Archetypes in the Tarot: Father / Mother
Tags archetypes, parents, father, mother
Carl Jung proposed a model for understanding why humans tend to group ideas about other people in certain recognizable patterns. These patterns, he explained, occur in the Collective Unconscious as Archetypes.
One such archetype is the Father or Mother. They represent our literal parents, but they also represent anyone who served in a parental role in our lives.
In a tarot reading, a card picturing parents may represent our actual mother and father, but it may also be a reference to the qualities we associate with parental figures. For example, the Mother may represent a nurturing, warm, comforting figure. The Father may represent someone who is stern, commanding, or powerful.