There is a great passage on the nature of symbols in Carl Jung’s landmark book, Symbols of Transformation. On page 124 he says about symbols:
In neither case should they be taken literally, for they are not to be understood semiotically, as signs for definite things, but as symbols. A symbol is an indefinite expression with many meanings, pointing to something not easily defined and therefore not fully known. But the sign always has a fixed meaning, because it is a conventional abbreviation for, or a commonly accepted indication of, something know. The symbol therefore has a large number of analogous variants, and the more of these variants it has at its disposal , the more complete and clear-cut will be the image it projects of its object.
Not only is this an excellent quote in regards to psycho-spiritual phenomena, but I think it’s especially relevant to all this Pop Culture Tarot stuff that we’re working on right now. In Jung’s language, we are dismantling and fusing together signs (things which definitively refer to one thing) to reveal the deeper symbols which are underlying them. The trick works because by laminating together the meanings of various cultural signs, they start to morph and vibrate a little bit with multivalent possibilities, thereby invoking the deeper symbols.
