Australian General Semantics Society .
|
AGS Sunday Seminar August,
2004 (Presented
by Messrs laurie Cox and Robert James) “Correct Symbolism to Fact”
"The Map is Not the
Territory”. |
|
Chaos and the Psychological Symbolism of the Tarot
Abstract.
The Tarot deck contains archetypal
symbols that can be related to the analytical psychology of the Swiss
psychologist, Carl Jung. The Tarot deck, especially the major arcana or trump
cards, can be used effectively in therapy. The client, with the assistance of
the therapist, conducts a reading or uses several cards to tell a story and
then discusses possible meanings of the symbols in his or her own words. The
therapist then relates the symbolic meanings given by the client to the
client's problem in much the same manner as in Jungian dream analysis. This
therapeutic process can be explained by using a chaos model. Using a chaos
model of therapy, a period of psychic instability is deliberately induced by
the therapist through stimulation of the imagination via the Tarot symbols.
Concentration on the Tarot symbols induces bifurcation points that the
therapist then uses to direct change toward desired attractors. This is similar
to the well-known techniques of paradoxical communication, paradoxical
intervention
, and prescribing the symptom, all
of which induce a temporary condition of psychic instability that is required
for a bifurcation.
Introduction
Loye and Eisler (1987) see the
roots of modern chaos theory, as it pertains to social science, extending all
the way back to the ancient Chinese Book of Changes or I Ching. The I Ching,
the oldest oracle still in use today, (Bannister, 1988) was used to make
predictions by casting stalks, straws, or sticks. Today, this is usually done
by throwing coins (Cleary, 1986). In the West, the oldest oracle still in use
today is the Tarot card deck.
The Tarot is a deck of cards which
can be used for meditation, psychic stimulation, or divination. It also can be
used as a psychological tool to look inside the unconscious (Bannister, 1988;
Nichols, 1984). The Tarot is medieval man's equivalent of today's highly
respected Rorschach and Thematic Apperception tests (Schueler & Schueler,
1994). Wang (1978) describes the Tarot as "a system accepted by many
respectable sources such as the school of Carl Jung, which views the Tarot
images as agreeing perfectly with the archetypes of the collective
unconsciousness" (p. 8).
The Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung,
saw all of the Tarot images as "descended from the archetypes of
transformation" (Jung, 1959/1990, p. 38). These archetypes include several
of the primary archetypes that are encountered during Jung's individuation
process, a process of psychological maturation similar in nature to the aging
of the physical body (Jacobi, 1942/1973). These include the shadow, the anima
and animus, and the wise old man. The Tarot also contains symbols representing
other important archetypes of transformative processes such as the hero, the
sacrifice, rebirth, the mother, and the Self. In Jung's analytical psychology,
these archetypes comprise the major dynamical components of the unconscious
which affect the human psyche in many different ways.
Modern chaos theory addresses
complex systems, which are systems with a large number of interrelated parts.
It also addresses dynamic systems. Every complex system, and especially every
living system (living systems are usually referred to as self-organizing
systems), is also a dissipative structure. Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize
for chemistry in 1977 for his work on dissipative structures, which he defined
as any structure that takes on and dissipates energy as it interacts with its
environment. A dissipative system, unlike one that conserves energy, gives rise
to irreversible processes such as the growth of organisms (Nicolis & Prigogine,
1989). All systems that exhibit disequilibrium and self-organization are
dissipative and have a dissipative structure (Briggs & Peat, 1989, p. 138).
Dissipative systems are those which are able to maintain identity only because
they are open to flows of energy, matter, or information from their
environments (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984).
Not only is our body a dissipative
system, but our psyche as well. Jung designated the ego as an ego-complex,
because of the numerous components and processes with which it is comprised,
and taught that the ego was one of many complexes that exist in the psyche.
"The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium
just as the body does" (Jung, 1954/1985, p. 152). Designating the psyche
to be a self-regulating system, Jung (1968) states that "Dreams are the
natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system" ( p. 124). By
assuming the psyche to be a complex dynamic system, as well as a dissipative
system, we can look at it through the lens of modern chaos theory.
Chaos, as an archetype, is well
known in the Tarot where it is depicted fully in card 16, a trump card titled
the Lightening Struck Tower. According to Wanless (1986), this card represents
transformation. Jung taught that we can become conscious of the unconscious
contents in our psyche by examining the symbols that come to us in our dreams.
He details many of these archetypal symbols in his Symbols of Transformation
(1956).
The Tarot
The traditional Tarot is a deck of
78 cards which are divided into two main sections: a major arcana and a minor
arcana. The major arcana is a set of 22 picture cards which are also called the
greater arcana, trumps, atouts (from the Egyptian atennu (Wallis Budge, 1920)
meaning a book or part of a book), or triumphs. These cards are pictorial
representations of various cosmic forces such as Death, Justice, Strength, and
so on, and contain archetypal symbolism. Fifty-six cards of the minor arcana
are divided into court and suit cards. The sixteen court cards are comprised of
a King, a Queen, a Knight, and a Knave (or Page) for each of the four suits of
the deck. The remaining forty cards are divided into the four suits called:
Pentacles (also known as deniers, coins, or disks), Cups (coupes), Swords
(epees), and Wands (batons or scepters). The French terminology stems from the
famous Marseilles deck which originated in the late fifteenth century (Giles,
1992). The suit cards are numbered from 1 (ace) to 10 for
each of the four suits. The suit cards represent specific
opportunities and lessons (Wanless, 1986). The minor arcana cards are used to
represent people, relationships, finances, action, energies, and forces
(Schueler & Schueler, 1987).
The Tarot has been called the
oldest book known to man (Papus, 1970). According to legend, (Schueler &
Schueler, 1994) the original cards comprised "chapters" in a book
known as The Book of Thoth. Thoth was the ibis-headed god of wisdom and
knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. At the founding of Egypt, unknown centuries
ago, he is said to have given man the knowledge of medicine, astrology,
language, art, and various sciences such as mathematics and engineering. The
original chapters of The Book of the Dead are said to have been written by
Thoth.
After several thousands of years,
the Egyptian empire began to crumble. As things began to fall apart, the god
Thoth again intervened. He desired to keep alive the knowledge and wisdom that
he had provided his people. To save his contribution to mankind, he summarized
all of the accumulated wisdom of the Egyptian empire onto a series of 22
tablets. He did this by using symbols and pictures instead of words. These
tablets became known as The Book of Thoth. As the empire decayed into
ignorance, the tablets found their way into a band of roving people later known
as gypsies. The gypsies copied the symbols of the tablets onto cards which
became the major arcana of the Tarot deck (Crowley, 1944; Papus, 1970; Schueler
& Schueler, 1989).
Although several colorful theories
exist today, there is no historical evidence to support any of them, and the
true history of the Tarot is largely unknown. Whatever the actual origin of the
Tarot deck may be, it is known that a deck of fortune telling cards were
mentioned by a Swiss monk in 1377 AD (Giles, 1992). It is also known that
Girilamo Gargagli wrote in 1572 about tarochhi cards being used to designate
psychological types (Giles, 1992).
The Tarot later found its way into
the Hebrew Kabbalah, probably because the 22 cards of the major arcana could be
shown to correspond with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. During the
nineteenth century, many occultists tried to demonstrate a higher use for the
cards than divination (Papus, 1970; Levi, 1896). Eliphas Levi (1896) tried to
show that the cards of the major arcana were connected to the Qabalistic Tree
of Life. This idea was further carried out by a secret occult group in England
known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Wang, 1978; Crowley, 1944;
Regardie, 1937).
Aleister Crowley was initiated as a
member of the Golden Dawn in 1898. He left it in 1907 to form his own magical
organization. In 1944 his Tarot deck, illustrated by Frieda Harris, together
with his explanatory book titled The Book of Thoth were published.
According to Wanless, (1986) a
well-known expert on the Tarot deck, "The Thoth Deck by Aleister Crowley
is a classic tarot symbology ... Its symbolism is Egyptian, Greek, Christian,
and Eastern. It is more useful than many contemporary decks which represent a
particular cultural or philosophical point of view" (p. 1). He also points
out the multi-dimensionality of the deck's symbolism, which has associations
with the Hebrew Kabbalah as well as astrology, and credits the 22 major arcana
or trump cards as representing "universal principles of life and
'archetypal' personality types" (p. 2). Giles (1994) says that the Thoth
deck has "swirling backgrounds and haunting images" which
"create a unique impression; those drawn to the deck find it a very
powerful reading instrument" (p. 191). She points out that while many
decks exist, with a myriad of minor variations, the Tarot has "core
images" that are part of a "mental structure" that is fairly
consistent across the different deck designs. Wanless (1986) notes tha
t "The strength of tarot is
that its symbolism is subject to constant redefinition and evolution" (p.
1). In short, the Tarot images can change or evolve over time, but otherwise
they are quite consistent. This is in agreement with Jung's (1959/1990) concept
of the archetypes of the collective unconscious which are consistent across
humanity while slowly evolving with the body over time.
Jungian
Dream Analysis
Jung (1956/1976) taught that dream
images must be understood symbolically. Furthermore, the instinctual basis of
these symbols are "primitive or archaic thought-forms" (p. 28). Jung
differentiated a sign from a symbol. A true symbol can never be fully
explained, while a sign can be fully explained insofar as the conscious ego is
concerned. Symbols themselves are archetypal, and they are expressed verbally
in terms of signs. We can say, then, that a sign is an individual's
interpretation of an archetypal symbol.
"Symbols are the language of
dreams. In dreams, the unconscious is revealed in symbols, and the key to
understanding a dream is knowledge of the symbol" (Boa, 1992, p. 42). The
color of a symbol is also important. Jung believed that the correlation between
colors and functions varies between cultures and even between individuals. With
Europeans, for example, blue is the color of thought, while red is the color of
emotion, green is the color of sensation, and yellow is the color of the
intuition (Jacobi, 1942/1973). Von Frantz notes that "dreams generally
point to our blind spot" (Boa, 1992, p. 15). They seldom tell us what we
already know. To understand a dream, she divides the dream content into thirds:
We compare the dream to a drama and
examine it under three structural headings: first, the introduction or
exposition -- the setting of the dream and the naming of the problem; second,
the peripeteia--that would be the ups and downs of the story; and finally, the
lysis--the end solution or, perhaps catastrophe. (Boa, 1992, pp. 33-34)
Jung (1968) states that "In
our dreams we are just as many-sided as in our daily life, and just as you
cannot form a theory about those many aspects of the conscious personality, you
cannot make a general theory of dreams" (p. 124). He then points out that
while personal dream symbolism varies with the dreamer, universal dream
symbolism is possible of interpretation. "On the collective level of
dreams, there is practically no difference in human beings, while there is all
the difference on the personal level" (Jung, 1968, p. 124). When analyzing
a dream, Jung (1954/1985) suggests that we "renounce all preconceived
opinions, however knowing they make us feel, and try to discover what things
mean for the patient" (p. 157). We must take into consideration the
patient's personal philosophy, religion, and moral convictions whenever we
discuss dream symbolism.
Jung (1953/1977) treats dream
symbolism on two separate levels: the objective level and the subjective level.
The first level is analytic. On this level, the dream content can be broken up
into memory-complexes that refer to external situations. The second level is
synthetic. In these situations, the dream contents are detached from external
causes and must be treated in terms of archetypal symbols.
Nichols (1984) says that "The
pictures on the Tarot Trumps tell a symbolic story. Like our dreams, they come
to us from a level beyond the reach of consciousness and far removed from our
intellectual understanding" (p. 7). According to this view, the Tarot
Trump cards can be interpreted in the same manner as Jungian dream analysis.
A Chaotic Systems Model of Therapy
Therapy can be defined as "a
systematic and intentional attempt, using a specific cluster of interpersonal
skills, to assist another person to make self-determined improvements in
behavior, affect, and/or cognitions" (Kottler & Brown, 1985, p. 44).
Egan (1975/1990) describes a Helping Model of the therapeutic process which
emphasizes action that leads to valued outcomes through a nine-stage process.
Goals must be the client's goals,
strategies must be the client's strategies, and action plans must be the
client's plans. The helper's job is to stimulate the client's imagination and
to help him or her in the search for incentives. (p. 49)
A chaotic systems model is one that
uses the findings of modern chaos theory. Such a model can be used to describe
the therapeutic process. The chaos theory of sensitive dependence on initial
conditions, for example, describes how small stimuli can evoke massive
responses. This finding has been used to explain the functioning of the
olfactory system wherein a very small amount of stimuli, received by the olfactory
bulb, is detected and magnified until it can be interpreted by the brain as a
distinct smell (Freeman, 1991). Furthermore, testing food smells on rabbits has
demonstrated that undergoing new experiences can actually change memory of
older experiences. These two findings have led to a new understanding of the
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) treatment (Flint, 1994).
The methodology used in EMDR is
straightforward and relatively simplistic. The patient holds his or her
attention on a particular trauma or bodily sensation while watching the
therapist's fingers moving in a back-and-forth motion. About 20 to 40
back-and-forth motions constitute one repetition of the technique. After
several repetitions, the pain of a trauma or sensation is often lessened
dramatically. Theoretically, the memory of a painful traumatic experience
causes a unique pattern of neurological activity in the brain. Watching a
moving finger, while in the relative safety of a therapeutic environment
changes, or modifies the pattern, producing a lessening of the associated pain
in many cases.
In chaos theory, the behavior of a
complex system can be shown graphically on a plot called phase space. Each
point on this plot represents the state space or specific condition of the
system using primary system parameters (the main parameters that describe a
system's behavior). When a time history is used (when time is plotted along the
x-axis), each point along the y-axis represents the state of the system at a
given time. These plots are called trajectories and their shapes can tell us a
lot about the behavior of the system. Sometimes several possible trajectories
of a system will converge toward a point or region. Such points and regions are
called attractors because they appear to attract a systems's trajectory. The
surrounding region of an attractor is called a basin.
Using the chaos theory of
attractors, we can define neurological responses in the brain as attractors
which give rise to particular behaviors (Flint, 1994). In a complex system such
as the psyche, many attractors can be found, some in series with each other,
and some giving rise to bifurcations (changes in one's world view following
periods of indecision). In a theraputic environment, these can be observed by
the therapist in terms of their evoked sensory and motor responses.
In this model, we can define
motivation, for example, as the state space of the psyche that exists within a
specific environmental situation, in which the brain is destablized enough to
evoke the low-level background activity of its neural networks or basins which
correspond to previously learned activity that is meaningful in the current
situation. In this state space, or phase space of the psyche, a small stimulus
can generate a massive response resulting in information going out to all
regions of the brain. In turn, this usually results in some kind of
corresponding behavioral response. When the behavior results in beneficial
situations (e.g., those that enhance survivability or that lead to pleasant or
desired situations), the strength of the attractors is proportionally
increased.
In this model, the client would
describe one or more specific behavioral problems to the therapist who, in
turn, would work with the client to form specific goals to work toward and
measurable plans to reach those goals. These goals would become the desire
attractors, and intermediate goals would be agreed upon as basins. The task of
the therapist would then be to help guide the client from existing attractors
to the desired ones through suitable bifurcations.
One of the tools that could be used
in this process is the symbol. Tarot symbols, for example, can be used to
stimulate the imagination of the client. During the short periods of
instability (points of possible bifurcation) due to imaginative stimulation,
small suggestions by the therapist would help drive the client toward the
desired attractors. This is similar to the well-known therapeutic techniques
used in family counseling described by Goldenberg & Goldenberg (1980/1991)
of paradoxical communication, paradoxical intervention, and prescribing the
symptom. All of these techniques use the paradox to induce periods of psychic
instability in the client. However, the intended outcome of these interventions
is not to create periods of uncertainty, but rather to allow for win-win
outcomes for the client. Using the chaos model, the uncertainty can be used to
perturb the patient's psyche into the basin of the desired attractor.
Tarot Symbolism
The primary symbolism within the
major arcana were discussed briefly.
ooo000ooo