Essay 5: The Shadow, the Trickster, and Synchronicity — Tarot as a Psychological Tool
Essay 5: The Shadow, the Trickster, and Synchronicity — Tarot as a Psychological Tool
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
The final essay in this series focuses on three of Jung’s most mysterious and transformative ideas: the Shadow, the Trickster, and Synchronicity. These three concepts are also pillars of deep tarot work, and essential for anyone using the cards as a mirror of the psyche.
I. The Shadow – Reclaiming the Rejected Self
The Shadow is the part of ourselves we deny, suppress, or disown. It includes fear, shame, rage, jealousy—but also unclaimed gifts and power.
In tarot, Shadow work involves:
Facing cards we dislike or fear (e.g., The Devil, 10 of Swords).
Noticing projections: seeing parts of ourselves in others.
Integrating rather than exorcising the “bad” cards.
Jung believed wholeness requires conscious engagement with the Shadow. This may come through:
A sudden insight triggered by a reading.
Recognizing how we sabotage or avoid truth.
Realizing we are the “villain” of our own story.
Shadow integration in tarot is often triggered by:
Reversed cards
Recurring cards you “can’t escape”
Uncomfortable truths from the spread
The goal is not perfection, but conscious relationship with what was hidden.
II. The Trickster – Chaos, Humor, and Liberation
The Trickster is the great disruptor—chaotic, comic, and often necessary. In tarot, this archetype is most clearly embodied by:
The Fool (sacred innocence and foolishness)
The Magician (manipulator and innovator)
The Devil (shadow of the Trickster, seduction and bondage)
The Tower (divine disruption)
Jung viewed the Trickster as an agent of transformation. When life becomes too rigid, the Trickster breaks it apart.
In readings, the Trickster may appear when:
A major shift is brewing.
You’re taking yourself too seriously.
A lesson must be learned through inversion, irony, or reversal.
Tarot teaches that laughter, surrender, and foolishness are often the keys to insight.
III. Synchronicity – The Meaningful Coincidence
Perhaps Jung’s most mystical idea, synchronicity is the experience of events that are meaningfully related but not causally linked.
Tarot readings often generate this eerie sense of meaning:
Drawing the exact card you were thinking of.
Cards echoing a recent dream or conversation.
Repeated images across decks, days, or spreads.
Jung believed synchronicity was a glimpse of the Self operating through symbol—a kind of psychic “signal” that we are in alignment with our deeper truth.
Tarot readings often serve as ritual containers for synchronicity:
The querent projects psychic material into the cards.
The cards “respond” with mirrors from the unconscious.
A story unfolds that feels inevitably personal.
The cards may not “predict” the future—they reveal the present in its fullness, opening the door to insight and transformation.
IV. Tarot as a Psychological Tool
Through archetypes, images, and spontaneous associations, tarot offers:
A dialogue with the unconscious.
A space for projection and reflection.
A bridge between psyche and symbol.
It is not “just a deck of cards.” It is a mythic mirror, a symbolic machine for self-initiation.
As Jung once said: “The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul.”
For many, tarot serves the same purpose.
Conclusion: The Mirror and the Threshold
The tarot is a mirror. The unconscious is always speaking. Whether through symbols, stories, or shuffled images, it seeks reunion with the Self.
To walk the tarot path through the Jungian lens is not to escape reality—but to enter it more fully, more consciously, and more soulfully.
The work continues, always.