Tarot and Dreams 

One day at the National Museum of Art in Washington DC, I stood viewing the portrait "Little Girl in a Blue Armchair" by the Impressionist Mary Cassatt.  My heart began to race and I felt light-headed as I looked at that little girl in the portrait.  I recognized her.  It was me!  I saw myself in that painting, or at least I saw something within me.  It was like looking into a mirror, and it gave me a palpable feeling of grief.  Standing motionless, I wondered, "Where is this coming from?"  Although I was awake and conscious of all the sounds and smells around me, the experience felt surreal, like a dream.  Memories swirled in my head, and in that moment of painful recognition, I found the next piece of my puzzle.  I thought I had completely come to terms with the event the memory evoked, but, stirred by the portrait, my soul exposed the fact I had not.

        That such an insight might come from a dream image was something I already knew.  I had been studying and recording my dreams for many years.  But now, looking at that painting while wide-awake, I became aware of a kind of conscious dreaming I had never met before.  I knew that visions during meditation and contemplation were conscious dreams, but here was a conscious dream emanating from something outside of myself in the physical world.  Dream images have the potential to produce a powerful emotional charge that can spontaneously evoke new perceptions on both emotional and cognitive levels.  What I now began to understand is that physical images that cross our path in our waking hours can elicit that same response with the same possibilities for insights and enlightenment.  As I learned that day, the unconscious is constantly looking for ways to bring its vast range of knowledge, wisdom, and healing to our consciousness.     

      
         I have since discovered that the images in the Tarot deck can provide the means for a meaningful dialogue with the divine through conscious dreaming.  Several years before my art-museum revelation, I had become interested in the Tarot and purchased several different decks.  At that time I ws not really connecting to the images from my depths, but would read in books what the images were said to mean.  After the museum experience, I one day came across a deck I had not seen before, The Osho Zen.  I immediately connected at the soul level with many of the images in this deck, in the same way I had with the Little Girl in the Blue Arm Chair.  This compelled me to put the instruction book away, black out the descriptive words that were just below each image, and rely on my emotions and intuition to guide me in viewing the cards.  The results were, and continue to be, remarkable.  By associating to images on the cards that I pull at random, I consistently trigger striking insights at the just the time I need them.

        What exactly is the Tarot?  Traditionally used as a divination tool, the Tarot is a deck of 78 cards divided into two sections: the major arcana and the minor arcana.  The 22 major arcana cards are visual representations of cosmic forces such as Birth, Death, Justice, Heroism, and so forth, which contain the archetypal symbolism that lies deeply embedded in the human psyche.  They are a respresentation of the spiritual, or inner, journey.  The remainder of the deck, the minor arcana, is divided into 16 court cards and four suits, which represent the path of the outer, or physical journey.

        The Tarot archetypes provide a key to twenty-two expressions of soul energy.  Twenty-one of these are steps we take on the journey of soul exploration and growth.  The twenty-second archetype is the Fool, who represents the vagabond traveler that we ourselves are as we make our way through the cycles of our life.  The fool symbolizes all the new beginnings, foolish risks, innocent hopes and leaps of faith we take on both our physical and spiritual journeys.

        No one truly knows the origin of the Tarot, although several intriguing theories exist.  They begin with the mythical story of the Ancient Egyptian god, Thoth, as a source moving on to references in a document written by Italian monks in 1377, and another reference written in 1572 by Girilamo Gargali.  in the twentieth century, Aleister Crowley and his Thoth Deck (1944) brought the Tarot back into modern awareness.

        An understanding of the basic teachings of Carl Jung, a visionary and considered one of the fathers of modern psychology, is crucial for approaching the Tarot as a vehicle for conscious dreaming.  Jung believed that dream images must be understood symbolically, that the instinctual basis of dream symbolism is "primitive or archaic thought forms."  He pointed out that while personal dream symbolism varies with the dreamer, there are symbols that have universal meanings and are part of what he called the collective unconscious.  These are the archetypes that we all share at the collective level.  Jung also felt the Tarot images are "descended from the archetypes of transformation" (Jung, Collected Works 9, par. 81).

        Archetypal consciousness manifests itself on both the personal level and the collective level.  When we access the collective unconsciouss, we tune in to our innermost being.  The universal patterns with which we resonate offer us creative solutions to the challenges we face in our lives.  Examining our emotions carefully and honestly allows us to see which archetype is influencing us at any given time, with or without the knowledge of our ego.  There are several ways to access our archetyypal patterns, including dreams, visions, music, art, active imagination, and the Tarot.  When we listen to our inner wisdom, we have the opportunity to choose our path and help it unfold, rather than have the path seize us and drag us along.

        Jung named several primary archetypes that are key to the individuation process, which entails the psychological and emtional maturation that is meant to accompany our physical maturation.  Some of these archetypes include the hero, sacrifice, victim, mother, father, wise old man, rebirth, the shadow, the anima and animus, and so on.  All of these archetypal symbols are represented in the twenty-two major arcana images.

        Just as dream images convey their effects symbolically, so the Tarot offers itself as a prime tool for examining the psyche.  The images on the cards tell a symbolic story and tap our deepest source, our unconscious, the the same way a dream does.  When used with that intention, and not as a divination tool, the images on the Tarot cards offer great insight, often giving the same kind of 'aha,' or charge, we get when examining a dream.  They can also point us to our shadow, that part of ourselves we do not want to examine.  It is quite possible for the cards to synchronistically point toward the essence of future events in the outer world as the inner world grows in awareness.  This new inner awareness that grows from such hints offers us perspectives and choices that had not previously been recognized, thereby precipitating eventful changes in one's life.  To rely on the Tarot for "predictions," however, is much like taking a dream in the literal sense.  What the cards actually do when used as an association tool is offer insights on how to change ourselves from the inside out, in the way a dream does, thereby altering our future by inviting "higher" forms of thought, emotion, and inner truth.

        There are dozens of Tarot decks available with an incredible spectrum of images, colors, and explanations, offering many conflicting descriptions of the cards and their meanings.  When we use the Tarot for conscious dreaming, however, conflicting instruction books are not a problem.  Just as we do not rely on dream dictionaries to interpret dreams, we do not rely on Tarot books to convey the meaning of the cards.  Instead we allow the associations to the images to arise from within ourselves thereby gaining intuitive understanding of the synchronistic appearance of the card.  As synchronicity would have it, cards pulled from a deck at random will always be exactly what is needed at that moment, often leading to an "aha" and a step toward a resolution of the issue at hand.  When a particular card elicits an emotional reaction, that reaction needs to be examined as soon as all associations to all the images in the spread have been made.

        Jung taught that the language of symbols used by the unconscious mind transcends all human language.  This is why the symbols of the major arcana can have a more potent effect on us than verbal language can.  The Tarot is a container that holds and expresses synchronistically the wisdom of the universal or archetypal symbols.

        It can be very effective to use the cards as though they are a dream.  One method is to shuffle the cards, choose three to five of the major arcana cards at random, and lay them out in whatever order you choose.  Then tell yourself a story based on your associations to the imagery of those cards, explain possible meanings of each of the symbols in your own words.  Relate the symbolic meanings to situations in your waking life.  This has the potential to trigger "ahas" as each card contains many small details that subtly represent the dark and bright shadow aspects of the particular archetype it portrays.

        By using the images on the Tarot cards as a conscious dream to tell our own story, we are able to bypass our ego and commune with our "higher self."  The power of these archetypal images offer meaning that we are often able to tap from our deepest, truest source, our soul, while we are awake and conscious.

There are many ways to do inner work.  I have found that the Tarot, when used as a vehicle for conscious dreaming, is a sound and effective tool for your inner journey.  You might want to give it a try.      

This article by Marty Gegner was published in the Summer-Fall 2008 issue of "The Rose" periodical.