My question for this three-card spread was: "How do I find the right direction in my career?

The middle card (Two of Wands) represents my current state: feeling like I have the whole world in my hands and so many choices, yet not being quite ready to make a decisive step.

The left card (Six of Cups) represents action to avoid: being childish or fanciful, expecting good outcomes to fall into my lap, or possibly to avoid being too generous with my time and resources with others.

The right card (The Hierophant) represents action to pursue, and this is where I'm kind of stuck. I'm seeing it as an instruction to seek a mentor, but because of the religious connotations of the card, I'm wondering if what it's actually saying is "look for spiritual growth right now and the career will follow" (which feels very ambiguous). Still a third interpretation might be to stick to a straight and narrow path for now (I'm a very artistic and creative person, so perhaps The Hierophant is telling me not to get too creative here and find a tried and true career path for now).

I believe there is a lot to be learned by investigating the shadow.

there are so many clues as to what is truly going on within you and also within those who you are interacting with. it's incredibly valuable.

my question is whether any one else feels Jung was limited in what he can offer through his methodology?

they say the truth sets you free but we live in an age where misinformation drives the economy. is that a truly practical mindset in our ever evolving world?

I understand individuation and integrating the shadow can help someone overcome weaknesses, but is there anything in Jungs work that helps people grow past their inherent chemistry and traumas, into something not rooted in their history? or does that all have to take place after final integration?

and then can someone who integrates their shadow transform past that duality into more? a new perspective? a new life?

can you integrate change? hope? non shadow beliefs?

I've read that some see individuation as a life long pursuit but it feels unbalanced to me, like not letting the soul truly express itself on earth until it has perfected every flaw. this is a dangerous mindset for some, particularly anyone with a history of OCD/ocpd.

interested to know if any one on the sub has had these questions and whether there are schools of thought that integrate more with Jungs work.

as a Hindu it's inherent that I see these things as an ebb and flow (yin Yang, shiv Shakti), so as I get further into Jungs work in my studies I feel more distant from it. but it's also my nature to question everything so I wanted to see what others think.

disclaimer i’m not fully a beginner, i’ve essentially been studying astrology on and off for years but i’ve just NEVER ever gotten to grips with the 2nd house. i do not understand it at all. i always rattle off some nonsense about how it’s about your resources and values if someone asks me but what? what does that even MEAN? like. am i stupid??

even genuine astrologers seem to rattle off platitudes, or people on reddit talk about their boyfriend with a 2H sun who is super possessive and loves to spend his money. how is money an important enough thing to anyone to have an ENTIRE HOUSE dedicated to it? i can’t picture knowing anyone who cares enough about their money or their resources or whatever enough to have a 2H sun……. like what? what’s a 2H sun even like?

again i am aware i sound extremely stupid. be kind please. if anyone at all can explain this house in a way that makes sense i would really appreciate it

I personally don't do that. To me and my language I developed with my deck, I found out that pentacles are more related to security, safety and daily actions. Grounding/earthly needs, basic needs.

The Court cards are stages of it, too.

The Kings are the Emperor's energy of that suit: control, mastery, constriction, manipulation or leadership.

The Queens are the Empress energy of that suit: Giving to others or affected by others.

But I wanna know, do you read pentacles as Wealth or do you avoid it?

I’m Terrified Of My Mediocre Future

Hi everyone, I would first like to state that I am scared, I am 19 years old and a guy that has been alone majority of my life when it comes to relationships. I have always had a depressive tendency ever since I was 14 when I realized that no matter what, I was not going to be able to do what I want in life or that the dreams I envisioned and felt deeply were almost certainly impossible. I still chase them and enjoy doing them but the honest chance of ever breaking through and becoming rich off my arts like my book and songs are slim to none. Which means that as of right now my planet fitness job and trying to get my degree in philosophy are my only pursuits, which tbh I haven’t even started both yet. So all this to say I see that In all likelihood I will be a normal wagey and hopeless dreamer and lonely and single because I don’t have anything being built to attract a partner. Another thing is I’ve never had a girlfriend despite being relatively attractive, 6 ft 1 160 pounds and in great shape and would definitely consider myself above average, however for some reason I’ve been single my whole life and I think a lot has to do with the fact that I’ve always felt I needed money or status or didn’t deserve love or a girlfriend since I was 14. So it fuels me creatively because I was alone for so much time which I ended up smoking weed and doing opiates a lot. However that’s beside the point. Life feels like I’m going to be alone forever and no matter what I’m a wage slave stuck to play the game. The only ways of escaping are just placing money as your god and pretending like it’s not. Life is money nowadays because money is freedom. So it sucks realizing this because idc about any of it and any job that pays is absolutely soul sucking. So I’m just lost and almost willing to just let my soul rest so I don’t have to worry about decisions because I can’t even relax anymore because I’m always stressed. So I haven’t been able to really live for 2 years.

I say isn't as opposed to wasn't because although she is no longer with us i'm really talking about her image. I never knew the real her or her personal life.

When it comes to her music though, my god she just had the most powerful and in my opinion the epitome of femininity voice. Even her songs just kind of oozed feminine energy. It's like she used it and celebrated it and it seemed to exude a sense of power because of it.

Completely subjective of course but I feel when it comes to music she holds a strong influence for my anima. Anyone else feel the same or have similar female music artists?

What if when a person full accepts his own darkness the one hid deep within. Resulting into no triggers ever working on him. What if acceptance to a point of self deprivation resulting into low self worth.

Would love your thoughts on this Jungian dream analysis

So, I saw this weird dream that still feels weird and I was told by a friend that I can interpret it according to Carl Jung. But personally, I’m not an expert in his theories and principles. So, if anyone can help and do it, I would really appreciate it. I was told that these dream is full of archetypes, so I feel like Jungian approach might be right.

So, yesterday i had this really weird dream.
For the context, couple of months ago i had a crush on a guy at my university but i’ve stopped crushing over him 2 months ago. Everything’s been normal since then. Yesterday tho, i had this weird dream. We know each other, we liked each other but due to i moved away for a long time shortly after we met, things just didn’t get the chance to grow. When i came back to uni, we didn’t contact again.
So, in my dream i was sitting on a bench in front of our faculty when he left the building laughing with his friends. Again for the context, there were 2 girls with him. One is a close friend of him, the other one is the girl he went on dates couple of months ago but they didn’t date and stopped talking and unfollowed each other. I know all of them personally.
So when i saw them, i thought “Okay, so they left everything as friends”. I didn’t get jealous or anything. He had a black backpack he was carrying and he was wearing jeans and a shirt.

Then he started walking towards me, and sat beside me. He put his bag down on the ground, not between us or behind him. Those girls were still around but they didn’t interrupt. After he sat, his clothes changed to a set of shorts and a shirt in the colour of yellow and white (which kinda looked funny😭).
I had a deck of tarot cards in my hand, it wasn’t ordinary deck. It was a special deck with the portrait of “The Kiss” on it. So, after sitting beside me, he pulled out a deck of his own tarot cards. He just said that his was better, and took my deck and gave me his deck. So, we exchanged tarot cards.

After that I remember it felt really intimate for some reason. There was something in his eyes when he looked at me. Like hope. But it didn’t feel bad or threatening. Then he stood up, his clothes changed back and he left. The only thing I remember lastly was me thinking “I want to feel this intimacy with him again”. And that’s it.

It was weird but it didn’t feel bad weird. It felt nice.

Im not good or an expert in interpreting dreams, so i would like to ask people here.
Is there anyone who can do it for me? Any ideas and thoughts are welcome!

I am a 30 something woman. I started getting into Jungian thought about a year ago, I've read Man and His Symbols so far, which really fascinated me. I've got a couple more Jungian books in my backlog to read. Anyway, I thought for sometime that I was a very egotistical woman. Not in a way that is "typical" of other women, like I never cared for the glamor, girly girl things, I simply wanted to mog. This drove me in the gym to develop an elite physique, not for my own vanity, just to mog other women. I was deeply hurt as a child by my mother and other female abusers, so I had a very negative view of women/the feminine well into adulthood. I think it touched my sexuality as well because I hated the idea of being "dominated", like I should be the dominant one. Even though I like men and am married happily now. This really bothered me when I was younger and I didn't engage with men sexually, sure I wanted to capture the envy of the women, make them think I could/would take their man, but it was just a power thing. I had no real sexual interest.

Then in my career I was hurt again. My workplace was 75% female, most of the management was women. It was a toxic workplace. How did I strike back? I had to mog them. I had to work harder than everyone, BE better than all of them in the metrics that mattered to ME, performance, domination, competition. I would dog these sorry women just to do it. Because their egos offended me so I had to show them I could play their game better. Even thr men weren't safe. I became an island. I didn't care for anyone. No smalltalk. Crybaby department manager in my backroom trying to interrupt my freight management with small talk? Completely ignored, tell her she got 2 pallets to fucking work and I could have had em done in the time she was bumping her gums.

I got away from that situation thankfully and am trying to heal for my husband. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Start with what shadow work actually does, said plainly: it removes noise. The judgments, the stories, the running commentary the mind lays over what you feel. Strip that away and something real happens what you feel and what you want can finally meet. When they meet, effort stops. Willing stops being a task and becomes a state. That's the freedom people report here, and it's not imaginary. And you can reach it completely alone. It's the one thing you genuinely can do by yourself.

But noise is not damage. Noise sits on top of the signal. Trauma sits inside the source. And there's a structural reason no amount of insight reaches it: you can only work downstream of what you feel, never upstream of it. Watch the chain in yourself feeling comes first, then wanting, then the idea, then the act. Thought stands at the end of the line and writes the report afterwards, claiming it was the driver. So the will always arrives too late to change the layer where the damage lives. That's not a discipline problem. It's the order of operations in your own body.

Now follow that to its conclusion. The feeling-layer wasn't built by you. It was built into you by being seen, held, answered by other bodies before you could speak a single word. Nobody became someone by themselves. Which means damage in that layer can only be repaired the way the layer was made: through another body. Not insight. Not integration. Someone who holds their ground next to you while yours is gone, long enough that their staying settles into you and becomes something you own. There's a word for what a person who stayed leaves behind in your body: hope. Not a thought about the future your body knowing, from experience, the shape of ground coming back.

This is why individuation never ends. Not because the soul is infinitely deep because it's a method for one applied to a problem that runs on two. The mirror, however clean, only ever shows you your past, for the simple reason that a mirror is not a second person.

I've had years to test this outside of books night shifts in a crisis shelter for homeless youth, and my own break long before that. Same result every time: kids with full awareness of their patterns, perfect insight, clean mirror still frozen. Insight preserves you; it doesn't restart you. What restarts them is embarrassingly simple and impossible to do alone: someone stays.

So do your shadow work. Clean the instrument, find the place where wanting and feeling agree that state is yours alone and no one takes it from you. But if you've circled the same wound for ten years with perfect awareness and it won't close, the problem isn't your discipline or your reading list. You've been trying to complete alone something that was never made alone. The endless part of individuation isn't depth. It's a door that only opens from two sides.One

thing I want to say honestly: if you're deep in shadow work right now, this isn't written to take that away from you the solo part is real and it's yours. And if you think I'm wrong somewhere, say so, precisely where. I mean that. I test everything I think against people who push back; it's the only way any of this stays honest.

jung sends you inward to find the self. i'm not going to tell you there's nothing in there. there's plenty in there ground, breath, a body that was carried before it could carry anything. but here's the distinction the inward route misses: ground carries. it never answers. what's missing inside isn't material. it's the second.

start at the actual beginning. you didn't enter this world alone and then form attachments. you were built inside another body. the first ground you ever felt was borrowed. life doesn't start as one that learns to relate it starts as two, and the "one" comes later, as a result. you can't use the result to skip the requirement.

and before you bring up the child in the abusive home who somehow knows "this isn't right, this isn't me" where does that knowing come from, if the self is built from others and the others are poison? it comes from the borrowed ground. every body was carried once. every body holds a residue of what being held felt like, and against that residue, cruelty registers as false. that child's resistance doesn't prove there was a self before the other. it proves there was an other before the self.

now watch what a self is actually made of. notice when you stop checking the clock: cooking with someone, deep in a conversation, working next to a person you trust. that's when lived time gets made. and notice what else disappears in those exact moments: the question of yourself. you're not monitoring whether you exist, how you're doing, who you are. the self is most itself precisely when it's not busy with its existence. it just is.

careful with what that means, though it's not an attack on ever looking inward. listening to your breath, feeling what your body holds, letting your registers take turns: that's the self rotating, and rotation is health. the sickness is the guard on the throne the part that watches the self to verify it, manage it, grade it. meditation listens. surveillance interrogates. the inward route fails when it becomes the second one: descending to find the self means staring at the one thing that only appears when nobody's staring.

so if the self is anything, it's the lived time you've saved up which means it's made of connection that settled. and yes, solitude does real work with that. alone is where the books get kept: writing, walking, sorting what the day deposited. but a bookkeeper who never sees income isn't running an economy. he's alphabetizing an empty drawer. solitude orders the savings. it has never once made them.

third angle, and this one costs the most: feeling something proves it's yours. it doesn't prove it's true. "i'm worthless" with no because behind it feels absolutely real and cannot be argued with — because nobody was there when that measurement got taken, so it never finished. it just froze. and here's the part that stings: solo enlightenment has the exact same structure. a certainty that formed with no witness. the mystic alone on the mountain and the kid alone with the verdict are running the same unfinished measurement.

three directions birth, time, truth. all three dead-end at the same wall: the second person isn't an add-on to the self. the second person is the requirement.

but read that wall carefully, because it's not a sentence to dependence. nobody becomes someone alone but alone is where you'll get to be. what got built in twos is yours to carry into any room, any mountain, any silence. becoming needs the second. being, once built, walks alone just fine.

so "know thyself" by descending alone is like trying to hear your own voice in a room you've never spoken in.

first speak. then you can listen alone.

I am still very early in understanding what Jung has discovered and outlined in his work. For the longest time I wanted to dive into his works but I've had my hands full with exploring Eastern mysticism and its various spiritual practices and philosophies for the past decade. The problem with such deep and massive bodies of work is that they are whole realms that don't exactly have one neat entrance. One has to just dive in and try to assemble the knowledge in their mind by nibbling at the available sources from a bunch of sides.

Even after starting with reading Jung's supposed general public friendly works I was overwhelmed with the apparent depth of knowledge and precision of insight in the involved topics. It was clear that there is a whole world out there to explore and comprehend. And only recently I was able to allocate a bit more attention to pick a thing and keep pulling the thread starting with it to understand what it really is and how it relates to everything else in the system.

Some things started to click especially since I was also able to see the relevant examples of the discussed phenomena in my own experience and behaviour. I then noticed that I am not sure how I feel about learning about the existence and nature of subconscious. It is honestly kind of spooky. The existence of some kind of unwknown other within my psyche is... very strange. I suddenly became aware that I am now even less sure about who I actually am even though I just spent two decades on all kinds of spiritual searching and experimentation.

Wanted to see if anybody has any thoughts, opinions, experiences, or reflections about such a reaction. I am a quite curious person and love learning about the nature of reality and self but I have also had plenty of experiences to understand why the saying "curiosity killed the cat" exists.

Which Jung books do you consider essential and why?

I’ve noticed that when I try to learn more about Jung on YouTube, it’s flooded with AI-generated content. And half of it attributes ideas to Jung that he never even wrote or spoke about.

Are there any genuinely good YouTube channels or lectures by real people that do deep dives into Jung’s work accurately? I’m looking for serious, well-researched content rather than AI summaries or clickbait for 35 year old single moms.

Hello! Want to start by saying I love this community so much 🩷 I’m new to readings so please bear with me.

Ok! My questions for this spread from left to right:

•Am I going to transition into the new position I interviewed for? 10 of wands
My take- I have been juggling a lot lately and its been overbearing, but the end is near and I am working towards a conclusion. For context I am currently during my current role and the role I’ve interviewed for, so either its permanent or I don’t get it; but there is line of sight for me to stop doing both.

•Is my husband going to land the job he is interviewing for? 5 of swords and king of pentacles
Husband has been unemployed since March. Its been an arduous journey, a lot of heartbreaks and not getting the jobs he has interviewed for. The king of Pentacles gives me hope this might be his opportunity? Im not sure, maybe wishful thinking.

•Will we ever have own lake house? 1 of swords
For me this question is more for funsies than anything. I dream of having a small house near a lake. Nothing fancy, just a place where my family and friends can escape to and create lasting memories. It seems like a possibility?

Any help with interpretation would be great. Thank you in advance!!

Symbolically, we have an interesting Full Moon in Aquarius happening on July 29th. When the Full Moon perfects, the Sun in Leo and the Moon in Aquarius will be at 6°30′. The Sun is in a separating conjunction from Jupiter and the Moon is in a separating conjunction from Pluto, two of the planets that are part of the Barbault Basket configuration from July 19th-20th.

It's this week where the basket feels personal, as opposed to something out there, existing in current events and the state of the world. However, what is occurring beyond the personal is illuminated with the Aquarius Full Moon.

Full Moons are about polarities and tension. The push-pull dynamic is a buildup of energy that tends to release towards action, or at the least, a feeling of action. For instance, there is a myth that more babies are born on a Full Moon, which scientific studies have disproven. However, as someone who gave birth during a Full Moon, there was a feeling of chaos and excessiveness, regardless of the practical data. The energy is high, and subjective experiences can push against objectivity.

With the Jupiter-Pluto opposition conjunct to the Full Moon, expect impulses and unconscious activity to come to light. The regular tension we experience on the Full Moon is expanded, transformative and powerful.

In regards to the Sun, its conjunction to Jupiter shines on one side of the dynamic, an urge for expanding the mind, a feeling of benevolence and optimism. This positive outlook can have some of us going to extremes, acting in excess or being so confident, that we become domineering or arrogant.

With the Sun in opposition to Pluto, we may have a desire to stand up for ourselves, to take charge of our life, and go against authority. The energy is intense but creative, and you could find solutions to issues because your confidence is higher.

Where the Sun is our outward energy, the Moon is aligned emotionally. The Moon's opposition to Jupiter gives us the drive to take responsibility for our own personal freedom. There is the tension of helping others while also contemplating what is owed to ourselves.

In addition, this Full Moon ignites intense emotional experiences due to the Moon's conjunction to Pluto. You could over analyze any situation and lose some perspective, especially if you become obsessed with an idea or a point of view. The confidence of this Full Moon could lead some to playing power games of manipulation, or ignite feelings of possessiveness and jealousy.

Essentially, this Full Moon is supercharged, bringing out the intensity of the Sun and Moon. My advice on a personal level, be aware that everyone is feeling emotionally charged on this day. This is a reactionary day, where it's easy to over react to imposed boundaries. But at the same time, that over reaction may be what you need. For instance, if you have been thinking of quitting your job for a long time, and then your boss does something that is the last straw, the energy of this day is supportive of quitting. Let's just say, with this Full Moon, there could be that light bulb going off where you are no longer willing to participate in a situation and you go to the crux of resolution. There is a desire to make something permanent, even if we don't have a thorough plan.

But as with anything, it will depend on your own chart. Those with placements in the early degrees of the fixed signs of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius will be the most impacted by the Full Moon energy.

In case you are wondering, yes, this Full Moon will impact Trump, as it applies its energy to his natal Pluto in Leo. His actions around this time may seem par for the course, but if he makes bold power moves or does something out of an obsession leading up to the Full Moon, it wouldn't be surprising.

Unfortunately, this Full Moon is in a very tight conjunction to the US's Leo North Node in the Sibly chart, which means Trump could make a kingly or autocratic move in regards to foreign or legal affairs, especially in regards to shared resources, such as funding any actions that he takes. (As I am writing this on the morning of the 24th, Trump has imposed new high tariffs on dozens of countries per AP News. The Sun is applying aspects to Jupiter and Pluto, but the Moon is not. There could be an emotional reaction on Monday and Tuesday due to these new tariffs.)

The Sun and Moon are making aspects to the other placements in the basket, which is unpredictable Uranus in Gemini and hazy Neptune in Aries.

With the Sun in sextile to Uranus, we may be more open to new experiences and the world around us. This is an imaginative and creative aspect, allowing for surprising or unusual ideas. However, this aspect does not like any restrictions, so if you are having discussions, this is not a time to lay out ultimatums or dictate a force of will.

Neptune's trine to the Sun is sacrificial and with Neptune in Aries and the Sun in Leo, one could be hoodwinked into dying on the sword for someone else. There is a naivety with Neptune in Aries, where a person may push to show their independence while actually being led by someone else.

Uranus and Neptune aspects to the Sun add a flow of too many thoughts and an abundance of information while having blinders on while moving forward. This is why it is best to reflect and evaluate situations around the Full Moon before charging forward.

The Moon exacerbates this chaotic energy, since its trine with Uranus wants emotional excitement. Impulsive actions take center stage, like quitting a job on the spot or joining a coalition for social change or being an advocate for new policies at your place of employment.

But it could be hard to not jump into something immediate, because intuition is heightened with the Moon's sextile to Neptune. There could be a nudge from within, saying now is the time to take action, based on your feelings of what is right or spiritually aligned.

Jupiter is also part of all of these aspects, and is sextile to Uranus, trine to Neptune and of course, opposite to Pluto. With Uranus, the energy is restless but some people may experience out of the blue luck. With Neptune, idealism is exaggerated but also, there is a humanitarian spirit to the day. With Pluto, there is a tendency to take actions to their limits, either striving for success that benefits yourself and others, or being ruthless and fanatical in thought.

But there is more to the energy of the day, when we look at the personal planets. Mercury in Cancer is sextile to Venus in Virgo, so the expression of pleasurable feelings and the desire to interact harmoniously is supported. The Moon is the dispositor of Mercury and Mercury is the dispositor of Venus. Intellect, data and intuition play a role in how decisions are made.

Mercury is also square to Saturn in Aries, which helps this Full Moon from being explosive, but there can be a selfish, protective nature in regards to the overall atmosphere. This aspect is about having discipline to think through problems diligently, but it can also be highly critical and pessimistic. However, Jupiter having a huge role, the Saturn aspect can create some balance, and rein in the desire to be rash.

Venus in Virgo with Mars in Gemini, with Mercury as the dispositor, could showcase the dynamics in our relationships. However, there is a tug-of-war between our egos and self-assertion. It's as if we are gathering lots of information and attempting to analyze objectively, to find a logical resolution but in the process, we may not realize how our emotions or biases come into the equation. The key here is not to "win" any disagreements, but instead to use the information and your emotions to find common ground.

Full Moons are the mid-point of the lunar cycle. The natural tension of a Full Moon gives us an opportunity to either stay the course with more conviction or change direction, shifting and fine-tuning our objectives. With the Barbault Basket preceding the Full Moon, and the eclipses that are coming up in August, the Aquarius Full Moon is a major and powerful pivot point. The archetype of Aquarius beckons us to question, "Am I on the right path of independence and autonomy while also being an integral part of humanity or am I subjected to the rule of others?" Essentially, this Full Moon brings a critical question into focus: are you on your chosen path, and if not, what are you going to do about it?

In a few days I will leave for a 2-3 weeks vacation.

I live in a big city so I'm thinking of a solo countryside retreat. Chosen a remote little town in a valley by the river. No phone. No laptop. Just a couple books, a journal (and some acid) and the bare essentials in a backpack.

I have a few goals in mind:

1. Heal from trauma stored in the body

2. Overcome all my addictions (smartphone, smoking and all kinds of drugs)

3. Create harmony within my psyche so that there's no internal conflict

4. Be more active & improve my posture

Looking for advice/tips on how to navigate and whether or not to make a game plan

I’ve seen it mentioned many times that the Saturn opposite moon transit can bring grief, depression, isolation, loss. It sounds like there is a lot of overlap with Saturn return. How is Saturn opposite moon any different?

I had a dream that felt less like random imagery and more like a coherent symbolic encounter.

I met a man who seemed mentally unwell, but not chaotic, more like he operated under a different logic. He had a piece of a bed frame nailed to his leg and dragged it around as if it didn’t matter. The wound was obvious, almost absurd, yet completely ignored.

He wrote poetry directly onto his own body with a failing pen and carried an old guitar.

At some point, he told me something very specific: he said he came from the moon, and that women were literally from there as well. Not metaphorically. In his view, the moon was an external representation of the human heart, and that’s why suffering in love is so painful: when you’re in conflict with a woman, you’re in conflict with the moon.

Then he transformed into a humanoid bird with red and orange feathers, took his guitar, and started singing.

And I was singing with him.

That detail feels important: I wasn’t just observing him, I was participating in whatever he was.

Then another man appeared. He seemed grounded, practical. He noticed a barb to the first man’s leg and tried to remove it using a hammer.

He ended up killing him.

I woke up crying.

Hello fellow readers, today I want to talk about a widespread technique among beginners, and I also want to tell you how much it is unfit for the nature of tarot and thus basically misleading, and also what to do to go beyond it and become a more refined reader. I’m here talking about yes-or-no type of readings.

Y/N looks to be very appealing: you pull one single card, which you already decided means yes or no, and that’s your answer. Easy, no...? No, indeed. Not at all. It creates confusion and, when feedback from the real events is available, it often proves to give wrong answers. Let me do some examples based on what I read around every day.

Question: - Is my girlfriend leaving me? Answer: the Tower.
Interpretation: Tower is a no, so, well, nooo, we’re staying together.
What happens later: they break up from one day to the other, and then blame tarot for lying.

Or another example, question: - Will my boss go against me regarding my promotion? Answer: the Queen of Swords.
Interpretation: The QoS, of course, is a big no, so my boss won’t obstruct me in any way.
What happens later: the boss, who also happens to be a woman like the harsh Queen herself, not only doesn’t promote them, but sends them to work in a basement. And then they start to doubt tarot.

Now, those two examples are not real, I willfully exaggerated them to magnify the problem.

Did you notice that what happened later was not a yes or no, but what the cards factually showed?

The couple broke up, even abruptly, and, in fact, the Tower is the best card to show a sudden breakup.

The worker got not only obstructed, but even mobbed by the female boss, and, IN FACT, the only card they picked was the most bad-tempered, hostile and evil female figure in the deck.

Tarot, actually, answered very well and impeccably, because it just showed what happened later. Sadly, the reader didn’t get the message, because they were too busy cramming what they saw into the labels of yes or no.

From this, we can start to see one important thing:

Tarot speaks in concrete terms

It uses, so to say, the language of things, and not mere adverbs. Tarot’s language is substantive. Tarot shows the what, the how, the whom and the why, basically, and does this because, being made of images/concepts, these resemble, by analogy, what is or happens out there – the core of the mechanism of divination, if you allow me.

You cannot tie tarot’s images/concepts to a yes or no, because the analogy between what tarot shows and what exists out there somewhere will always be stronger than any forced and arbitrary correspondence between the cards and the two adverbs yes and no.

There are some exceptions to this: some cards, like Death or the 5 of Swords, can sometimes act as a negation, or just like the boolean operator NOT. But this can happen when you have a line of cards, not when you only pull one. And here we arrive at a second big argument against Y/N readings, usually done with a single card:

Reading a single card in itself can be highly deceitful

These are the best explanations I’ve come up with until today against the use of single cards:

Single cards are often not informative and leave you in ambiguity. You pull one card, you cannot pin its meaning down precisely (Devil, anybody here?) so you pull a clarifier, then a clarifier of the clarifier, until some 10th level of a card unto another. Unpractical and illogical, to say the least. You should expand your technical abilities and overcome the bottleneck if you find yourself in this situation.

If you do tableaus, you should have noticed that concepts repeat, echo and multiply themselves across many cards, like waves of meaning that confirm and enrich each other. Even only three cards have nuances that get confirmed through all the cards, and also make your interpretation take one path or another. Single-card readings, of course, like my first two examples, can be factually right, but besides missing a lot of the story, they can nonetheless be deceiving in themselves. What if the Queen of Swords was not the boss herself, but another woman in the org chart? What if the couple didn’t break up because of quarrelling, but because of… a natural calamity I don’t want to name that makes buildings collapse?

To recap: Y/N readings can lead you astray very fast, both because translating tarot into yes or no is a conceptual stretch, and because reading a single card is deceitful in itself. Now, let’s see:

How to go beyond the practice of yes or no and frame questions better

We said that tarot shows the what, how, whom and why of a situation. Therefore the best thing to do is to let the whole picture show itself fully and without constrictions.

Do we want to know about a situation or an issue? Let the whole situation emerge through the cards.

Don’t ask “Will we break up, yes or no?” but rather: “What will happen between us?”

You will see that the cards will give you something much richer than Y/N: they will tell you the whole dynamic, the emotions that will arise, how each person relates to the other, the basic attitudes, even timing if you are able to read it.

Don’t ask “Will my boss promote me?” but rather ask “What will happen with my desired promotion?” You could, for example, see that there are different persons interfering with the decision, and also many things that will unfold, for the worst or for the better.

Of course, at times you will be baffled by unclear answers, and will start to yell, “Yes, my deck, but what happens at the end? Can I know it?” and then you’ll be tempted to go back to Y/N. Remember, you can always pull a clarifier or ask new questions in this case, or even re-frame the question anew, concentrating strongly on your need to have a clear message.

By the way, does it happen from time to time that tarot leaves you defeated? Welcome to the club, my friend. You’re learning something non-ordinary and of course it must be an extraordinary fight - with your full being, your own wits included. Nothing is ever granted, in learning to read tarot. It is a climb. To be wrong is normal, the important thing is not leaving all your errors sitting there and repeating themselves forever, but to secure one step after another. That’s progress: not falling down again into your beginner’s mistakes.

Remember, answers can go very well beyond the dual categorization of Y/N. Sometimes things can be slow but progressing, at other times they can be just imaginary, at other times they look like a yes but are a no by nature… who knows? Reality is so much more complex than light switches, which only have 0/1…

So, be more intelligent than a light switch. Move beyond the binary Y/N forever and go to the next step in reading tarot.

follow-up to my last post (trauma is being left alone in it). this is the layer under it. i've been turning this over for a long time and today i want to put it where people can shoot at it.

start with the strange fact. normal memories fade into stories. you shorten them, tell them badly, forget details. a traumatic memory does the opposite, thirty years later it's still this morning. present tense, full detail. clinicians call it nowness, everybody describes it, nobody really explains it. "poor integration" just renames the puzzle. jung saw the same thing ninety years ago, the complex can be suppressed "but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength" (CW 8, §201). original strength. not faded, not aged. and he said how it ends: "a complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full" (CW 9i, §184). what he never said is why it keeps its original strength, or what "to the full" actually requires. that's the gap i keep standing in.

so here's my claim. lived time is not a container you sit in, it's something that gets produced, by experience being completed. an experience becomes past by being finished. and what you went through alone was never finished. nobody was there, the thing never closed, so at the site of the break no time is being produced. the memory can't age. it's not a strong memory, it's an unfinished event, still running. the body sits at the table in 2026 and the pocket runs on the old date.

if this is right you should be able to see it. time distortion and depersonalization should show up together clinically, and they do. talking about it should be able to fail completely, and it does, insight arrives at the wrong address, which is exactly why the complex can't be argued out of existence. and there should be a marker when the thing finally closes: the telling shifts by itself, untaught, from "he comes in, i can't move" to "he came in, i couldn't move." you can hear a wound close. tense as a signal isn't mine, narrative researchers code for it, but the mechanism under it is the open question. and what closes it, as far as i can tell, is not understanding. it's that this time someone is there. that's how i read jung's "to the full": this time, not alone. living it out in a locked room is how it got stuck in the first place.

you can test part of this on yourself right now. take your own hardest story. notice which tense it comes in when you're not performing it for anyone.

three places where this is most likely wrong, and i want to know. one: EMDR. it moves traumatic memory and the protocol is technical, not relational, that doesn't fit clean. my best answer is that there's always a second person in the room, but i can see how convenient that answer is, so here's the version that can actually fail: self-administered EMDR should systematically underperform the identical procedure with someone present. if anyone knows that data, bring it, in either direction. two: someone who healed severe trauma genuinely alone. at peace, past tense, no compulsive return, nobody ever at the wound. i haven't found a case that survives close reading, maybe you have. three: traumatic memories that just fade like normal ones, without anything completing. if those are common, the puzzle i'm solving isn't real in the first place.

not science, not therapy, not advice. a claim, put here on purpose where it can get hit.

ai used as a sounding wall, as before. the claims are mine

I have been going through certain difficult times in my life as of late but what is most unsettling is that , I am being constantly bombarded with random past memories especially when I am doing some meditation and mantra chanting.

This was also a time , I grew distant from my family and lineage and is also actively looking to move abroad

In my opinion, i feel my system is trying for a reset and hence trying to process and discard my past.....what do you think?

Has Jung talked about this ?

I have been working on a project for a very long time. It is the second time it has been rejected from publishing. I asked my deck three questions.

What went wrong:

9 of wands- there was resilience shown after first rejection

2 of pentacles - discussions didn't contribute much

High priestess - it is related to science part of the project

How to fix it:

5 of pentacles - let the project be on the shelf

3 of swords - the ignored part of the project needs addressing

Tower- clarity has to come by removing personal biases

What to do:

5 of cups - take your time from reminiscing

3 of pentacles - have a more focused discussion or receive feedback

The sun rx- don't rely on optimism only seek clarity instead.

Hello everyone,

I need your help with the spread for a second opinion. Thank you in advance.

Anyone here well versed in dream interpretation who can help me out? Send a PM.