Queen of Tarot

Archetypes in the Tarot: Father / Mother

Tags: archetypes, parents, father, mother

Carl Jung proposed a model for understanding why humans tend to group ideas about other people in certain recognizable patterns. These patterns, he explained, occur in the Collective Unconscious as Archetypes. 

One such archetype is the Father or Mother. They represent our literal parents, but they also represent anyone who served in a parental role in our lives.

In a tarot reading, a card picturing parents may represent our actual mother and father, but it may also be a reference to the qualities we associate with parental figures. For example, the Mother may represent a nurturing, warm, comforting figure. The...

Archetypes in the Tarot

Tags: archetypes, tarot-analysis, anima, animus, child, trickster, spirit, senex, shadow, father, mother, hero, persona, maiden

Carl Jung proposed the concept that much of human experience originates in what he calls the "Collective Unconscious." He described the collective unconscious as functioning much like a part of the human mind. One of the features of the collective unconscious is its tendency to organize people and situations in familiar terms — so much so that it forms well-formed character-like figures that the human mind associates with a set similar qualities. These figures are called "Archetypes," and they appear frequently in art, fiction, film, and dreams. They also appear in the tarot.

The following is a selection of archetypes that...