Collective Shadow, Personal Shadow, and Tarot
We had THE MOST FUN talking to Serita Fontanesi about the Tarot and Shadow, capitalism, and all things scam on our recent IG Live.
In our conversation, Serita pointed out that “you can’t really love yourself if you don’t own your Shadow.” And to her point, you can’t truly evolve, grow, and develop for the better if you’re in avoidance of those icky shadowy bits.
As a collective, we’re facing hella shadow right now. And as individuals, the communal shadow aspects coming to the surface may intimidate or even scare us. But it is so worth it to excavate the Shadow and do the work. Keep scrolling to learn why.
What is Shadow work?
When we say Shadow, we refer to the aspects of ourselves that we've deemed unacceptable (thanks to our own programming or societal programming) that we repress in the subconscious mind. We trash compact these aspects of ourselves in a futile attempt to adapt to cultural norms and expectations, and kind of just cross our fingers that they won't ever show up again.
Newsflash: They totes do! Everything comes to the surface eventually! Shoving your fee-fees down is not a prescription for a happy, well-adjusted lifeeeeee!!!
But before we go deeper on that, let's get clear on why Shadow is actually a core tenet of spirituality.
Psychoanalyst Carl Jung popularized the term "Shadow" in psychology and personal development work, but the idea of shadow work has existed across ancient cultures.
In fact, the idea of working with the Shadow is one of the many things that the white-washed New Age movement has appropriated from indigenous groups.
Shadow and shadow integration existed in many pre-Judeo-Christian societies in the form of myth and spirituality. As we know, pre-monotheistic cultures embraced the idea of a multi-faceted, non-binary existence. Instead of things being "good" or "bad," they just existed in balance with each other.
In these cultures, Shadow isn't a duality — it's an aspect of a prism. Embracing darkness, death, destruction, and chaos were necessary for understanding and evolving spiritually.
For example:
Many ancient Shamanic teachings involved a spiritual or physical death and resurrection — ascending into darkness and knowing it intimately in order to emerge as a healer and spiritual person.
In Navajo healing tradition, healers learn about both good and evil magic to become spiritual leaders in the community. If they aren't mentally strong, though, they could choose to fall into dark and practice corrupt, evil forms of magic.
Shiva the Destroyer is a deity in the Hindu trinity, with the power to create and demolish.
In rural Italian cities, townspeople would drown the "witch," an effigy of an old woman, in the local lake once a year to absolve the entire town of sin and darkness.
Basically, Shadow work is old as shit.
And many of us have forgotten how to access and embrace our Shadow.
But why would we want to?
Why would we choose to dive into the depths of ourselves and excavate the not-so-pretty things that we're dying to hide away from the world?
A few reasons:
To Serita's point, you can't truly love yourself if you reject aspects of yourself. Self-love is an all-inclusive package. It's not a buffet where you just get to pick and choose what you like. You gotta take it all. That's part of the deal.
When we excavate our Shadow, we actually defuse it. The longer we avoid, push down, and smother our Shadow, the stronger it gets and the more control it has over us. When we're ashamed of our Shadow, it holds us captive. Instead of being able to move freely and authentically, our actions revolve around trying to keep our Shadow aspects from escaping. We're trying REALLY HARD not to show the world the "bad" aspects of ourselves (they're not really bad, that's the thing!), which is exhausting.
Also, if you don't defuse the bomb inside of you, eventually, it goes off.
Just because society says an aspect of you is "unacceptable" doesn't mean it actually is. Like, hi, we live in a White supremacist patriarchal capitalist society — it hates ANYTHING that questions those labels. [Like queer, socialist, spiritual, easeful, healing, maternal, non-gender binary, feminist, communal, intuitive, to name a few] So the things that society/culture told you to hide away to be deemed socially acceptable, aka one of the popular kids, aren't even "bad" things! They're just the aspects of you that are unique.
"Bad" and "good" is a massively simplistic binary. We are not all one thing. We've all got "bad" and "good" (what do those words even really mean?) traits. They make us who we are, and it's better to be aware of where our areas of opportunity are than to pretend that they don't even exist.
Love, abundance, freedom, connection to Spirit/intuition, peace — all of the sort of theoretical "things" that we want are on the other side of seeing our Shadow.
What does the Shadow have to do with tarot?
As Serita explains so beautifully in this IGTV episode — we'll also go into greater detail in her class — the Tarot can be an amazing tool to help us pinpoint where our Shadow might live.
Being petty AF? Tarot will call you out.
Feeling lazy about your self-care? Tarot will drag you.
Keep giving that boundary-crossing person second (and third) chances? Tarot will spit a card of truth at you.
The Tarot doesn't sugar coat. It tells it how it is whether you're ready or not.
And as Serita will explain in her class, we can also use the Tarot to figure out how to approach integrating our Shadow self with love and compassion.
Join us Saturday for class with Serita to learn more!