Tarot is not anti-Christian

Tarot cards were invented in the 1400's and were used for card games, just like "regular" playing cards. Both kinds of decks have four suits that run Ace-10; both have "court cards" like kings and queens. Tarot cards also have "archetype" cards like the Sun, the Moon, Justice, Strength, and the World.

Just like with all kinds of games and literature and art, tarot has evolved over centuries. In the 18th century, some people started using tarot cards in occult practices, like witchcraft, paganism, voodoo and fortune-telling. Some people still use them today in these practices, and some take tarot reading on as a spiritual practice. Of course those people have a right to do what they like with their own belongings and their own faith practices.

But lots of people are not using them that way. For example, I'm a "secular" user of tarot cards. I don't think of them as a tool for future-telling or for sorcery, but as a way to consider your past and present. Each tarot card is a small individual story, and story-telling is a great device to help us frame occurrences, thoughts, and dreams, and to make sense of our own conflicting hopes and fears.

Believe it or not, many therapists are even using tarot cards these days as a tool to help their patients sort out feelings and concerns during sessions. Is using the illustrations and stories on tarot cards to prompt discussion and reflection, really that much different from art therapy or Rorschach testing?

The Bible has a lot of statements against divination. For example, in the Old Testament, Leviticus 19 forbids divination and sorcery. Of course... it also forbids trimming your beard, making cloth with two different kinds of threads, getting tattoos, or eating your steak medium-rare. There are lots of activities that the masses were warned against in ancient times, because at the time they were misunderstood or unhealthy. We don't hold on to much of that today.

But more importantly... these verses don't define what activities constitute "divination" and which don't. Is it simply trying to see the future? Or is it possibly a search for meaning in the unknown? (And in that case, isn't that the case for what most of what ancient scholars considered science, anyway?)

Now, the Bible is very staunchly against necromancy, and decries it many times; Christians are definitely not supposed to be trying to speak to the dead or to ghosts or lost souls! And Jews and Christians alike are warned off of engaging with mediums and sorcerers.

Conveniently, though, that isn't what tarot does. They aren't magic wands, or Ouija boards to speak to the dead, or crystal balls that swirl up visions of calamity. It's just 78 cards with pictures on them -- often embedded, in fact, with stories and fables that align very closely to Biblical tales.

Like so many objects in this world, tarot cards are just things. What gives them any sort of power is in how and by whom they are used.

No one would reject everyday objects like coins, apples, pebbles... you wouldn't call a haircut evil... and yet all of those very commonplace things were used in the Bible as harmful weapons.

Do we forego them now? Of course not.

Tarot cards are just inanimate objects; they can't be anti-Christian, or anti-anything. Only humans can do that.