Considering Archetypes

[Joan Marie]

I'm going to start this post by admitting I'm out of my depth on this topic.

I've always had a problem with it that starts at the fact I don't like the word "archetypes." Maybe it's that hard "k" sound in the middle followed by the plosive "p", I don't know. It's not my favourite word.

I think (remember I said I was out of my depth) that it was Jung who associated the Tarot Majors with this word, saying that each one represented a particular archetype. But are they really separate? Are they not, in relationship to each other and in different situations more fluid and wouldn't our readings be improved or at least be a bit more dynamic if we considered that any "archetype" also contains it's counterpart? (I won't say opposite because the counterpart depends also on the situation.)

I'm thinking of this because of something I read this morning in a book I've quoted before, Mercurius by patrick Harpur.

Here are couple of quotes that started these thoughts of mine:

Theres no getting away from the fact that a number of archtypal images ...exist; but I can't see them any longer as manifestations of a number of separate archetypal forms. There's only one "archetype" : The Spirit Mercurius, who appears in a number of guises.

Rightly or wrongly the notion of archetypes suggests to me a set of things when really they are dynamic patterns in an imaginative "field."

There has been so much emphasis on Jung in the Tarot world, and in my experience, we've been encouraged to take him at his word. But Jung was not a Tarotist. Just about anyone here is more of a Tarotist that he was, yet because of his other credentials there's been a tendency to sort of defer to him and his assessment of our cards.

I realised this is not a well-formed thought I'm presenting here. I'm just trying to tickle this concept and see if anyone has some insight or thoughts about it.

[Charlie Brown]

I think I understand what you're saying. I haven't spent much time thinking about or reading about Jung and tarot (I know it's popular) but I did read a fair bit of Jung in my younger days, so I immediately get the gist of what they're talking about.

Andy B talks about the majors not so much as "archetypes" but as icons. Last summer, I went to the Museum of Russian Icons in Massachusetts and could see what he meant. I think that a study of iconography could get you to a similar place as Jung but with a different language that fits better with different assumptions or emphases. I haven't really studied it though, so I'm just brainstorming.

[BlueStar]

But are they really separate? Are they not, in relationship to each other and in different situations more fluid and wouldn't our readings be improved or at least be a bit more dynamic if we considered that any "archetype" also contains it's counterpart?

I would say yes. Any given 'archetype' is really just a label, a way to categorise something so we can easily make more sense of it or reference it, in the same way as we have the male and female archetypes in society, yet if you look at any individual they may not be 'typical' and be more 'masculine' or 'feminine' in different aspects of their personality, how they do things in life, different situations, or per social group or culture .

So I think archetypes can be useful to explain concepts and relationships at a high level, but they shouldn't be viewed as definitive, but as you say potentially more dynamic considering the situation and other probably many factors such as counterparts.

I'm certainly no expert on Jung, just my take having given it only brief thought on seeing this topic:)

[Diana]

Joan Marie, I also don't like the sound of the word archetype. It would be nicer sounding if it was a softer ch like in "arch". It's all the Greek's fault !!! But I don't mind it in architecture. Go figure.

I know next to nothing about Jung and archetypes (nor anything else for that matter - although I'd like to look into his dream work one day). So I had to go to wiki to refresh a bit my memory. So according to the first paragraph:

Carl Jung understood archetypes as universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behavior on interaction with the outside world. They are autonomous and hidden forms which are transformed once they enter consciousness and are given particular expression by individuals and their cultures. In Jungian psychology, archetypes are highly developed elements of the collective unconscious. The existence of archetypes can only be inferred indirectly from stories, art, myths, religions, or dreams.

Now from this, I would think that Jung could surely not have meant that an archetype was represented only on one card. They are given "particular expression by individual and their cultures"... could have been continued by adding "and tarot cards". Each archetype has a particular expression according to the individual or.... tarot card.

I mean, when we tell our Tarot story by laying out the cards, there are quite a few that could represent the "Hero" archetype, I would think. Or any other archetype.

Of have I not understood the original questioning in this thread and am going off beam....

[archimedes]

I think we've a tendency to think a thing either 'is' or 'is not' something, when the reality is far more dialectical.

A card may represent an archetype, but it may also represent (or be read as) another, depending on context, on the reader, on the artist... it is only a representation and therefore imperfect, and archetypes themeselves are hardly well defined but are collective ideas, which are in themselves, I would argue, not eternal but subject to change. There are some forces in the universe and some human experiences which are so constant and universal that they may be efffectively unchanging, of course. But nothing is entirely fixed. The fool is one of these, I think, which sits a little differently in contemporary consciousness than it may have done in centuries gone.

I actually like the word. Archetypal was a favorite.

[Diana]

There are some forces in the universe and some human experiences which are so constant and universal that they may be efffectively unchanging, of course. But nothing is entirely fixed. The fool is one of these, I think, which sits a little differently in contemporary consciousness than it may have done in centuries gone.

I actually like the word. Archetypal was a favorite.

That's very interesting what you say about the Fool. Are you talking about how the "fool" was once an accepted figure in the community, had a role to play and that later was sent to an insane asylum, and now there's psychiatry and pills ? Now that everything has to be normalised and standardised and globalised ?

Archetypal I don't mind. But I don't like archetype. In French the "e" is pronounced (an e as in "egg) so there's not that horrid "k" sound that Joan-Marie talked about. I can handle it in French.

[archimedes]

That's very interesting what you say about the Fool. Are you talking about how the "fool" was once an accepted figure in the community, had a role to play and that later was sent to an insane asylum, and now there's psychiatry and pills ? Now that everything has to be normalised and standardised and globalised ?

Well had more in mind the court fool portrayed in certain cards, but also, yes, the village fool; we don't think of people as having this role, unless you're a particular brand of English eccentric I think, and even comedians don't fit this. There's an understanding of the innocent wisdom of the fool in that archetype that is absent from any modern conception of the word that I can think of.

I suppose there are some modern renderings of innocent wisdom as in 'Rain Man' and the like? Even apart from medicalised mental health (and I'm wary of being critical of this, as for many people, medication and therapy are very useful and effective) there's a shift in the way we regard those with developmental differences or delays.

And not to romanticize, either- historical treatment of people with mental health issues was often terrible, and so those 'accepted as part of the community' were only those with a certain range of disability or difference; others were rejected, exorcised, and incarcerated.

This is really a half-baked thought, really just tossing up a few thought bubbles and see where they go, so I'm not at all fixed about any of this.

I think modern renderings of the Fool have addressed this by making him a kind of innocent hippie-vagabond type, and quite carefree and aimless. In the TdM, the fool is more the court jester, and his job is to tell the King how things really are, to ignore the threats from the Tailors and say 'you have no clothes!' ... in other renderings, he appears to be paying the price for that honesty, booted from court and on the road.

I think Tarot readers get a sense of the fool from learning about him - the archetype is well known to us. Would the general community make similar sense of the image? Maybe if they've done a bit of Shakespeare and read some fairy tales.

In French the "e" is pronounced (an e as in "egg) so there's not that horrid "k" sound

I thought that was the correct pronunciation in English. Maybe Americans say it differently.

[Diana]

I thought that was the correct pronunciation in English. Maybe Americans say it differently.

https://www.google.com/search?q=archety ... e&ie=UTF-8

That's the British pronunciation. It's the "schwa" sound which is actually the most common sound in English. It's how unstressed vowels are pronounced in English.

Look forward to continuing this discussion.

[Joan Marie]

This is really turning into a very interesting discussion on the nature of The Fool, which is a really good way to explore my original question about archetypes. Applying the ideas to The Fool can help us focus our thoughts.

(BTW- there is currently another very intriguing conversation happening about the fool in the Sola Busca study group)

Another idea regarding The Fool's of those times is that they weren't Fools at all, but actually quite clever and savvy. They were just playing the fool as a way to gain access and have influence on the powerful. They could be master manipulators.

They were also often the truth tellers, hiding behind the guise of a joke.

These are interesting forces and still in play today.

I'm starting to see many sides to this archetype, and going back to my original post, if you'll forgive me for repeating,

Theres no getting away from the fact that a number of archtypal images ...exist; but I can't see them any longer as manifestations of a number of separate archetypal forms. There's only one "archetype" : The Spirit Mercurius, who appears in a number of guises.

Rightly or wrongly the notion of archetypes suggests to me a set of things when really they are dynamic patterns in an imaginative "field."

It really does seem that the so-called archetype is mercurial and not fixed. How it manifests is situational. Maybe even opportunistic.

When I was younger I drove a lot of really crappy cars and was often stopped by the police for various infractions regarding the state of disrepair. The cops always had two choices, write me a ticket, which was expensive and a pain, or give me a warning to fix the problem. I learned that acting stupid was the way to get the cop to give me a warning instead of a ticket. I think it appealed to their sense of superiority, or maybe something else but by pretending I didn't KNOW I was required to renew my registration every year, or even what an exhaust pipe WAS and why it needed to be fixed, would garner some kind of sympathy and I always got off with a warning. I learned this the hard way after getting several expensive tickets trying to explain myself or reason with the cop.

And like a court jester, (The Fool) the whole act is entertaining to those watching and even to those being fooled. I imagine the cop telling people later about the pitifully stupid girl he pulled over earlier today who didn't know turn signals could break. ("But the thing is going up and down" I'd say as I showed him my turn signal switch.)

I knew exactly what I was doing. My behaviour was far from "innocent" which is one of the archetypes typically applied to the Fool. (BTW- with a warning ticket I still had to fix the problem, I just didn't have to pay a fine on top of it. )

So what am I trying to say with all this digression? I think I'm saying that although Jung raised interesting ideas about archetypes, I think applying them too stringently to the tarot majors could be limiting us as readers in some ways.

[fire cat pickles]

I'm glad you offered this example because it illustrates an important difference between the archetype and the icon. Both are important, and they play a role in how we perceive and read tarot.

The police officer in your case had a psychological archetype of 'the fool' in his mind. In modern society, this often becomes the stereotype, such as the "woman who can't drive/who is ignorant of all things mechanical", etc. Once you played off of this, you became the icon of the "pitifully stupid girl".

This is much how we read the tarot. The psychological archetypes are what we pick up on. We formulate these ideas into icons that are psychically present in the sitters' (or ours, if we are reading for ourselves) lives in order to piece together a cohesive and informative reading for them (us). An archetype is an idea. An icon is a physical thing.

[archimedes]

Theres no getting away from the fact that a number of archtypal images ...exist; but I can't see them any longer as manifestations of a number of separate archetypal forms. There's only one "archetype" : The Spirit Mercurius, who appears in a number of guises.

Rightly or wrongly the notion of archetypes suggests to me a set of things when really they are dynamic patterns in an imaginative "field."

It really does seem that the so-called archetype is mercurial and not fixed. How it manifests is situational. Maybe even opportunistic.
...

So what am I trying to say with all this digression? I think I'm saying that although Jung raised interesting ideas about archetypes, I think applying them too stringently to the tarot majors could be limiting us as readers in some ways.

*nods* yes, and I think this is one of the issues with web communication - we can't always tell whether a comment is meant to be definitive or (as is more usually the case) is just an addition to a much larger and more nuanced conversation. We end up having to precede every comment with 'well this is one possible way to read this...'.

Jung has a lot to offer but I think is representative of one particular school of thought, which was independent of the development of Tarot; so Jungian thought may offer a useful lens on the Tarot but it isn't the only one, far from it.

Your comment about imaginative 'fields' resonates with me. As Firecat says, the icon is not the idea. I'm reminded of Bourdieu's field theory, and Berger's development of this in describing the cycle of conceptualization and production and reification of meaning (and I just had *the* most interesting moment of connection as this resonated with something I remember from Joseph Campbell in terms of participating in myth).

[Joan Marie]

I'm glad you offered this example because it illustrates an important difference between the archetype and the icon.

From something I was just now reading it would seem that Jung himself added to this particular confusion by often using the word archetype when he meant "image" or "icon."

But I think your description fire car pickles, is accurate and as you say important to understand for the purposes of the discussion.

My understanding of Jung's archetypes is that they are ancient "forms" from which images emerge. They are not, as I (and I am probably not alone here) have thought of them in terms of "roles" like mother, trickster, hero, etc. Those are the images, the icons. But where do they come from?

If an archetype is an ancient kind of "crucible" from which images emerge, if they are the so-called "collective unconscious" given form, then wouldn't the conditions, the times in which they arise, in which they bubble to the surface, cause those images to shape themselves, to manifest differently?

So what is The Perfect Fool (the archetypal Fool)? Our books give us lots of ideas of what kind of Fool the Fool could represent, but unless we dig a lot deeper in a reading, we can't possibly know which one applies. Once we get past learning basic card meanings, (i.e. it's the start of a journey, better watch your step!) this is next level reading.

I'm starting to change my opinion from what is was in the beginning of this thread and I'm starting to see something very intense about using archetypes in readings, a sort of getting past a certain wall, a limitation if you will.

It requires the ability to enter a different space altogether, almost a kind of trance or connection to the essence of the ancient archetype in order to observe how it is presenting in the moment.

[Diana]

After having watched JulianneVictoria's introduction to her new Tarot deck, Sigilla Mediaevalia, I had a thought about archetypes and symbols. Perhaps this is only new to me, and you'll say exasperated "this has been rehashed a million times". But things are always new to somebody...

I was thinking that it is WE who unlock the secrets of the symbols, but it is the ARCHETYPES that unlock OUR secrets.

Does this sound reasonable ?

[Diana]

I was listening earlier to a talk on archetypes on youtube. It's a really interesting channel focused on philosophy.

The guy (don't know his name) speaks here of Jung and archetypes and particularly how archetypes are sort of ever evolving, not fixed in time. As an example he takes the archetype of the feminine and the masculine which is transforming and evolving due to all the changes that have taken place, like the women's liberation moment and sexual revolution. This was of interest to me because in a thread in Plato's Cave this feminine/masculine aspect was raised recently.

The talk is here. It's worth listening to and this guy (I assume a philosophy teacher or professor) has a great speaking voice and is really enjoyable to listen to as well. It's only 8 minutes so doesn't take up too much time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD_DwkG ... ex=17&t=0s

[jupiter]

Interesting discussion... I wanted to chime in to say that there's an archetype deck available now, made by Kim Krans (The Wild Unknown tarot).
The Wild Unknown Archetypes Deck

I have it here, it arrived yesterday – haven't had time to play with it yet, but the concept seemed interesting to me.

/edited to add a first spread I just did. There are five spreads suggested in the guidebook, to use the deck for "reading" – while it can also be used for journaling, meditation and archetype research.
download/file.php?mode=view&id=7331

And yes, that cat card ... a lot of people don't get that one.