Within the depth-psychology corpus, Tarot occupies a contested yet generative position, functioning simultaneously as a historical artifact, a symbolic system, and an instrument of psychological self-exploration. The literature ranges from rigorously historicist accounts — most notably Place’s demonstration that the cards originated in northern Italy between 1410 and 1430, not in Egypt or antiquity — to full-throated psychological engagements that treat the Major Arcana as a pictorial map of the individuation process. Nichols’s foundational Jung and Tarot established the template for reading the trumps as constellations of Jungian archetypes, a move followed and elaborated by Hamaker-Zondag’s explicitly Jungian hermeneutic and Banzhaf’s alignment of the Major Arcana with the hero’s journey. Pollack’s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom situates the deck within a broader symbolic cosmology inflected by Gnosticism, goddess tradition, and Kabbalah. Jodorowsky approaches the Tarot of Marseilles as a complete, self-sufficient spiritual teacher whose structural numerology encodes a cosmological architecture. Greer occupies the pragmatic-therapeutic pole, deploying the cards as tools for self-inquiry, affirmation, and shadow work. The central tension throughout is epistemological: whether Tarot functions as a projective field for the unconscious, a divinatory technology, or a bearer of perennial symbolic wisdom — and whether these functions are mutually exclusive or complementary.
Tarot had its origin and anticipation in profound patterns of the collective unconscious with access to potentials of increased awareness uniquely at the disposal of these patterns.
This passage frames Tarot as grounded in Jungian collective unconscious structures, positioning it as a non-rational bridge between unconscious and consciousness and legitimizing it as a subject for analytical psychology.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
it is the view of this book that Waite is correct in his belief that the Tarot’s Major Arcana tells a story that is in essence mystical, and that this was the intent of its creators.
Place argues that the Tarot’s Major Arcana encodes a genuinely mystical narrative originating in Renaissance Italy, separating legitimate symbolic interpretation from historically unfounded occult mythology.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis
in its most sophisticated form, it is the Jungian observation of archetypal patterns in all cultures. As the Jungian scholar Joseph Campbell observed, one of the most common myths found in all cultures is the spiritual quest for enlightenment… the Tarot embodies this archetypal quest.
Place connects the Tarot’s symbolic structure to the Jungian-Campbellian concept of the hero’s journey, arguing that the deck’s universality derives from its embodiment of archetypal mythic patterns.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis
when we make an insightful approach to the analysis of its symbolism, it can become a source of inner enrichment and psychological growth, and prediction will take second place to accurate and clear self-insight.
Hamaker-Zondag argues that a depth-psychological engagement with Tarot’s symbolism transforms it from a divinatory instrument into a vehicle for self-knowledge and individuation.
, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997thesis
occultists began to interpret the Tarot as an ancient book of knowledge that was created in Egypt by a group of sages possibly under the direction of Hermes Trismegistus… Many of the occult theories are historically unfounded.
Place critiques the occultist myth of Egyptian origin while acknowledging that not all occult insights are valueless, framing the scholarly task as separating historical fact from projective fantasy.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis
doing Tarot readings helps achieve a balance and unity of these principles in their practical states, that of will and openness. Each time we do a reading we assert our will to impose a meaning on the patterns thrown out by chaos.
Pollack theorizes Tarot readings as a psychological practice that integrates the Magician principle of conscious will with the High Priestess principle of intuitive openness, enacting psychic wholeness.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980thesis
Historical scholarship by Michael Dummett, Thierry DePaulis, Ron Decker, Stuart Kaplan, and Robert O’Neill, among others, have amply demonstrated that Tarot was, in all likelihood, invented in Northern Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century.
Greer acknowledges the revisionist historical consensus on Tarot’s fifteenth-century Italian origin, situating her own psychological approach within an informed scholarly framework.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
the entire Tarot deck is a quincunx with the four minor suits in the four corners and the Major Arcana in the center. It is like a sacred mandala and its entire structure is illustrated by the Marseilles World card.
Place interprets the structural architecture of the Tarot deck as a sacred mandala, linking its fourfold Minor Arcana to Jungian typological functions and centering the Major Arcana as the integrating element.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
Their symbols—or at least some among them—were gates which opened on realms of vision beyond occult dreams. —A. E. Waite… The images in the Tarot are connecte[d]
Citing Waite, Place presents Tarot images as symbolic gateways to transpersonal vision, providing the basis for meditative and psychologically transformative engagement with the cards.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
I THANK SALLIE NICHOLS, AN AMERICAN JUNGIAN depth psychologist, for her inspiration. Her profound book, Jung and Tarot (published by
Banzhaf acknowledges Nichols’s Jung and Tarot as the foundational inspiration for his own hero’s-journey reading of the Major Arcana, establishing a lineage of Jungian Tarot scholarship.
, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 2000supporting
The Tarot of Marseilles was the most popular, but was not the only Tarot produced outside of Italy. The decks that developed in Belgium at the same time, known as the Belgian or Flemish Tarot, evolved their own distinctive iconography.
Place maps the regional diversification of Tarot iconography across Europe, demonstrating that the deck’s symbolic content was culturally contingent rather than unified and ancient.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
A. E. Waite’s deck was published in 1910 by Rider & Co., in London… The symbolic pictures in the Rider-Waite deck were drawn by Pamela Coleman Smith, following Waite’s directions. He was unusually knowledgeable about symbolism but, owing to his membership in the occult societies in existence at that time, he found it necessary to keep silent about what he knew.
Hamaker-Zondag presents the Rider-Waite deck’s creation as shaped by esoteric concealment, arguing that Waite’s symbolic depth exceeded what he publicly disclosed.
, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997supporting
the English occultists revived the practices of eighteenth-century secret fraternal societies, which included a hierarchical structure with grades of initiation and oaths of secrecy.
Place traces how the institutionalization of occult Tarot interpretation within secret initiatory societies shaped the symbolic frameworks that subsequently dominated modern Tarot hermeneutics.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
there is no mention of Tarot in the many catalogs of esoteric arts, such as that of Robert Fludd, Rabelais, or Paracelsus. This suggests that Tarot or playing cards, when used in spellcraft, may have been more a part of lowly folklore than high magic.
Greer presents archival evidence that early Tarot divination belonged to popular rather than high magical tradition, complicating narratives of the deck’s esoteric pedigree.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
I resolved not to read any books on the Tarot since most books that were available then on the Tarot passed on spurious histories and misinformation that stemmed from the occult fantasies of the nineteenth century. I wanted to communicate directly with the images unhindered by these preconceptions.
Place’s autobiographical account of approaching Tarot imagery through Jungian dream-interpretation techniques, bypassing occult literature, illustrates an experiential-psychological methodology as an alternative to received tradition.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005aside
the three faces adding up to seven (3 × 7 = 21, The World), compelled the alteration of these symbols into absolutely different ones, which forced me to make exhausting mental efforts to substitute them for the ones I cherished.
Jodorowsky illustrates his interpretive discipline in restoring the Tarot of Marseilles, showing how numerological and structural integrity override personal symbolic preferences.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004aside
In the phase of The World we know, or simply sense, when to take the lead and when to keep our hands off… we are guided by what ‘feels right.’ This is not fatalism, but a positive and deep involvement in life.
Hamaker-Zondag interprets The World card as representing the individuation endpoint — a state of ego-transcendent participation in the rhythms of existence — integrating Jungian wholeness with Tarot symbolism.
, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997aside