The Universe Communicating with Itself

Why do the cards work the way that they do and why do they do it so well? This is a question I have asked over and over again when a reading was just a little too spot on, sometimes to the point of being a bit spooky! I started researching this long ago and found that the answers were far more intriguing than I could have imagined! The way that I understand it and the truth that speaks to me all starts with the psychologist Carl Jung.

When you read the Tarot cards for the first time, you are looking at various images that seem vaguely familiar. Aside from not knowing what they "mean" you can still recognize a lot of the main characters. Your subconscious opens up when viewing the images on the cards. This is not by chance, but by design. While I researched why this is,  I kept coming across references to the psychologist Carl Jung; one of the most famous psychologists in history- next to his frenemy Sigmund Freud. Jung founded analytical psychiatry, and while he was not an expert on the Tarot himself, it is hard not to find a respectable article on Tarot without the mention of Carl Jung. This is because The Collective Unconscious, Archetypes, Symbols, and Synchronicity are all Jungian ideas that come into play when we talk about how the cards work.

Each of the images on the cards are loaded with things called Archetypes, and symbols. Jung described archetypes as a universal and recurring image, pattern, or motif representing a typical human experience. Symbols he described as being the best possible expression for something essentially unknown. They replace the need for written words. Some examples of archetypes are: mother, father, crone, free spirit, hero, and lover. A simple example of a symbol would be the crescent shape which we often recognize as the moon.

Wikipedia’s Archetype page defines an archetype as ‘a universally understood term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned or emulated.’ The same page tells us that in Psychology, an archetype is a ‘model of a person, personality, or behavior’. So an example of an archetype in the cards is the Empress. She is the archetypal "mother". Everyone knows what a mother is, and when you think about the words associated with a mother, they are all closely related to the meaning of the card.

Jung came to his conclusions about archetypes and symbols after studying the explanations of dreams and hallucinations in psychotic patients. He found that many of the things that they described were the same or similar to the symbols and archetypes in myths, stories and legends from all over the world. These were things that these patients did not, or could not have known about.

 According to Jung, archetypes are:‘innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic symbols or representations of unconscious experience emerge. The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif – representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern… they are indeed an instinctive trend.’

In regard to where archetypes and symbols come from, Jung refers to "The Collective Unconscious". He theorized, that a pool of knowledge exists in every person and connects us all. Jung believed that we all innately know the secrets of the universe and that each and every one of us can access the Collective Unconscious for information or inspiration. We are all- also continuously contributing to its growing pool of knowledge and memories.

Next we are going to jump over to synchronicity. The word "synchronicity" was created by Jung to describe "meaningful coincedences". These are the random events in life that seem to be related in a meaningful way, even though there is no natural connection. For example, you are thinking of someone you have not talked to in long time, and suddenly out of nowhere- they call you on the phone. Has something like this ever happened to you?

In his book on the subject- Synchronicity: An Acasual Connecting Principle he wrote-

"...it is impossible, with our present resources, to explain ESP, or the fact of meaningful coincidence, as a phenomenon of energy. This makes an end of the causal explanation as well, for "effect" cannot be understood as anything except a phenomenon of energy. Therefore it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity. Because of this quality of simultaneity, I have picked on the term "synchronicity" to designate a hypothetical factor equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation."

Jung thought; and I agree- that when a synchronicity occurs, it happens because you are attracting  events into your life as a way to get place emphasis on something that you need to be made consciously aware of... in order to grow. Watch out for the patterns of synchronicity in your life. You can consider what the synchronicity is trying to tell you, and use it to guide you. The more aware you become of it, the more in tune you are with yourself and the source of "all that is" or as Jung would call it "Unus Mundus".

"Unus Mundus" was greatly inspired by physics. After Jung and his friend Albert Eisenstein talked many times about Einstein's theory of relativity, he had an idea. He then partnered with yet another physicist; Wolfgang Pauli to build the theory of Unus Mundus"; which in Latin means "one world". It  is the concept of an underlying unified reality from which everything emerges and to which everything returns.

Archetypes and symbols then, would be an expression of Unus Mundus. We know them through the collective unconscious. Synchronicity is made possible by Unus Mundus; in that it would mean that both the observer (you) and the phenomenon (synchronicity) ultimately stem from the same source....!

By using Tarot, we are basically opening up windows to the collective unconscious through the archetypes and symbols on each card. The cards fall in a way that will apply to you because you chose them. Your reading is like a synchronicity life hack. You make synchronicity happen instead of letting it happen to you. Instead of tying together random events you have laid these cards out before you and read them like a story.

So in closing, you can use the cards to find the patterns in your life that are worth paying attention to. Learn and grow from the information that you receive from them. You gain understanding of yourself, and make choices that will ultimately result in a better you. An easy way to choose a  higher frequency.

You are part of the universe and the universe, is communicating with itself.