From the Publisher
Unavailable for almost a decade, Marcus Aurelius Press is pleased to announce the reissue of this important work by art historian and author, Dr. Robert Wang.
The Jungian Tarot Deck, first published in 1988, is intended to be a visual introduction to Jungian philosophy. The key is the archetypal image encountered through creative visualization or, as Jung called it, "active imagination."
It is a process which may, theoretically, lead to discovery of a true Inner Self. Such creative visualization is at the heart of all mystical and religious systems, from those of the ancient world, to the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola, to Hermeticism and Rosicrucianism, to Alchemy, and to the remarkably creative occult exercises of the nineteenth century.
One of the main purposes of this work is to demonstrate parallels between Jungian philosophy and Hermetic Kabbalah, a system which has been essential to Western mysticism since the Italian Renaissance which Wang explored in depth in Qabbalistic Tarot.
Wang considers Jung's ideas about regressions from the personal into the collective to be commensurate with the Kabbalistic method of working backwards from the lowest level of the Tree of Life (the material condition), through the upper levels which symbolize not only the enlightened Self, but a condition of nonbeing which transcends all consciousness, personal or collective.
From the Author
It is my hope that viewing the tarot images in psychological terms may serve to amplify our understanding of a whole class of literature previously considered "mystical."
As an art historian my amateur incursion into comparative religion is very tentative and my sources are general. I should also admit that as a historian I have a specific bias. History is, to me, something secure against which religious, mythological, and psychological ideologies must be measured, and it bothers me to find so many discussions of the history of tarot predicated upon irresponsible speculation when the historical tracks of the cards are so clear.
I have no doubt that the tarot originated in fourteenth-century Italy. Of course interpretation of the tarot in serious psychological terms would have seemed laughable, if not absolutely bizarre to its originators, who developed the cards as a game.
It was not until the late nineteenth century that tarot was systematically related to Astrology, to Kabbalah, and to Alchemy. And it was the twentieth century which added an overlay of modern psychological theory
