Tarot cards as alternative therapy
Whether we admit it or not, most of us have quaint notions of what tarot cards are.
On the surface, they are simply a deck of illustrated cards used in predictions, while the tarot card reader is an eccentric, robed person sitting behind the fortune-telling booth at the village fair. This image of tarot cards is, of course, a cliché, and yet we’d rather get comfortable with its familiarity than delve further. We resort to the most convenient explanation instead of really digging into the sometimes unpleasant but rewarding truth of tarot cards.
Perhaps the most famous among the tarot cards is the death card, a card quite unfairly invested with too many negative meanings and energies behind it, so much so that we tend to think of tarot cards as tools of the occult, even vehicles of evil. While we cannot deny the fact that tarot can in fact be used for such purposes, tarot cards can also have good intentions and can be used for good causes.
In fact, the first use of tarot cards in 15th century Italy was as a game, much like a regular deck of cards but with the addition of trump cards. It wasn’t until the late 17th or 18th century that tarot cards began to take on a more serious role in fortune telling.
Over the years, the images on tarot cards, their rich symbolism, procedures, purposes, and meanings have evolved in such a way that the characters portrayed on them have come to reflect all of our follies, fears, strengths, and hopes. By tying them together into a tale, we can retell and discover the past as we would have liked it to unfold, as well as have a glimpse of a manageable future that we can feel safe with.
A radical and inevitable change for tarot cards from a simple game to a life-changing therapy.
Carl Jung, a world renowned psychologist has always considered tarot as an alternative psychotherapy. By using the rich imagery encapsulated in each tarot card, we can express our concerns, look at our past, and prepare for the future. In some cases, children who cannot yet speak can use the images and characters in the tarot deck to reconstruct their thoughts and tell their story. Tarot cards then offer an alternative language system through which we can bring our Unconscious to light.
Jung explains that tarot cards represent different archetypes of human personality and situations. Tea death card then it is not simply a boring card that predicts the irretractable death of the querent (person who asks questions in a tarot card reading). Rather, the death card can be seen as death, the end of something within us: a vice, prolonged pain, bad habits, sadness, signaling rebirth.
We don’t just blindly choose cards from the tarot deck. Every moment of our lives we are armed with choices, choices that explain and define our destiny. It’s not just what you keep out of your life that matters; it’s also what you allow to make a difference. Even if they are just a deck of tarot cards.