Myth, Tarot and the Archetypes of Healing

a guest post by my mama who recently retired and became a witch

The following is a guest post by my mom, Wendy Woolf, who you might remember from years of Eat Well posts on GGC. Well, friends? I am happy to report that she has gone from Eat Well to Neat Spell. Take it away, mama…

I welcome her into my home. We sit in front of my grandmother’s chest, covered in objects of great meaning to me: rocks I found on the beach—each holding a story—a carved wooden whale from Ojo de Libre Lagoon in Mexico, Quan Yin (the bodhisattva of unconditional love), a ceramic sea turtle, a book of poetry. I explain why each talisman is important to me, the stories they hold, and then we each light a candle for our intention for our time together. Mine is always the same—to hold my client’s story in love and support, to call into the room our ancestors, guides, angels, our Higher Selves, Source. Her intention is to be open and to listen. And then I spread the cards between us, she picks five, and we enter the imaginal, magical, mystical, and sacred world that will reveal her story.

I don’t remember the first time I had a Tarot card reading, but I do remember the moment I realized there was some sort of mysterious magic in cards. For over 20 years I’ve been in a writing group, which isn’t about the end result but rather a deep dive into our inner worlds to find the jewels that live there. Our mentor, Lois, guides us with a photo, poem, or a prompt, and then we take off on our inward journey for an hour or more, letting our pen wander on the page. Years ago, Lois brought her William Blake Tarot deck to our session and asked each of us to draw one card. The card I picked was the 4 of Music. These words, from a William Blake poem, were written on it: “And I wrote my happy songs every child may joy to hear.” In my life,I have been a geneticist, an artist, a teacher of art, music, and science, but most consistently, the composer, music director, and accompanist of a children’s theater company that I co-own. Yes…I write happy songs for children, to not only hear, but to sing. When a couple of years later I drew the same card from the 78-card deck (the odds of this are 1 in 6,084), I felt the universe was telling me something.

In 1988, Joseph Campbell’s famous interview with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, riveted me and opened my eyes to the importance of connecting to myth and archetypes.

(An archetype is a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology. As an example, the three female archetypes are Maiden, Mother, and Crone [wise woman].) My life-long interest in philosophy, metaphysics, metaphor, synchronicity, symbolism, and dream interpretation was heightened by adding in myth and archetype. I bought the book based on the TV series and read it over and over. It excited me to know that it was Joseph Campbell who helped George Lucas create a new mythology in the first three Star Wars movies (4, 5, and 6), movies I adored. That is why they were so great. People could feel the authenticity of the mythology and the archetypes of the Dark Father, the Hero’s Journey, The Sage, The Force, etc. Lucas wrote his other Star Wars movies after Joseph Campbell died, and that is why they cannot even come close to the magic of the first ones.

(Note: Since Joseph Campbell looked at mythology from a male gaze, many women have revisited his themes from a female perspective. One book that I loved, The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar, challenges Campbell’s, The Hero with a 1000 Faces, emphasizing “all the traits that define the heroic behavior of mythical women: curiosity, care, and determination.”)

Our modern world has drifted away from the importance of mythology and universal archetypes as a way of understanding the human condition. We still find myth in some movies and certainly in comic books, but connecting to the universal archetypes and mythology, to story and its importance in understanding our lives, is not talked about much. Yet every night we dream, reminding us that our psyches are deeply connected to the magical world of symbolism.

Recently I decided to read the fabulous new translation of The Odyssey, translated for the first time by a woman, Emily Wilson. Yes, it is a patriarchal story about a very complicated man who was many things, most of which are pretty bad. But as I was reading it, I saw so many parallels to now—how the patriarchy is ruining our civilization through warring, othering, silencing of women, and destruction of nature. I looked at the Siren story, a metaphor for men thinking our voice is dangerous, from the Siren’s perspective…how she just wanted to sing her song and didn’t give a hoot if the men couldn’t resist it and would fall into the ocean to their death. I looked at the story of the Cyclops as a story about “othering” another culture, making them into monsters because they were less “civilized” or different. These ancient stories live today because of the universality of their mythology.

Cards are a powerful tool, a portal into understanding our personal stories. Joseph Campbell had a similar experience with Tarot as mine, and afterward he collaborated with Richard Roberts on a book called Tarot Revelations, which connects Tarot to Jungian psychology and myth. In the book, Roberts says: “The common attitude towards Tarot, prototype of modern playing cards, is that Tarot is fortune-telling, and therefore, utterly bereft of value. However, …Tarot is above all a symbolic system of self-transformation comparable to what Jung terms the individuation process.” In other words, it’s a way to know ourselves on a deeper level.

Several years ago, I read Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen which led me to goddess cards, and I began doing people’s life readings through those. I realized that with my background, intuition, and years of study, reading cards for people came easily to me—like I could see how they fit together…not in a woo-woo way, but in almost a scientific way. And then when Rebecca went to Joshua Tree to finish her book in 2020, she gifted me with a deck of cards that changed my life: The Wild Unknown Archetypes by Kim Krans.

I have been working with these cards ever since and have done over 75 readings, each one illuminating to both my clients and to me. I cannot tell you how they work…I just know they do. Always. Every time. Why? Because we all contain multitudes, and the archetypes are universal to all our life experiences.

I was trying to explain my process of card reading to a client the other day who had come to me for a 3rd reading. “It’s the same process as when I paint a painting or compose a song,” I said. “I see all the parts and how they fit together, standing back to see your life story as a whole.”

“Yes,” she replied. “I feel that my nose is pressed too close to the painting to see it…Our sessions let me stand back and see the whole picture with clarity. And doing that makes all the difference.”

This is the best description I can give about how they work. The cards and their interpretation let us stand back and see our life, both our shadows and our light, and in so doing, give us support and guidance for how to go forward. In essence, like therapy, working with archetypes is another way to further understand ourselves. And what more do we want to do than to figure out the enigma that is our own life story.

There are hundreds of different decks of cards that people work with. My all-time favorite is The Wild Unknown Archetypes by Kim Krans.

The more you look at the collage images on these cards, the more you see. Her descriptions and her suggestions on how to go deeper are spiritual and insightful. She has other decks which I’m sure are fabulous, too. To complement my readings, I always have my clients draw from the Spirit Card Oracle Deck by John Mosley, which I also adore. Besides being beautiful to look at, each card has a deeply meaningful description which is easy to understand, and I suggest them as a great deck for anyone beginning this journey. Other decks I have used are The William Blake Tarot deck and various goddess decks.

Although I feel there are great benefits in having someone guide you through a reading because of their non-attachment to your story and their experience working with metaphor, you can access all the richness of cards yourself if you are willing to enter the world of the imaginal.