psychological pain. An emotional situation that corresponds to a
particular archetypal constellation may develop, and mental pressure may become
too strong to be contained within ones coping abilities: Colloquial expressions
acknowledge this change in psychological level: What the devil got in him anyway?
or He got caught in the grip of an idea or She went out of her mind with fear or
rage (Bolen, 1979, p. 19). Tarot symbols hold together contents that individual
consciousness alone is incapable of holding at the rational level, but which nonetheless express themselves at a subtle emotional level.
Archetypes do have two complementary poles, one expressing a positive,
favorable, bright side [and the other a] partly negativepartly chtonic (Jung, CW
9i, 413). It is a natural process [as] a manifestation of [psychic] energy that springs
from the tension of opposites (Jung, CW 7, 121) expressed in the dark and light
archetypal aspects, both pertaining to Tarot imagery (not unlike yin and yang as an
interplay of opposites in the Chinese Book of Changes) that give rise to the transcendent function performed by symbols embedded in Tarot hermeneutic.
By bringing to awareness many initially unperceived, unconscious and latent,
meanings, the pictures serve the function of what Jung called amplification. The
meanings, even if implicit, are nonetheless highly structured or organized, and a
15

CHAPTER 2

Tarot layout (such as the Celtic Cross shown in chapter 7) amplifies the unconscious
contents of the archetypal images via their representation in the material medium
of the pictures. Because of the amplifying, synthesizing, nature of symbols, the
meanings expressed in the multitude of images hiding in the unconscious can be
elucidated, interpreted, narrated and potentially integrated into consciousness.
The amplifying and synthetic character of symbols reflects the dynamical and
evolutionary approach to knowledge and, for Jung, a psychological factas a
living phenomenonis always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the
vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving
and creative (Jung, CW 6, 717) as a function of our life-long learning from
experience per se in the process of individuation and re-symbolization of the Self.
The Tarot pictures that are full of interpretable symbols relate to archetypal
ideas; thus they are subject to hermeneutic interpretation involving intuition, insight and creative imagination. Jim Garrison, a philosopher of education, suggests
sympathetic data as a term describing intuitions and perceptions that enable our
understanding of others, and expresses his regret that our culture has not evolved
highly refined methods of collecting [those] data researchers do not perform
careful interpersonal experiments, [and] the theories of human thought, feeling, and
action remain remarkably underdeveloped (Garrison, 1997, p. 35).
There is a sad irony here with regard to the fact that it is precisely sympathetic,
inter-subjective, data that are maximally relevant to the topic of teaching (Garrison,
1997, p. 36) as well as to counseling, which are a central concern in the present
context of Tarot hermeneutic grounded in relational dynamics. An expert reader as
a genuine bricoleur can translate the pictorial language of symbols and signs into
spoken word, thus creating a wealth of sympathetic, emotional data embodied in
the unfolding narrative for the subject of a particular reading.
Many typical life experiences are represented in the patterns that appear and can
be discerned when the pictures are being spread in this or that layout, and a person
can learn from her experience when it is being unfolded in front of her eyes in the
array of images. Respectively, the latent meanings of experience become available
to human consciousness, and a person can discover in practice a deeper, spiritual
and numinous, as Jung would say, dimension of experience. Thus Tarot, in terms
of its archetypal dynamics, and despite being traditionally considered irrational
and illogical, helps us achieve an intense scope of awareness exceeding narrow
instrumental rationality.
It is what educational psychologist Jerome Bruner called an intuitive sense of
rightness that allows a genuine reader to articulate the implicit meanings of Tarot
images and symbols. For Bruner, intuition implies the act of grasping the meaning
or significance or structure of a problem without explicit reliance on the analytic
apparatus of ones craft (Bruner, 1966, p. 61). A symbolic, intuitive, approach
creates a dialectical relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. In this
respect Tarot images may be viewed as a bridge between the personal unconscious,
via the archetypal field of the collective unconscious, to the conscious mind.
Similar to the interpretations of dreams in Jungian analysis, Tarot hermeneutic
as reading and interpreting pictorial images becomes the core means assisting people
16

DOING BRICOLAGE

in the process of individuation. The task of the reader is to make the information
concealed in the unconscious available; thus to facilitate a growth-promoting process
for the subject of the reading who is an equal participant in the emerging, therapeutic
and learning, relation. Like in any relationship, human subjective experience is
critical. The human factor is a precondition for us experiencing what Jung, in collaboration with physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, called synchronicity
(Jung and Pauli, 1955).
Synchronicity is defined as a meaningful coincidence when an unexpected
[mental] content which is directly or indirectly connected with some objective
external event coincides with the ordinary psychic state (Koestler, 1972, pp. 9697).
The ability of mind to be about something, to have mental content, constitutes intentionality as a subject-matter of phenomenology. According to its founder Edmund
Husserl, a faithful description of any phenomenon as it presents itself within ones
concrete experience represents a prime objective of phenomenology.
Husserls phenomenological method supports the very process of Tarot readings
during which noemata and noiesis are related in such ways that the archetypal
structures embedded in the unconscious become intuitively present to consciousness.
Noiesis as intuition is an operation of the Nous, or Intelligence, and represents the
highest portion of human knowledge. In Eastern Orthodox Christianity human nous
is described as the eye of the heart or soul or the mind of the heart. Noema is a
structure of experience that appears to consciousness in the form of implicit, as yet
unconscious, pre-linguistic meanings embedded in the patterns of experience. We
arrive at the noematic structures through self-reflection mediated by symbols.
For Husserl, the noetic and noematic are ideally two sides of the same experience,
and it is the bricolage of Tarot as a mix of phenomenology with hermeneutics that
enables us to see in the form of sensible material patterns that which otherwise
would have remained outside of sense-experience, in the intelligible realm of Platonic
Ideas, or archetypes to which we have no direct access. Yes, the archetypes per se
cannot be known directly, but can be transcended or brought down to earth, so
to speak when being mediated by the images and symbols embedded in the Tarot
pictures.
Understanding the symbolic meanings embodied in the archetypal images of
Tarot Arcana and bringing them to consciousness contributes to re-symbolization
of the Self in the process of gradually removing the Ego from its privileged, egocentric, position and enriching the human mind with other ways of knowing that
complement its solely rational functions. For Jung, an intuitive function is nonrational, and the contents of intuition have the character of being given in contrast
to the derived or deduced character (Noddings and Shore, 1984, p. 25) pertaining
to two other Jungian functions of thinking and feeling. Feeling is considered by
Jung to be a rational function as determining our value judgements.
Jung insisted on intuitions unconscious nature. While the fostering of intuition
as an aid to learning and knowing was not on [Jungs] agenda (Noddings and
Shore, 1984, p. 27), it is the Tarot symbolism that triggers the stream of the unconscious and serves as a device to educate and strengthen the human intuitive
function invaluable for meaning-making. Noddings and Shore (1984) notice that
17

CHAPTER 2

phenomenology has contributed a dynamic quality to the notion of intuition in terms

of its sense-fulfilling (that is, meaning-making) feature so that intuition becomes
essential to the acquisition of knowledge. Husserl referred to intuition as a source
of authorityfor knowledge, that whatever presents itselfin primordial formis
simply to be accepted (Husserl, 1962, p. 83 quoted in Noddings and Shore, 1984,
p. 31; italics in original).
Implementing a phenomenological approach means to accurately describe a
given phenomenon as it presents itself in ones own experience not [to explain]
its genesis through reference to antecedent causal factors (Casey, 1976, p. 9). Such
absence of a direct, unmediated causal link pertaining to phenomenology relates
to Jungs a-causal principle of synchronicity as it manifest itself in Tarot. It is
synchronicity that indicates the unitary aspect of existence (von Franz, 1992, p. 40;
italics in original) which is difficult to explain rationally, especially since our thinking
is heavily conditioned by deductive reasoning from premise to conclusion and the
linear cause-effect connection prevalent in classical mechanics.
Still synchronicity is primarily connected with psychical and not physical
conditions, that is, with the archetypal dynamics of the unconscious mind. Archetypes
are the constellations of psychic energy dispersed in the collective unconscious, not
unlike the holy sparks of the Kabbalistic vessels. Jung described synchronicity
not only in terms of a coincidence between mental content, or a dream, or a vision
with the physical event, but also as a premonition about an event, a foreknowledge
of some kind (Jung, CW 8, 931; italics in original). The reality of this implicit
self-subsistent unconscious knowledge (Jung, CW 8, 931) of what we are meant
to be and where we stand within the individuation process demonstrates itself
empirically in the archetypal constellations of Tarot images as will be seen in
chapters 7 and 8.
It is the archetypal symbolism of the images that presents us with those inner
unconscious meanings that, while being outside of the conscious thought, are
nonetheless located inside our intensified experiences. We learn from our very
experience, the archetypal patterns of which unfold in front of our eyes in this or
that layout. Tarot therefore performs two functions, existential and educational, the
latter focusing on the ethical and spiritual dimension of experience and the former
on the construction of identity in terms of the re-symbolization of the Self
within experience itself which is symbolically represented in the pictures.
In terms of its archetypal dynamics, and despite being traditionally considered
irrational and illogical, Tarot helps us achieve an intensified and expanded scope of
awareness exceeding narrow rationality. The bricolage of Tarot as a theory-practice
nexus is a process of the education of the Self: self-education that encompasses two
processes, that of learning and counseling. Since Aristotle, the relationship between
theory and practice has been controversial. Theory is derived from theoria defined
as a philosophical contemplation of higher truths and as such disengaged from
practical, political, contexts and social life; that is from praxis, which is defined
as the process of putting theoretical knowledge into practice and is embedded in
actions, relationships, and experiences that by definition have an ethical or moral
dimension.
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This detachment, in modern times, has led to a spectator theory of knowledge

and strict disciplinary boundaries between sciences and humanities. The detached
gazing at the spectacle in antiquity is, quite ironically, a precursor to modernitys
scientific method. Scientific, intellectually certain, knowledge (or cognitive episteme,
in Greek) became distinguished from, and opposed to, the creative arts (as techne
or ).
Tarot pictures are artistic productions techne; the pictures mastered by a
human skill inspired in turn by the creative imagination of a particular artist, who
designed this or that deck. Techne is often translated as craftsmanship, handicraft
or skill; the products of techne are artifacts, such as Tarot pictures. In its dimension
as a techne, Tarot becomes a powerful, albeit alternative, educational aid in the
context of post-formal holistic education and mental health alike. But Tarot as
praxis is equally if not more important.
In Greek mythology, Praxis is also another name for Aphrodite, the goddess of
love who was a central character in the story of Eros and Psyche. The myth tells us
that it is by virtue of active learning from novel life-experiences imposed on her by
Praxis/Aphrodite rather than by a theoretical contemplation of the objects of
knowledge already possessed by the conscious mind that Psyche, as a personification of human soul, was eventually able to reunite with Aphrodites son, divine Eros.
For Plato, the highest philosophical vision is achievable only by one with the
temperament of a lover, a lover of wisdom, who will allow himself to be grasped
by, and to grasp in turn, the erotic passion in the process of recollecting true ideas.
In Platos Symposium, Diotima the Priestess teaches Socrates that Eros or Love is
located in-between lack and plenty; it is a spirit or daimon that, importantly, can
hold two opposites together as a whole, therefore to eventually reconcile that what
analytic thinking habitually perceives dualistically, that is, as binary irreconcilable
opposites. Jung used the Latin term coincidentia oppositorum for the apparently
mystical coincidence of opposites, such as psyche and matter, which takes place in
synchronistic experiences.
The term philosopher literally translates as a lover of wisdom who has a
passionate desire for deep inner knowledge, Gnosis (from the Greek for knowing).
It was Hermes, the messenger of gods, who finally summoned human Psyche to
Olympus where she reunited with her beloved, divine Eros, having been granted a
godlike immortality in this loving union. It is through being driven by Eros/Love
that Psyche was able to meet the multiple challenges and win over the obstacles
created by Praxis.
And it is only through love and compassion for the often suffering human spirit
that an expert Tarot reader can intuit, understand, and narrate the subtle meanings
encoded in the symbolism of the pictures, hence making each reading a precious
learning experience.
The art of using Tarot lies in the knowledge of its symbolic language as the
means of communication between another pair of supposedly binary opposites,
consciousness and the unconscious. Jungian psychology postulates that all products
and expressions of the unconscious are symbolic and thus carry or guide messages.
The symbolic messages can be perceived by a reader as the information implicit in
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CHAPTER 2

the collective unconscious because ones personality and life circumstances at any
given moment reflect the actualized archetype or the constellation of archetypes.
Jung insisted that it is through the integration of the unconscious that we might
have a reasonable chance to make experiences of an archetypal nature provide us
with a feeling of continuity not only throughout our life-experiences but also, in a
spiritual sense, before and after our existence, in virtue of the immortal soul. The
better our understanding of the reality of the archetypes, the more we can participate
in this reality, progressively realizing the archetypes eternity and timelessness.
We learn from the constellation of Tarot pictures that embody real events,
thoughts, and feelings implicit in the problematic situation (or, as it is called in the
context of counseling-reading sessions in chapter 8, presenting problem) and become
able to understand the situation better when it is amplified, clarified and brought
to consciousness by means of the Tarot hermeneutic. The interpretation of symbols
not only enriches a session with information but also makes this information meaningful. Many experiences start making sense for us when their disjointed fragments
assembled in the bricolage of pictures ultimately form a unified meaningful whole,
hence contributing to our self-education and meaning-making.
The experience of Tarot readings is both learning and therapeutic in terms of
providing insight into the archetypal dynamics, thus enabling better communication
and a greater understanding between a person and her potential Self. The actualized
Self is fully individuated, yet it strongly contradicts individualism. Vice versa, the
Self always involves the Other. As the archetype of wholeness, it is inherently
inter-subjective and transpersonal, encompassing many experiences that the human
soul learned in the school of life, which is full of diverse situations, relationships
with significant others, and ever-varied empirical contexts.
Jungian self-education therefore should be understood as constituting the developmental and learning, individuating, process towards achieving a greater personality
(Jung, CW 7, 136) ultimately reaching towards the re-symbolized, integrated Self.
Referring to self-education, Jung said:
At present we educate people only up to the point where they can earn a living
and marry: then education ceases altogether, as though a complete mental
outfit has been acquired Innumerable ill-advised and unhappy marriages,
innumerable professional disappointments, are due to this lack of adult
education. (Jung, 1954, p. 47)
Jung was adamant that the education of the educator will eventually rebound to
the good of [the] pupils (Jung, 1954, p. 47). Such self-education, however, should
not be defined in terms of the currently popular professional development or lifelong training, but should make him properly conscious of himself (Jung, 1954,
p. 46).
The adults are educable; however such education should not proceed along
the lines of compulsory schooling. Jung considered the analysis of dreams
whose constancy of meanings is exhibited by archetypal images to be an eminently
educational activity (Jung, 1954, p. 94). It is becoming conscious of the archetypal
field of dynamic forces-in-action that constitutes the method of indirect post-formal
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adult education as a process resulting from the independent activity of the unconscious (Jung, 1954, p. 49); and Tarot hermeneutic represents but one example
of post-formal pedagogy.
It is our learning from life experiences embodied in the symbolism of the
pictures that not only leads to human development and eventual individuation but
can also reconnect an individual psyche with its symbolic origin in Anima Mundi,
the soul of the world, because our unconscious ideas are archetypal in nature and
partake of the collective unconscious. Jung noticed that such conceptualization
is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science,
philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they
are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting
these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to
recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses,
but to translate into visible reality the world within us (Jung, CW 8, 342).
This is the ultimate function of Tarot hermeneutic: to translate into visible reality
the deep and invisible, internal world within us.
The Tarot hermeneutic via the mediation or embodiment of archetypal ideas
in the material medium of pictures makes the invisible visible, and the expressive,
yet silent, voice of the symbols and images becomes articulated with the help
of creative imagination during constructions of specific narratives as will be demonstrated in chapter 8. The correlation between inner and outer realities has to make
sense and become meaningful; but not because a particular cause has brought about
a specific effect as in the case of mechanistic causality.
In the next chapter 3 we will address the Hermetic tradition that posits the
existence of relations, correlations, analogies and correspondences akin to Jungs
synchronicity principle that enables meaningful connections between a persons
individual psyche and the collective unconscious. Like a genuine bricoleur, Hermes
the messenger of gods crosses borders and transgresses boundaries; inhabiting a
liminal in-between place, the Imaginal world.
NOTES
1

See http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/carl-jung-and-tarot/

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