Tarot: personally difficult cards

Perhaps I should begin by saying that this is *not* a post about what to say to someone when the Death card comes up in a reading, or when you clearly see the exact opposite of what the person clearly wants in a reading.
This is rather about a feature of Jungian psychology as it appears to us in the tarot. I tend to soft pedal the personal development aspects of tarot, not wanting to sound like a fluffy, but it does lend itself to the Jungian approach so beloved of magical people. I think one of the reasons for this is that at the heart of Jungian psychology is something also at the heart of magic: that too much of one thing leads to its polar opposite. Jung called this enantiodromia and the Wikipedia page on it (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiodromia) references the writings of Heraclitus.
In Jungian psychology this polarity is found between the conscious and unconscious (the Shadow) sides of us. There is no judgement on the Shadow side, it is merely that it is unconscious until we meet it. We often 'project' it onto other people, when we see them as something that they don't see at all, or conversely it might be the other person's shadow if they simply don't recognise something in themselves that others reasonably see.
The essential 'meeting' in Jungian terms is for the two sides of the person to meet, leading to individuation, the integration of all the aspects of the person into a whole.
It's very easy to see which tarot card is your shadow: it may irritate you or seem alien. Depending on what situations you relate cards to it may represent something that irritates you in other people. It may represent something in yourself you find irritating. It may be a recurring theme that you see in the world about you (to borrow a phrase from transactional analysis, if you are firmly convinced that everybody is always out to get you, that is your 'script', not theirs). It may represent something that other people accuse you of sometimes but that you don't see in yourself, not forgetting that it isn't 'negative' as such, if someone says, 'You do X', that is not the whole of you, even if it is something really annoying!
Much as I would like to say that my shadow helps little old ladies over the road and picks snails off the pavement when it's rained, in reality my shadow tarot card is The Emperor, particularly in his flip sides of rigidity, arrogance, stubbornness, and so on.
To start off with this was always a card I had inordinate difficulty reading, at length by dint of card-a-day readings over some time, coming to associate it with forces external to myself that were over-authoritative & thought they were right (how that sentence rings alarm bells for a shadow card!). Then I came to think of daddy referring to the Emperor as mummy refers to the Empress. My father died when I was 10 & was ill for some years before that, so that I have as many daddy issues as I do mummy issues, just for different reasons, and I saw my difficulty interpreting this card as being about my absent father. This got me interested in getting to know this card better, & I became more receptive to a less 'negative' interpretation when it came up as daily card, and came to see his authority as also meaning that he has knowledge and resources. It was only when someone commented that I was being rigid in holding an opinion of a particular person that I realised how this card is my shadow. I will happily acknowledge that I am an arrogant bastard, I like to think that I will be reasonable with other people and hear their views (this is my conscious side, the epitome of fairness and reasonableness), but when push comes to shove I will damn well be right.
Well b*gger me if I'm not behaving like all the aspects of the Emperor that irritate me most! This realisation has actually been surprisingly painless, and also my Emperor-ness has ceased to be a negative thing. In fact since I've made this realisation other people seem to be actually asking for my opinion more - lucky this blog is anonymous or someone who knows me might write a reply!).
Also I should have got the hint since my Emperor-ness (imperiality?) Is actually at the heart of the whole mother and father thing. I've posted previously about how my relationship with my mother has deteriorated over the years. I had noticed that she was reminding me more of her mother, then she let slip one day that my father and her mother didn't get on, which I didn't realise. Now I can see that we have been recreating that poor relationship, with me playing the part of my father. We tend to think of the Emperor and Empress as a pair or even a couple, but Their Imperial Majesties are pictured alone, and can clash with anyone who seems to interfere with their dominion.
And my Emperor problem goes even deeper in the relationship with my mother, which is both built on a faultline but was thrown up by cowboy builders. Around 20 years ago I had [imagine the arch tone of voice] a Bad Experience, with someone in a position of authority over me who was emotionally abusive, over a period of about a year. This has left its scars and I still feel the rage now, although like a good witch, while I do nothing to nurture this rage I am not prepared to reach 'closure' as this rage is a potent source of power if I need it. The experience was very similar to Dion Fortune's description of a psychic attack by an employer, in Psychic Self Defence.
My mother did not believe me that this was happening and told me I was wrong, the common experience of those who tell their loved ones they are being abused by a plausible authority figure. Her reaction both undermined any element of trust that might ever have been in our relationship, demonstrating how abuse wrecks people's lives, but if you don't believe what someone tells you I don't see how you can reasonably be surprised when thereafter the person does not tell you what is going on in their life.
This brings me to the whole point of how your shadow self is not a 'negative thing', because given that my so-called nearest and dearest preferred the word of a stranger over her own child (I was a very young adult at the time), I made up my own mind about what was going on. This was the beginning for me of coming into my own power: I realised how I had been brought up with a script that I was always wrong, and made up my mind that when I knew I was right, I would place nothing and nobody higher than my own sovereignty. Incidentally my mother was only reluctantly persuaded she was wrong by a family friend, not me. Therefore I can look at my headstrong shadow side with pride & know that it was nurtured by my own dealing with an extraordinarily difficult situation in my life. This has opened the floodgates to another power, that of divination, because I read right to the heart of a situation, knew I was right & stuck to my interpretation (Fortune describes how difficult and draining it is to stick to your guns in a psychic attack), I have come through with this strange gnosis. When I gnow, I will be right. Yes, this makes me an arrogant bastard but that is an aspect of my personality I welcome, and on occasion other people are grateful for, since I so generously share my rightness with them!
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