Tarot Is Not Evil

Many different types of people use Tarot Cards as a personal divination tool to help craft a better life for themselves. Some seekers identify as Wiccan, Christian, New Age, agnostic, and some are even atheists; your religious background (or lack there of) does not matter when it comes to learning and using Tarot cards.

Why Does Tarot have a Bad Reputation?

Unfortunately the media frequently promotes negative stories about Tarot card reading and divination in general. You frequently see movies and television shows depicting Tarot as evil but this is just a plot crutch the way most horror movies use teenagers being sexually active as inevitably drawing a violent end by some crazy maniac.

Another reason Tarot is portrayed as evil is because some psychics of ill-repute take advantage of desperation with readings that say a particular person is “cursed” and only large sums of money paid to the scammer can break the curse. These types of stories draw very negative community reactions with good reason. By association, all Tarot readers get painted as fraudsters.

The primary purpose of scary movies, scary news stories and urban legend is to first entertain through chilling tales and to second maintain social order by sharply defining what is “Good” and what is “Bad”. Sadly, these modern allegorical threads fail to reflect real life. They’re quick sketches that rely on victim-shaming. Tarot card reading is universally painted as “Bad”.

Tarot Does Not Over Shadow Free Will

A common misconception is that Tarot asserts a spooky power over your free will. In other words, if you draw a particular reading there is nothing you can do to change it. If you got a bad reading, bad things will happen. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth and this idea is the opposite of the purpose of the Tarot.

Tarot is about possibilities and by its very nature invites you to examine your course and change it for the better. Secondly, it makes it seem like you are helpless to change your life and that is patently untrue. You have free will, something emphasized extensively in the Bible, and you can do what you wish including changing your future.

Tarot can be thought of like a selfie. It captures a particular moment in time. Though just like a selfie will be a bit different if you take another on a different day, Tarot readings would be slightly different  because the act of divination gives you insight that simply by having that insight changes your path.

Tarot has No Power Greater Than God’s (Or Yours)

Divination can predict the future based on the general circumstances we currently find ourselves a part of and it can also form a bridge to our intuition. I believe the former is far less valuable than the later. Intuition is our inner wisdom formed from the union between our conscious and subconscious mind. Intuition is the little voice inside us that looks out for our best interest and it inherently good not evil.

Tarot fine tunes this voice using a system of pictures, colors, numbers and symbols. It brings us a fresh perspective and urges us to think deeply about issues we’re invested in. Any purpose-driven life requires self-examination and Tarot is a great tool for that.

What Tarot isn’t, is some mysterious force sent to steal us away from God (if that is your conception of a Higher Power) or yourself. It has no magic on its own, black or otherwise, that doesn’t stem from YOU. You are what drives the machine not the other way around. 

God is omnipotent by any religion’s definition. How could paper with pictures be more powerful?

Predicting the Future

Divination by definition can predict the future and this is specifically mentioned as evil by some religions. But why is this so? It’s because if you spend your time only focused on the future you’re out of alignment with the Now which is the only time you will truly ever be in. You can’t go backwards or forwards in time after all, so your energy is best invested in working on Now. Some think of future predictions as the main purpose of Tarot but I think honing your intuition as being the more useful aspect.

Death and the Devil

Often, people unfamiliar with Tarot think cards like Death and the Devil are specifically calling evil forces. If you’re unfamiliar with the meaning captured in these cards, I can see the concerns because those two cards are the most feared cards in all of Tarot and frankly, they can look scary. Once familiar with Tarot, these cards are seen for what they are...karmic lessons not invitations to evil.

The Major Arcana specifically tells the story of the soul’s path to enlightenment and describe key life lessons we all experience. As corporeal beings, death is always part of the life cycle and so is temptation (the Devil). Who among us has never known death be it from the food we eat to the people we know (even though the Death card more commonly refers to the death of a situation)? Who has never felt the temptation to do something that is ultimately not good for us be it eating one too many donuts or be it investing too much time on social media? 

Divination Is Practiced In Nearly Every Religion 

• You can use the Tarot as a way to communicate directly with God or your Highest Self.
• Nearly every world religion has some form of divination in it including Christianity.
• Opening the Bible to a random passage for guidance is the same process as pulling a random Tarot card.
• Paper cards contain no evil qualities and cards do not attract demons or evil entities.