An article in Crisis magazine is doing the rounds on the dangers of the tarot for Catholics. I myself have no experience with tarot, other than in movies and literature. At some point in my development I knew that divination is wrong, the way one knows to drink water when one is thirsty. The use of illicit means to control the physical world around me has never been one of my chief temptations.
In the days when brick-and-mortar bookstores still thrived, I would often pass by the new age section at Borders to look at the boxes of tarot. I was drawn to the archetypes, to the mystery of the symbols, and if there had been a set whose art was striking enough, it's impossible to know if I would have bought one. My intention would have been to look at it, as one peruses a book of illustrations. Only God knows if this could have been dangerous for me. There are those who say it absolutely would have been. But I like to think that the Holy Spirit has a good, strong hold on me. May it be so, amen!
Still, I cannot wholly condemn the tarot, for the sake of its archetypes, the likes of which have been used to instruct the faithful for centuries. To reject the truths expressed in symbols is too close to rejecting stories, the logical conclusion being a Puritan rejection of imagination as a whole. I am not willing to give up Middle Earth, Narnia, or the Arthurian legends. It might even be a sin (for me). Stories are akin to sacraments. Through them, I meet God.
All things exist in and through God. All things are, in their un-fallen nature, good. It's a shame that the occult twists the good and uses it to lure us away from the One who made them. Thought of in this light, evil truly is pathetic and repulsive. In Lewis's space-time trilogy, the aliens of Mars call Satan the Bent One. This expresses a profound theological reality, the likes of which is also expressed in Tolkien's legendarium: that evil cannot create, only imitate and twist and befoul.
I think it may have been possible at one time for those deeply entrenched in the sacraments and the protection of God to make use of the tarot. I'm not sure in what way, because any kind of attempt to know something or do something outside of God is a sin. Holiness comes in submitting to His will.
In today's climate of the occult, I daresay that any tarot deck is to be avoided. Merlin was permitted the use of magic in That Hideous Strength, and it is made clear that the reason is because he came from a time when the risks were far less pronounced. There is also mention of the fact that God will not use someone who has not touched magic before, as there is a kind of virginity that, in His providence, He is not willing to violate.
It may be that in these times when the Enemy has convinced us he does not exist, the greater of us are called to maintain a kind of consecrated virginity, abstaining from the use of "magic," which was at one time licit, and even possible, in much the way Tolkien's elves perform "magic" in Arda. Stephen Lawhead's Taliessin does a decent job of separating the natural "magic" of nature with that which has succumbed to demonic influence. But that was when Christianity was still new in the world. These days, the magic of the sacraments should suffice.
+JMJ+
Photo by Cat Crawford on Unsplash
Have you ever come across 'Meditations on the Tarot' by Valentin Tomberg - a very deep and very Catholic set of meditations on the Major Arcana? Apparently both Popes John Paul and Benedict were admirers of the book. VT was an Anthroposophist who became a Catholic. His thought is both orthodox and daring - traditional and creative at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThen there's Charles Williams' novel 'The Greater Trumpos' of course, which is as good as anything he wrote in my view.
I don't own any Tarot Cards at the moment. I had a Marseilles deck at one point and a few years later a Rider Waite deck. There's a Byzantine Tarot out there which quite intrigues me. There's a handbook to it written by John Mathews, the Arthurian scholar. Like yourself, I used them as meditative symbols. I'm not interested in divination as such,
John
Indeed I have heard of it, and my sister and I intend to study it this year! I knew it came recommended by at least one orthodox Catholic theologian. Is anthroposophy the Steiner/Waldorf stuff? There's quite a lot I like about that, but I think it fails in making Christ only "one of" a type instead of the One.
DeleteI think of Williams and also T.S. Eliot for employing the tarot in their writings. All three of those decks sound interesting! Thank you for reading and commenting!