Tag Archives: universal hero

The (intellectual) hero’s journey: science/Tarot mash-up

Way to push a bunch of my geek-buttons at once: mapping Joseph Campbell’s ur-story of the hero’s journey onto the scientific method and philosophy, via the rich and deep symbolic interface of the Tarot deck [via Metafilter; more card images on the Science Tarot Facebook page].

Not sure how practical it would be (for science or for cartomancy – though as a po-mo method of storying science I think it’s a rather brilliant idea), nor whether some of the scientists portrayed would be particularly keen on the idea (can’t see ol’ Carl Sagan giving the thumbs-up to a grafting of occultism onto the tree of science, really), but for someone like myself who spent a great deal of time immersed in the symbolic structures of occultism and science at the same time, it’s a rather charming synthesis, not to mention one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” moments.