I recently went to a talk on Carl Jung and the Tarot. I’m not sure how I missed the Jung connection in my studies over the years. I had a basic notion of what the collective unconscious was. Now that I am delving more deeply into Jung’s writings, I find the combination of studies fascinating. In Jung’s essay The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, he explains that the images that are stored in our unconscious brain, “owe their existence exclusively to heredity.” For Jung, the collective unconscious was tied to biology, to pure science.

This opens up so many questions and possibilities for those of us who walk between the worlds using shamanic-style journey work. The spirit world we encounter, with so many similarities across cultures, can be put into a western framework. This provides a different understanding, one within the scientific world, of our forays as meditative travelers into the collective unconscious that we all share.

I just ordered Sally Nichols book Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey. I’ll keep you posted as I move forward on this part of the journey. There’s always more to learn.