Reclaiming the World

Tarot as a Pathway to Accessing Hidden Feminine Power

Though I had been familiar with Tarot many years before I was a psychotherapist, when I began studying this practice from a psychological perspective, I found so many books and journal articles comparing the Fool’s Journey through the Major Arcana to Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth the Hero’s Journey. If you are not familiar with the Hero's Journey, it is essentially an archetypal depiction of the process of individuation/self-actualization found in myths and stories throughout history. Campbell was heavily inspired by psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s work and applied his theory to his study of mythology. Thus, he develops a series of stages the “Hero” must encounter to achieve individuation. The graphic below demonstrates these stages and the three acts of the Hero’s Journey.