On Tarot, Jung, and the Strange Lives of Symbols
A few weeks ago, I was having one of those wonderfully deep conversations with my mentor, dear friend, and spiritual guide.
Those conversations have a way of wandering through psychology, philosophy, mythology, tarot, Carl Jung, and what it means to be fully human. We never really know where they’ll end up.
On this particular day, she and I were talking about the Ten of Swords in tarot—a card that’s often misunderstood. Most people see catastrophe. I’ve come to see it as something quieter.
The end of one chapter so another can begin. Acceptance. Surrender. The moment we stop arguing with reality and begin walking toward whatever comes next.
At least…
That’s what I thought we were talking about.
Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, voice-to-text quietly decided to contribute.
I never noticed.
My mentor simply replied,
“Who’s Gary?”
I blinked.
“Gary?”
I scrolled back through the conversation.
And there he was.
Gary.
Somehow, a perfectly ordinary word had been transformed into… Gary.
I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.
There wasn’t a Gary.
There didn’t need to be.
Just one ridiculous voice-to-text error and two friends laughing until we cried.
Nevertheless…
“You shall henceforth be known as… Gary.”
And somehow every time the Ten of Swords appears, I smile.
“Well… Gary’s back.”
There’s something wonderfully merciful about that.
The Ten of Swords is one of the most serious cards in the deck. It speaks of endings, loss, surrender, and the painful realization that something has reached its conclusion.
And then… along comes Gary.
A ridiculous voice-to-text mistake that somehow transformed one of tarot’s most intimidating images into an old friend.
I’ve often wondered if that’s one of the quiet gifts life gives us.
Just when we begin taking ourselves—and our suffering—a little too seriously, a bit of levity seems to drift down from heaven.
Not to diminish our pain.
Not to mock it.
Simply to remind us that being human is, at times, wonderfully absurd.
Perhaps wisdom isn’t found in becoming more serious.
Perhaps it’s found in learning when to laugh.
Even at Gary.
It sounds completely absurd.
Because it is.
But the longer I thought about it, the more fascinated I became—not by the mistake itself, but by what happened afterward.
Two people instantly knew exactly what “Gary” meant.
That’s how symbols are born.
A symbol isn’t merely an image.
It’s an image carrying experience.
A story.
An emotion.
A shared understanding that can no longer be separated from the thing itself.
Once that happens, the symbol is never just the symbol again.
Gary was never really Gary.
Gary became an ending.
One of the things I’ve learned after thirty-five years of reading tarot is that it isn’t nearly as linear as people imagine.
Life isn’t linear.
Neither is the psyche.
Some days we’re the Fool.
The next we’re the Hermit.
A week later we’re somehow back with the Five of Cups wondering how we got there.
Tarot, much like life, can feel like a soap opera.
The characters change.
The scenery changes.
The conversations change.
The themes, however, have a funny way of repeating themselves.
That’s where patterns become interesting.
Sometimes the cards don’t tell a story in order.
Sometimes they wander, just as we do.
But every now and then something remarkable happens.
A pattern appears.
The Ten of Swords.
Then, almost mysteriously, the Ace of Swords.
An ending.
Followed by illumination.
For a long time, I wasn’t quite sure why that pairing fascinated me so much.
Then my friend Maureen, a lighting director, told me about something in the theater called a ghost light.
After the audience has gone home, the actors and musicians have packed up, the scenery sits quietly in the dark, and the stage is empty, one solitary light remains.
Not because a performance is happening.
Because it isn’t.
The ghost light quietly illuminates an empty stage.
It marks neither the production that has ended nor the one that is about to begin.
It simply holds the space between them.
Ever since Maureen shared that with me, I haven’t been able to look at the Ace of Swords the same way.
To me, it has become the ghost light.
The Ten of Swords is the curtain call.
The Ace of Swords is the ghost light.
Not a promise that everything will suddenly make sense.
Not a reward for surviving the ending.
Simply enough light to see that the stage is empty.
Enough light to recognize that whatever comes next has not yet been written.
A clean slate.
Perhaps that’s why those two cards continue to capture my imagination.
Not because one predicts the other.
But because endings have a curious way of making room for illumination.
Perhaps that’s why those moments catch my attention.
Not because I believe the cards predict the future.
But because they remind me to notice the patterns already unfolding within me.
Sometimes repetition is just repetition.
But sometimes…
Repetition is trying to teach us something.
I’ve been collecting questions for as long as I can remember.
Not answers.
Questions.
Maybe that’s why I majored in psychology and minored in philosophy and religion. Looking back, those weren’t separate interests at all. They were simply different paths leading toward the same destination.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by one question.
What does it mean to be human?
Carl Jung once wrote,
“Astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.”
The first time I read that quote, I wasn’t struck by the astrology.
I was struck by the psychology.
Perhaps astrology, like tarot, mythology, dreams, and great literature, isn’t simply trying to explain the world.
Perhaps they’re symbolic languages through which human beings have always tried to understand themselves.
Jung also wrote,
“Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.”
That sentence has stayed with me for years.
The map matters.
Theory matters.
Symbols matter.
But none of them are the territory.
The territory is always the living human being standing in front of us.
The map is forever changing because we are forever changing.
The older I get, the less interested I become in certainty.
I’m far more interested in wonder.
And perhaps that’s what these essays are really about.
Not finding answers.
Simply collecting better questions.
