“What are those?” My grandmother pointed to my card game.
I looked at her, excited to tell her. “Tarot cards.”
His eyes widened and he looked at my mother and father. “Who let you have the devil’s toys?”
My mother and father looked at each other. I bought them for her. My father spoke.
“And you say you are a religious man?”
“I don’t see anything wrong with her satisfying her curiosity.”
“It’s a sin! You can’t claim this is a religious house if you allow the devil’s instruments inside!” My grandmother suddenly lost her temper.
“But grandma, they are fun and pretty.” I argued.
“Get rid of them.” she boiled
My parish priest once told me that the occult was a dark art. Sure, some of that can be, however, the tarot can be used for fortune telling or entertainment. I come from a devout Catholic family. Every Sunday, my parents and I attended mass, prayed, and then went to have breakfast. There were prayers before every meal, Bible study after school, and restricted television on the weekends. For my family, Jesus was always someone we tried to impress.
I became interested in tarot when I was fourteen years old. I saw a fortune teller using a deck of cards when he was at a carnival with some friends the previous summer. I was drawn to the designs on them and the way the fortune teller placed them on the table in what I would later learn is called a spread.
I asked my father about the cards a few months later to see if he had any information on them and he offered to buy me a deck. He didn’t understand how a deck of cards could cause so much confusion in a family. Since it seemed to be a religious issue, the only person I could think of to ask was my parish priest.
“Tarot is a part of the occult, which is demonic. Why, being a good Catholic girl, would you want to play with something as dangerous as this? Why would you let yourself be tempted by Satan?” Father Burns told me.
Okay, so the tarot is part of the occult, and the occult is demonic, but how can Satan tempt me if I just look at them? He had no idea how to read them. I decided to educate myself.
The tarot originated in Italy in the 14th century. The Jews used it for divination purposes or to predict the future. The deck consists of 22 major arcana cards, cards that resemble the king, queen, and jack of a deck of playing cards, which represent life, and 56 minor arcana cards, cards that resemble the numbered cards of a deck of cards. deck of cards, which correspond to the major arcana in some way. Each card has its own meaning.
The deck my father bought me was the Scapini Medieval Tarot, created by Luigi Scapini. The Scapini Tarot recreates the images of Europe in the Middle Ages through costumes, symbolism and scenery. Many images on the cards were inspired by masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. The cards are complete with golden backgrounds and a symbolism that the reader has to interpret that links this particular deck with the esoteric tradition of the tarot. Because every tarot deck is different, the Scapini deck includes the suits of Swords, Cups, Wands, and Coins. These suits correspond to the traditional tarot suits of swords, cups, wands, and pentacles. The playing cards can also be used as tarot cards. Tarot suits correspond to the four suits in a deck of cards: spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds.
The occult has been a part of American culture since the mid-19th century. In 1871, there were an estimated eight to 11 million psychic and occult followers. By 1979, according to Time magazine, an estimated 40,000 “witches” were already active in the United States. Today, that number has quadrupled. More than 300 educational institutions, including universities, offer programs and even degrees on New Age topics. Of these institutions, about 100 in the United States alone offer witchcraft courses. According to The Stateman’s Yearbook 2007, in 2000, Illinois had a total population of 12,419,293. Of these, 6,457,000 were Christians and 270,000 Jews. The other 5,692,293 were unknown. Those strangers could be occultists.
The reason for the high number of occultists in America is the abandonment of orthodox Christianity. It is a fact that wherever Christianity is biblically practiced, occultism is rejected.
People leave the Christian religion for many reasons, some of which include interests in other religions and wrongdoing by the church. However, most abandon the faltering religion. For example, a man named Jason* left the Catholic Church primarily because of his homosexuality. He simply disagreed with the church’s teaching not only on homosexuality, but also on the ordination of women and papal infallibility. Jason still has great respect and love for the Catholic Church, but he won’t be going back unless he sees a change in things he didn’t agree with.
The tarot is studied by occultists and pagans. Paganism has had a tremendous influence on Christianity. For example, Catholic infant baptism was derived from a pagan ritual. Many pagan rites were incorporated into Catholicism: the use of incense, genuflections, and the practices of facing east in prayer. Sadly, most Christians have either denied or forgotten this.
In Biblical evaluations of the tarot, it is stated that the cards ignore the sin of man, it contains a “secret doctrine” that only a few know about, and that the cards are dangerous when used to control fate due to the symbolism. The realization is that the Tarot cards correctly say that man needs spiritual help.
The four suits of the minor arcana have also been identified with the four symbols of the Holy Grail legend: spear (Wand), cup (cup), sword (sword), plate (pentacles). The major arcana also have Catholic symbolism. For example, the hanged man, card number 12, which depicts a man hanging upside down from a cross by the ankle, signifies the death and resurrection of Jesus.
For me, Tarot readings have always been steeped in mystery; carnival readers in dark tents, with black velvet on the table and chairs and little crystals hanging from the ceiling.
That’s what I used to think. Now that I realize that carnival Tarot readers are probably just looking for money, I looked up what a real Tarot reader looks and acts like. I didn’t find it in any book, so to find my answer, I visited a “real” Tarot reader.
I visited a website to try and get some information on where to get a good read. The information told me to stay away from calling 900 numbers, like Psychic Friends and Miss Cleo, because usually numbers like that employ people who don’t have reading skills and do what’s called “cold reading.” Cold reading is where a reader names a number of people and ideas that the person receiving the reading may or may not be familiar with in the hope that the person will offer valuable information to further the reading. Cold Reading has been compared to fishing; the reader keeps spewing out useless information until he gets something useful. These numbers are usually scams.
When I arrived, I noticed that the place I was in looked like a normal house. When I rang the doorbell, a woman in her 40s, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and bunny slippers, answered the door. “Hello.” She greeted me.
“Uh heh.” She probably assumed that her attraction took me by surprise.
He invited me in and motioned for me to sit at the kitchen table (which, by the way, had a St. Patrick’s Day tablecloth on it). As she made me a cup of coffee, which was in a mug that said “world’s greatest mom” on the side, she brought the cards to the table.
He sat across from me, pulling the cards out of the old sock he kept them in. “Why do you keep them in a sock?” I asked.
“So they can be personalized. It’s believed that if you keep your cards in a personal place, it will bond with the cards, giving you a more accurate reading.” She smiled. “What is your zodiac sign?”
“Pound.” I replied.
He searched through the cards until he came to the Justice card. She set him aside, separated from the rest. “Why don’t you include that one?”
“This card represents you.” She held up the card that she put aside.
“Why do you represent me?”
“Libra represents law and justice. This card corresponds to that.”
I nodded and she told me to shuffle the cards. I did and returned them. She arranged them in what was described as the “Celtic cross” spread. The spread had two cards in the center, one on top of the other, forming a cross, four cards in a circle around those cards, and four stacked cards running to one side of the circle. The cards inside that make up the circle detail someone’s problems, obstacles, and past and near future. Cards running down the side detail a person’s inner thoughts and feelings and environment, ending with predicting the end result of that person’s question.
He was correct in predicting some things in my reading, like my past relationships and general roadblocks. However, he missed many of the future predictions, the predictions that he told me would happen within the next month.
As we sat down to dinner, my grandmother asked me if I had gotten rid of the letters yet. My parents looked up from their plates and listened intently, their eyes wide, wondering what she would say.
“Nope.” I said simply.
“Why?” Grandma asked calmly.
“Because Grandma…” and I proceeded to tell her what I had learned about the Tarot. This was something she wanted to pursue, and I didn’t like anyone getting mad at me, especially her. I always wanted my grandmother to be proud of me.
When I finished explaining I expected her to scream and scream but it never happened. “Hmm.” Was all she said, and that was the end of it.
People read or go to Tarot readings because they are looking for something fun and interesting or they are moving away from their religion and looking for different spiritual outlets.
I’ve talked to several different people who told me they read Tarot because it’s “fun,” “interesting,” or “because my family hates it,” but only one person told me, “I read Tarot because I like to know what’s going to happen tomorrow.” I hate surprises.
This surprised me. “Do you really think you can see the future through cards?”
“I dont believe it, I know”.
This sends up a red flag for me. This is a crazy individual who bases his life on Tarot… go away! This is what I instantly thought of. However, through my research I have learned that most people who read Tarot do so for spiritual purposes and believe what they see on the cards. From what is portrayed in the media, I took this person to be absolutely crazy.
Through the research I’ve done, I’ve learned a number of things about the Tarot and may have matured a bit as I searched for answers.
“Your grandmother is leaving.” My father called out to me as he ran downstairs to say goodbye to her.
“I’ll see you next month.” She told me while she kissed me on the forehead.
As I turned to walk away, I heard her call out to me, “What you said at dinner last night really made sense.”
I turned to her and smiled. He just wanted her to understand. That was all she wanted.
