If you watch a lot of TVs, read a lot of comics
or play a lot of games, I’m pretty sure
you’ve probably already seen a looot of
Tarot Cards.
Ahhh, yes. Tarot Cards. They’re just so
convenient to use with their easily understood
names and crystal clear symbolism, that soooo
many shows and movies and games - just totally
and utterly get absolutely everything wrong
about them.
Fortunately, Persona is not like that!
Unfortunately, that’s another thing where
they’ve taken liberties with C.G.Jung’s
writings.
Heya everyone, I am Nenilein, now let’s
dig for the things that got Lost in Context.
On our third venture into the marvelous world
of Persona, I would like to take the opportunity
to talk about one of the more distinguishing
features of the games’ style; Their prominent
and surprisingly accurate use of Tarot Arcana
to signify people, demons, Personas and Shadows.
For the most part the games adhere to a similar
practice as most other media with this motive
and limit themselves to using only the 22
trump cards, also known as the Major Arcana,
though Persona 2 Eternal Punishment and Persona
3 do also use the much lesser known, far more
numerous Minor Arcana as well.
First of all, a little explanation on what
Tarot actually is. Basically, Tarot are playing
cards. And yeah, that... That’s pretty much
it.
OK, OK, I’ll be serious now, but there are
a lot of books and articles that try to pass
off Tarot as this mystical, god-given instrument
of supreme wisdom, when in reality, they have
the exact same origin as a deck of cards used
to play Poker.
In fact, with some tweaking you can technically
even use a full Tarot deck to play Poker!
Hm... Poker in the Velvet room. Now there’s
an idea.
Tarot is actually an old, french variation
of today’s playing cards, which itself came
from other variations, such as a the Italian
“Tarocchi” or the german variation known
as “Tarock”, primarily found in Austria.
FUCK YEAH MY COUNTRY!
Like with common playing cards, there are
4 suits with cards numbered from Ace to 10,
Cups being the Equivalent of Hearts, Spades
are Swords, Clovers are Wands and Diamonds
are Coins.
There are also the court cards, albeit they
differ slightly from the modern playing card
decks, with the “Jacks” being named “Pages”
instead, and an additional court card, “Knight”,
existing between “Page” and “Queen”.
However, what really sets the Tarot Cards
apart from today’s common playing cards
is the addition of 22 trump cards, which have
a higher worth than any of the suit cards,
thus making them valuable, well... Trumps.
Pretty obvious, actually, huh.
These 22 trumps are known in divination as
the “Major Arcana”, meaning “Great Secrets”.
Numbered from “0” or “Unnumbered”
to “21” in most variations of the Tarot
Deck, each of these cards is illustrated with
an often very religiously-charged image, which
was what made these cards become as popular
for fortune telling as they ended up being.
The illustrations and titles of these cards
really do offer themselves up for it, since
it’s just so easy to code symbolism into
them and interpret them in very meaningful
ways.
And, by the way, no, there’s no satanism
whatsoever encoded in them, the majority of
the symbolism is actually pretty standard
roman-catholic christian lore for the time.
Well, I guess you could see the inclusion
of a reference to the legendary female Pope
Joan as “offensive”, but even that one
got renamed.
Now, I could go over all the illustrations
and their meanings now, but since there’s
22 of these things, it’d just be very long-winded
and take up the majority of the video, so
I’ll reserve that for a different video.
For now, I’ll just assume you’re familiar
with at least some of the cards and their
motives.
What is done with Tarot Cards in divination
is actually pretty simple: The cards are randomized
and assigned to certain questions the person
you are reading them for is asking. Once turned
over and revealed, the person reading the
cards uses the image on the card, its symbolism
and its common interpretations and thinks
about how this could relate to the question
that was asked and how it could help resolve
any eventual conflicts connected to it.
Even if you do not believe in the supernatural,
this method of using images and symbolism
to inspire yourself to find a solution for
a problem or put unease you might have to
rest can actually be pretty effective when
applied since every reading is individual,
dependent on your specific situation, and
based much more on your personal interpretation,
rather than giving you exact guidelines.
But, of course, I know what the REAL question
that all of you are asking now is:
“But NEEEENI. What does any of this have
to do with Carl Gustav Jung!?”
Let me explain.
In some of Jung’s writings, he went into
closer detail regarding how the Archetypes
of the Collective Unconscious have manifested
themselves in our imagination throughout the
ages. I have already touched upon the Archetypes
in a previous video, so go watch that if you
have no idea what I’m talking about.
Alongside recurring templates in religion,
deities, demons and locations, he also named
Tarot Cards as an example, claiming that the
images on the Tarot are “distantly descended
from the archetypes of transformation”.
His idea was that all methods of divination
were actually methods of tapping into the
Collective Unconscious that humanity has employed
since ancient times to solve their problems.
Aaaaaand- That’s pretty much it.
Yeah, he brought this idea one or two times,
however, never elaborated on it too much,
which may have something to do with the fact
that Jung himself was more partial to the
I Ching, a Chinese collection of symbols for
divination, which he attributed that same
archetypal meaning.
Now, who REALLY went on to connect Tarot with
Jungian Psychology was not Jung himself. It
were Jung’s followers, who, based off his
theory of archetypes took a closer look at
the interpretation of Tarot Cards and tried
to figure out how the Arcana apply to our
lives as archetypes, which involved considering
both, the images on the card, as well as their
common meaning in divination.
The general consensus eventually reached was
that the Arcana, from 0 to 21, actually encode
the process of “Individuation”, Jung’s
idea that people can gain a higher level of
awareness and self-fulfillment by going inward
and exploring, conversing with and accepting
their own unconscious parts as themselves.
Does this sound familiar already? Yes, this
is pretty much what the method with which
Personas are gained in the games, most obviously
in Persona 4, was based on.
Individuation is often described as a journey
with different “stages” that one needs
to pass through again and again to eventually
reach “enlightenment”, which, in Tarot
terms, would be Arcana number XXI, The World.
All the cards in-between are seen as either
“Phases”, “Situations” or “Encounters”
in one’s life that have an impact on it
and call forth a change of some sort.
Seeing how by Jungian logic Tarot Cards are
actually an instrument that people have been
using to communicate with the unconscious
and develope their own personality to eventually
become enlightened, Jung’s followers looked
at them, decided “Hey, what worked for people
back in 18th century Europe works for us!”
and started writing books on how to use Tarot
Cards for meditation and to analyze your own
psyche and mental state in a Jungian manner.
Many, many books.
The method suggested for meditation in almost
all of these books is “active imagination”,
a technic commonly applied, for example, in
therapy, in which one’s unconscious is allowed
to be freely expressed through creative activities.
Active imagination using Tarot cards works
like this: You take a card, look at it, let
it “inspire” you and think about what
this card and its meaning means to *you* specifically
and how this can help you answer your own
questions or resolve conflicts in your life
- Pretty much exactly the same thing that
using Tarot Cards in divination is supposed
to do. Just considerably less... Magic-y.
In the Persona series, Tarot Cards are mostly
used as a shorthand means to assign archetypes
to Personas, Shadows, Demons, Characters and
Characters’ relationships to each other.
For example, a Demon or Shadow assigned with
the “Emperor” Arcana represents a masculine,
rigid, controlling archetype or the negative
aspects thereof.
A Persona of the Magician Arcana stands for
an outward personality that follows an impulsive,
performing archetype, sort of like an illusionist
or juggler, someone who has great energy but
has to be careful to not get prideful or carried
away with it.
This is seen wonderfully in Magician-type
Persona Users like Yuka Ayase, Junpei Iori
and Yosuke Hanamura.
A Social Link of the Fortune Arcana stands
for a relationship that revolves around an
archetype of sudden changes or turns of fate
that the participants themselves have no direct
control over, but need to learn to use to
their advantage anyway, like how Keisuke’s
Social Link is all about how life keeps putting
him into positions that tip him towards becoming
a doctor, Ryoji’s Social Link being all
about how fate won’t allow him to be a normal,
happy person, and Naoto’s Social Link being
all about a game Naoto’s Grandfather, an
outside force, set up, something neither her
nor the protagonist had an influence on.
As you can see, the meanings a Tarot Card
can take on are very flexible and individual
to every person and, seeing how in Jungian
psychology every Archetype exists deep inside
every person’s unconscious, every single
Tarot Arcana can also apply to every person
in some way or another.
It’s not like Mitsuru is fully defined by
the Empress Arcana’s Archetype, or like
Yukiko never acts in any way that is not “in-line”
with the most common interpretations of the
Priestess Arcana, it’s just that these cards
are what applies best to their current role
in their relationships to others and their
current situation in life.
With times and changes in their lives, the
dominant Arcana to them might change, as seen
when with several P1 and P2 Characters who
change their Arcana between installments,
and with characters like Aigis or Elizabeth,
whose Arcana have both changed to “Fool”
due to them beginning new chapters in their
lives.
So yeah, Jung really didn’t ever do much
of anything with Tarot, but that doesn’t
mean using the Arcana wasn’t a brilliant
and wonderfully simple way to integrate the
complicated concept of Jungian Archetypes
into the games without confusing positively
everyone ever, so: Kudos on that!
However, the Arcana are not a sure-fire personality-indicator
and their interpretations aren’t static.
In other words: All those Persona-themed Arcana
Personality Tests you may have seen on the
internet?
I’m gonna be talking some more about the
meaning of the Arcana in relation to specific
character arcs in some of my upcoming videos.
