Universal symbolic patterns residing in the collective unconscious, as described by Carl Jung. Archetypes are not fixed images but dynamic forces that organize psychic energy and appear across cultures, mythologies, dreams, and art in different forms while retaining an essential recognizable character. In the 4th Tarot, each of the 22 Major Arcana cards embodies a primary archetype of the collective unconscious: the Mother (Empress), the Father (Emperor), the Trickster (Magician), the Wise Old Man (Hermit), the Shadow (Devil), and the Self (World). The Minor Arcana extend this archetypal mapping into the textures of daily experience through the four elemental suits.
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Jungian Psychology
Archetype
Related concepts
universal pattern
Major Arcana
primordial image
collective symbol
mythic motif
inherited pattern
psychic structure
More in Jungian Psychology
- Abraxas
- Acceptance of Evil
- Active Imagination
- Anima
- Animus
- Archetypes
- Collective Unconscious
- Compensation
- Complex
- Confrontation with the Unconscious
- Coniunctio
- Creatura
- Daimon
- Divine Child
- Ego
- Enantiodromia
- Eros
- Fantasy
- Forethinking
- God-Image
- Hero
- Individuation
- Inflation
- Integration
- Libido
- Logos
- Magic
- Mandala
- Mater Coelestis
- Nekyia
- Persona
- Phallos
- Philemon
- Pleroma
- Projection
- Quaternity
- Rebirth
- Sacrifice of the Hero
- Salome
- Self
- Shadow
- Spirit of the Depths
- Supreme Meaning
- Synchronicity
- The Irrational
- Transcendent Function
- Tree of Life
- Wise Old Man