Tarot Symbolism:

Language, Psychology,
Ontology

Inna Semetsky, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Faculty of Education, Monash University Australia

Inna.Semetsky@education.monash.edu.au

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 Introduction:
Pictorial “language” expressed in the signs, images and symbols of Tarot
cards.

Hermetic tradition / revived during the Renaissance (e.g. Yates 1964; Faivre
1994, Tomberg 1993).

Michael Dummett (1980) The Game of Tarot

Tarot pictures --images of collective unconscious, or pictorial ‘text’ to be ‘read’

and interpreted.

Event ontology : coexistence of the past and future events in the present.

Creating a foundation for both epistemology and ontology, which the

phenomenon of Tarot readings commits us to.
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Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Pierpont Morgan Library in New York

Plotinus (250-70 CE)

Marsilo Ficino (1433-1499), Pico della Mirandelo (1463-1494), Giordano Bruno

(1548-1600)

Plato and St. John on the Cross, Zohar and St. Paul, Bergson and Ouspensky,
Dionysus and Leibniz, St. Augustine and Teihard de Chardin

Faivre (1994) : the gnostics of Princeton and Pasadena

Eliphas Levi, Papus

the Emerald Tablet

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 Memoria
Faivre : ‘a part of the teaching of Hermes Trismegitus consisted
of “interiorising” the world of our mens, from whence the “arts of
memory” cultivated’ (Faivre 1994, p. 13).

Augustine: ‘the fields and spacious places of memory (campos et

lata praetoria memoria), where are the treasures (thesauri) of
innumerable images’ (Yates 1966, p. 46).

Tarot images : descendants from the archetypes of

transformation (Jung CW 9. 81)
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Triangle Argument

The law of correspondences (space/time)

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‘the area of a screen – indeed, the area of any
surface in space – is really nothing but the capacity
of that surface as a channel for information. So,
according to the weak holographic principle space is
nothing but a way of talking about all the different
channels of communication that allow information to
pass from observer to observer. …In short, the
holographic principle is the ultimate realization of the
notion that the world is a network of relationships.
These relationships are revealed by this new principle
to involve nothing but information’ (Smolin 2001, pp.
177-178)

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The structure and dynamics of Tarot

The Celtic Cross spread

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Major Arcana

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Minor Arcana

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 The Language of Symbols
The Hermetic tradition: the principle of
homology (the law of identity), that is, the
only difference between any manifested
phenomena is just the degree of their
evolutionary development in space-time.

The Tarot layout is a visible, material link in a

signifying chain of a larger symbolic order.

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 Augustine:
Whoever, then, is able to understand a word, not only
before it is uttered in sound, but also before the
images of its sounds are considered in thought… is
able now to see through this glass and in this enigma
some likeness of that Word of whom it is said, “In the
beginning was the Word…” For of necessity, …there is
born from the knowledge itself which the memory
retains, a word that is altogether of the same kind
with that knowledge from which it is born. … And the
true word then comes into being. … Who would not
see how great would be the unlikeness between it
and that Word of God, … and simply equal to Him
from whom it is, and with whom it is wonderfully co-
eternal
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 Formula of Transformation

(Faivre 1994)

…a deeper level [at which there are]… universal

patterns or modes of experience, archetypal forms
that constantly arranged the elements of human
experience into typical configurations and gave to
collective …psychology a dynamic continuity. These
archetypes endured as basic a priori symbolic forms
while taking on the costume of the moment in each
individual life and each cultural era, permeating each
experience, each cognition, and each world view
(Tarnas 1991, p. 385).

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 anima mundi

Tarot pictorial language: icon of semiotic reality.

Tarot deck: a symbolic lexicon used by the Nous

The Gospel of Philip:

Gnostic Truth can indeed be understood, even if indirectly but by means
of its mediation via poetic or mythic, symbolic, language:

Truth didn’t come into the world naked

But in [arche]types and images.
Truth is received only
That way.
There is rebirth and its image.
They must be reborn through image. 13
Tarot Reading for “Sam”

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 A triadic relation/
The logic of the included middle

A A
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