I have opened Pandora’s box. A just-a-quick-look-up-research into the connection between the monomyth, Jungian archetypes, and tarot blew the lid off, and like a Tupperware avalanche in the kitchen cupboard, Jung, Freud, even Maslow, LSD experiments, heroes, dragon slayers, and finally Zeus, Odysseus, Calypso, and Pandora herself came tumbling down.

Not surprising; the Odyssey is perhaps the hero’s journey par excellence. Hartman and Zimberoff describe it in The Hero’s Journey of Self-Transformation: Models of Higher Development from Mythology (2009) and point out that it is actually just the journey home. The battle has been fought, the hero returns. Yeah, right. Odysseus was on his way back for ten years. (p. 28) I’m tempted to google what the assignment of the cantos of the Odyssey to the 22 Major Arcana could look like. Has anyone ever tried that? Google only finds one useful result for various search terms: a book that transfers the characters from James Joyce’s Ulysses into the 22 Major Arcana. The circle closes. Ulysses is at the very top of my bucket list. I’ve started it multiple times, but never finished it. But I have read Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and a lot, a lot about Joyce, in my opinion one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century.

But we will not open that box now. The work by Hartman and Zimberoff and Homer gives my story thoughts new momentum. In comparison with the tarot (which plays no role in either work), the hero might already be victorious in what I defined yesterday as the first act. With the Chariot (VII). That fits. Mission accomplished. Everything else would be the Odyssey-like homecoming with obstacles. I have to be careful not to get lost in the box now, like Odysseus drifting from one distraction to the next.

And I don’t have to assign the Arcana or elements to the Jungian archetypes. The assignment of the 16 court cards to the personalities of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is also repeatedly associated with Jung, is an old hat, by the way. Besides, I think very little of such personality tests from experience. They used to fascinate me, I knew them from Bravo (a german teenie-mag), but today I find them limiting and condescending. »That’s just the way I am, and I can’t do anything about it – it’s in my star sign and in my Myers-Briggs test« – that goes against my innermost convictions. Yes, I find numerous parts of my star sign (Virgo, Scorpio ascendant) and my Myers-Briggs type (INFP) in myself. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be completely different if I want to or think it’s right. Archetypal images, that you can interpret, (no matter how exactly you define the archetype and where it comes from), with whose parts I can identify myself and my situation but don’t have to, are much more to my liking.
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I can’t believe it. It fits with surprisingly little hobbling. 0 is the hero, the ego; I to VII is the hero’s journey to individuation (not unlike Pollack’s interpretation). VIII would be the assimilation of the new heroic insights and abilities; IX is the path of the Hermit, asceticism and turning away from the world, and at X, the wind of destiny sets in, the second initiation, the return begins. XI to XIX are the Lotus-Eaters, Cyclopes, Hades, Circe & Hermes, the Sirens, Scylla & Charybdis, Calypso, Poseidon & the Nymph, and Nausicaa. XX is the catharsis and revelation of true identity, and at XXI, back home, the suitors are thrown out of the palace, and the hero’s own world is reconquered. I can’t believe that no one has made the Odyssey-Tarot-connection before. But neither Google nor the university library brings anything to light. I also don’t remember consciously stumbling upon Odysseus and his crew in all the tarot books. Strange.

Of course, Odysseus, this plaything of the gods, only helps me to a limited extent. A lot of things happen to him; he is surprisingly externally determined for a hero. But with every station of his journey, with every catastrophe and every foolishness, he learns something and grows as a person. So now I have the Odyssey, the monomyth, the Hero’s Journey of Self-Transformation, an extra pinch of C.G. Jung, and the information from the tarot books. That should be enough to weave a story from my Major Arcana.

I’m playing with the idea of making a voodoo doll and painting it yellow and black. Visconti-Sforza and Marseille tarot were loaded onto the delivery vehicle this morning; the DHL man was probably here too, but he didn’t leave any parcels. You will regret this!

And I really would like the decks and, above all, the books. Now. My story for the Major Arcana is written in its shortest and simplest form. It’s amazing how easily it comes when you roughly know what’s supposed to happen. Each of us has heard this story a thousand times: The Fool has set out and was on a good path, but somewhere, he gets stuck, is completely desperate, correctly exclaims »I am a fool!« and then the good queen appears and helps him to overcome the hurdle, so that he still reaches the goal of his journey. But of course, at the destination, it turns out that it’s only the beginning, that the real adventure is still ahead of him, the true mission still has to be fulfilled! And so the hero sets out, although he himself still barely feels ready for it.

These patterns are not only exciting and help me to structure my cards in terms of content and to learn more about them myself; they also give me permission to focus on individual aspects. I had problems with that. The tarot is something all-encompassing. So I had the diffuse feeling or the diffuse fear of having to represent EVERYTHING in the cards. All the stages, facets, aspects, and possibilities of creativity and life and the whole world. That’s not possible. Through the story approach, I have learned (or am in the process of learning) that this is not necessary either. Stories don’t have to be all-encompassing. That’s what they are for: The reader or listener or viewer is allowed to think for themselves. Is allowed to decide that they would have made a different decision than the protagonist. That it is always(!) a stupid decision to leave the incapacitated villain on the ground and run away. Finish him off, here and now, otherwise he’ll get up again, even if you think he’s dead. Always.

So I’m working my way along the stages of my Fool’s story. My head is already a step further and filling in details. He could get one card at each stage. At the end, at the final test before eternal happiness, he is missing one. He has cards I to XXI – but the Magician said he needed 22! And there he realizes that he had the 22nd card, the 0, the whole time! He carried it within him! The Fool card, which reminds us of joy, of simplicity, of lightness. Which allows us to just be. All’s well that ends well. Amen.

But for this step, I would like insights into the old tarots, and the DHL man is to blame for me not having them. I’m so excited! I made a stupid mistake when ordering. At some point, I wondered why I hadn’t received a shipping confirmation yet. A little research showed that I hadn’t completed the order. Oh great! And the one book on the Tarot de Marseille was no longer available on medimops. So I looked for alternatives. There aren’t many. At least not in German or English, even if you rephrase the search term. But there was L’aventure du Bateleur. I had read Bateleur somewhere in my research … Google brings up pictures of birds for the term – the juggler bird. Right. Juggler, Fool. So: The Adventure of the Fool. I ordered it and will curse myself for it later. My French is sufficient for simple everyday conversations with a moderate use of hands and feet. But not for a tarot book. But I have to go through with it now. Eventually. When the DHL man has realised his unforgivable mistake.

After the skeleton of the story is in place, I’m returning to the Minor Arcana, which so far only have provisional titles and a theme that fits the number. What do these themes mean now in the light of the story? In the light of everything I’ve discovered in the meantime? And what does that, in turn, mean in combination with the four suits? To not drift too far off (I’m constantly afraid of ending up getting too far away from the tarot – or staying too close to the original), I’m using Hajo Banzhaf’s Tarot Book to compare my own thoughts and the library in my head with the short, super-simple, and somewhat flat interpretations in this book. I’m trying to find the common denominator. And from that insight, I’m refining the core theme of the number, which then applies to the corresponding Major Arcanum with the Fool’s story and to the four Minor Arcana of that number.

I had already mentioned that a lot about the tarot isn’t as logical as the introductory platitudes in tarot books always say. I want to do it better. Let’s take the 5 as an example. With Rider-Waite-Smith and Crowley, it is the Hierophant or High Priest; the card was probably also called the Pope at one time (I could say more about that if the DHL man would be more careful with his parcels), and with Phyllis Curott, it is called the Wisdom Keeper. Depending on where you read, the card stands for a guru, for inner wisdom, for initiation into mysteries, for organizations, for systems or societies, for religion and dogma, for a mentor, for the superego … in case of doubt, it stands equally for enlightenment and the tax office.* The Hierophant was a card I never liked because I simply couldn’t interpret it well enough.

So. And in the Minor Arcana, the 5 is a card of conflict. With the Wands, it is fair competition, a test of strength. Banzhaf calls it Challenge (the book is in German, so these are translated terms), Crowley Strife. The fiery Wands like a little competition. With the Cups, it’s like a funeral. Banzhaf calls the card Sorrow, with Crowley it’s called Disappointment. With the Swords, you see the end of a battle. Banzhaf calls it Malice (often there is talk of unfair victory), Crowley Defeat. The 5 of Pentacles is called Worry by Banzhaf, Crowley’s 5 of Disks is also called Worry. With Rider-Waite-Smith, we see two beggars, cripples, outcasts (forgive my word choice, but it fits), who walk past an illuminated(?) church window at night in the snow. (Edit: I’m just adding the sources. If I find another paragraph like this, I’ll cross it out. You can’t read this anymore. That won’t work, I’ll change it, they’re all coming into brackets here at the end.) (Banzhaf, 2001, pp. 82, 166, 110, 138; Krefting, 2020, pp. 84, 98, 112, 126)

The four crisis cards are almost coherent in themselves. The head person in me secretly rejoices that something bad is happening to the cheerful Cups for a change. I had defined the theme of the 5 in my smart table as Conflict. Now, let’s apply the qualities of the four elements: With the Wands, it would have to be something like a bull in a china shop. The Cups sinking into grief and despair is quite plausible. The Swords are discriminated again. The mind also likes challenges. With internal conflicts, brainf*ck can happen. Back and forth, not deciding, maybe lingering, overthinking something to death … But Malice? Why? And a conflict in the material realm can in the worst case mean beggary, leprosy, and torment – even if my term for conflict would then be a bit too weak. But it could also show what Waite’s 4 is: an exaggerated need for security. Shutting oneself off. Hoarding. Stockpiling to survive the conflict.

With the different elements, at least a double standard is applied. If the theme is conflict, I would have to ask all the elements the same question, for example: »How do you react to it?«. The Wands say: »No problemo, I’m ready. Where’s the enemy?«. The Cups get scared and melt down. The Swords are confident: »Just give me some time to think – I can solve this!« and the Pentacles go and buy toilet paper and lock themselves in.

Or I ask a different question: »Where do your conflicts come from?« After twenty therapeutic sessions, the Wands answer: »I’m too hot-headed, I always want to run into a wall without having thought it through properly.« The Cups say (after only two sessions): »From within, I am not in harmony with myself.« The Swords are still thinking about whether they maybe think too much, have difficulty making decisions, and therefore only get into action when the train has long since left the station. And the Pentacles basically know that all striving is only superficial and that there is more than meets the eye. The essential thing, however, is that I ask everyone the same question – and not a different one for each. And that I base the answers on a similar level of intensity. Not a catastrophe for one and a bruise for another. That’s at least the conclusion I’ve come to, even if Mister Waite and Mister Crowley apparently saw it differently, and only DHL alone knows what the old tarot cards say about it.

In short: The Fives of the Minor Arcana are semi-plausible. Now let’s add the Hierophant/High Priest. If the Fives stand for conflict, he does too. Caught in the same net. To get away from the religious, I first called him Tradition. Then a few days ago, I thought about Curott’s Wisdom Keeper, a keeper of wisdom. A keeper, a guardian, a shepherd, the pope again. A keeper is also a (prison) warden, oh. Who else guards something and carries the keys? And somehow, I end up with the Porter from Macbeth. A gatekeeper. He watches who comes and goes. Opens the door – or not. On top of that, he’s always drunk and spouts dubious wisdom (which is then picked up by Smurfette in my daydreams). In the Shakespeare Cards, he is assigned to the Fools. Interesting, because like the Fool, the Porter is always there and is never seen. Always listens but is never taken seriously. Like the Fool, he carries a very unique wisdom within him. I like that. So I’ll rename the High Priest Warden. And in his function as a bouncer, he can certainly mean a conflict.

For me, it is now without a doubt that the Hierophant, the Warden, is what is called The First Threshold in the monomyth. The hero has to cross the threshold, and at this point, some kind of test often awaits. This can be a difficult initiation. Striking connections and dark Freemason lodges come to mind. But maybe the hero doesn’t even want to go in (to the society, the lodge, the temple) but simply wants to go through. Or out. We all know stories where a guardian has to be outwitted or befriended so that you can go through the next door, literally or figuratively. These guardians, porters, sentinels that you want to get past are not at all papal or priestly – often enough, they are quite stupid and half-fools themselves. Not just the drunken Porter in Macbeth, but for example, also Mord, Tyrion’s troll-like prison warden in Game of Thrones. Tyrion, himself a kind of fool (in the Song of Ice and Fire books, he joins a troupe of other dwarfs in a juggler’s act for a while, that plotline was unfortunately removed in the HBO series), has a lot of trouble making his warden understand that he will reward him with gold, because the warden is so stupid that you wonder who ever came up with the idea of handing him a keyring.

So, now the whole thing makes sense. If I want to get into, out of, or through somewhere and this threshold is guarded, then I definitely have a conflict on my hands. I am facing a test. The Minor Arcana ask how you react to such tests, to not being able to move forward, to the hurdle, the threshold. The Wands are confident, the Cups need encouragement for their self-confidence, to the Swords you can explain that we always fight the biggest battles with ourselves, and to the Pentacles that they have everything they need. No toilet paper needed. Everything is fine. And the Fool? The Fool, who at this point still believes that he will never master the elements (similar to Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz), does the only thing he is really good at. He proposes a game. He plays. He wins. He doesn’t just win the game; he also wins over the warden. The warden is amazed and astonished by the Fool’s ability and lets him through. Like Circe, he even gives him something useful for the next stage.

Thus, the Warden, the new Hierophant, as a card means both conflict and threshold. This is where you can move forward; here, there is something to learn. It is about proving yourself, and after the threshold, something greater awaits. The threshold can be the entry into the temple on the way to enlightenment, but it can also mean that you have to overcome yourself to take the next step. Maybe a great Leap of Faith, or maybe just a kick in the butt to do your taxes. How this internal or external conflict ends, whether you pass the threshold or not, is left open. Here, the user is asked to take action themselves. If they do it like the Fool, they reflect on themselves and their abilities and jump.

So much for the status quo. The Fool tinkers through his fairy-tale journey and encounters archetypal situations and figures that usually appear in heroic stories. He grows with each card and at the end, he realizes that he himself is the twenty-second card, the Fifth Element. Without him and his foolishness, the world is not complete. Without a little foolishness, none of us are complete, no matter what other virtues and experience we can throw into the mix.

The Minor Arcana are not about archetypes and stories but how we deal with the different stages of our own hero’s journey in real life on the four levels, how we react to them, learn from them, and grow.

I’m not finished with this assignment yet. It’s three steps forward and two steps back. Does this or that term fit? Wouldn’t it fit better over there? Is that what it’s really about? Isn’t that too far away from the tarot? And so on. Iteration. And that’s okay. I don’t have to commit yet. I am allowed to try things out, flip through, think, and change. But at least I now have a framework that I can fill. A grid that I can use as a guide. I’m no longer hanging in the air.