Tarot as a Pathway to the Collective Unconscious
Maeve Boon, Advanced Clinical Fellow
Tarot is a deck of 78 symbolic cards that has been used for centuries for divination, self-reflection, and psychological exploration. If you've studied tarot before, you've probably heard the phrase, "Tarot is a mirror." But what exactly is tarot reflecting back to us, and how do we make sense of what we see?
One concept from Jungian psychology that pairs beautifully with tarot is symbolic amplification. Rather than reducing a symbol to one fixed interpretation, symbolic amplification recognizes that symbols can carry meaning on multiple levels at once. A symbol may evoke something deeply personal for the client, something different for the therapist based on their own psychological understanding and clinical experience, and something broader that resonates with universal human themes– the realm Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. Exploring these layers together allows the symbol to become richer and more meaningful than any single interpretation could provide.
Because tarot is a deck of symbolic images, each card can become a doorway into understanding our inner world. The value of the card is not in predicting the future, but in the thoughts, feelings, memories, and associations it evokes.
Sometimes we bring a situation into therapy and genuinely don't know what we think or feel about it. Other times, we have an intuition about our experience but need space to explore it more fully. Drawing a tarot card can offer a symbolic focal point that helps bring unconscious material into awareness. The images often invite perspectives that might not emerge through conversation alone.
Together, we explore what the card brings up for you. What stands out? What emotions arise? What memories, associations, or bodily sensations come to mind? Your therapist may also offer observations or symbolic associations that the imagery evokes. When our interpretations overlap, we may explore how these shared themes connect to larger human experiences or archetypal patterns. When they differ, those differences can be just as meaningful, opening new avenues for reflection and curiosity.
Rather than asking, "What does this card mean?" we ask, "What is this card helping us understand about your experience right now?"
The goal of using tarot in therapy is not to receive answers from an external source or to predict what will happen next. Instead, tarot serves as a catalyst for self-discovery.
The cards provide a symbolic language through which we can access intuition, deepen self-awareness, and explore aspects of the psyche that may be difficult to reach through logic alone. In this way, tarot becomes less about fortune-telling and more about meaning-making. The wisdom does not come from the cards themselves. Instead it emerges through your relationship with the symbols and the conversation they inspire.
Ultimately, the goal is not to tell you who you are, but to help you discover what you already know within yourself.