{"id":5867,"date":"2013-07-17T22:59:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T04:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5867"},"modified":"2013-07-17T22:59:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T04:59:12","slug":"tarot-cards-they-are-for-catholics-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5867","title":{"rendered":"Tarot Cards \u2014\u00a0They Are for Catholics Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas L. McDonald, Patheos’ “Technology | Culture | Catholicism” blogger has a five-part series on the history of the Tarot cards. It starts here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The real history of the Tarot, however, begins in the early 15th century in Italy, and their story is an important part of gaming and cultural history that was lost for centuries. They were created to play games, not tell fortunes. . . . .<\/p>\n

Catholics have been conditioned to avoid Tarot because of its New Age and occult connotations.<\/strong> That\u2019s a mistake: Tarot is part of our heritage. It reflects Catholic culture, symbolism, history, and theology. Its images are useful not just for play, but for contemplation, as Catholic mystic Valentin Tomberg explores beautifully in\u00a0Meditations on the Tarot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tarot belongs to us, not to the con artists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He is absolutely right that there is a great deal of bogus history about the Tarot, involving wild tales of a gallery of paintings of the trumps in a secret hall underneath the Sphinx of Egypt, and so on.<\/p>\n

I think too that one of the reasons that ceremonial magicians have struggled to mesh the trumps with the Cabala and so forth is that the Tarot is a hybrid system itself, partly from here and partly from there.<\/p>\n

I wrote something on those lines myself once, alas in the pre-Internet era, for Gnosis <\/em>journal.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas L. McDonald, Patheos’ “Technology | Culture | Catholicism” blogger has a five-part series on the history of the Tarot cards. It starts here. The real history of the Tarot, however, begins in the early 15th century in Italy, and their story is an important part of gaming and cultural history that was lost for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,159],"class_list":["post-5867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-history","tag-tarot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1wD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8366,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8366","url_meta":{"origin":5867,"position":0},"title":"Thinking How the Tarot Smuggled Paganism to the Present","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In my twenties, the Tarot was about the most \"occult\" thing around that I could bring out in public settings. I learned to read the cards semi-competently and had some adventures thereby. When I made it through an evening of reading for casual strangers in a nightclub, I figured that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"esotericism\"","block_context":{"text":"esotericism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=esotericism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0715645722","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14029,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14029","url_meta":{"origin":5867,"position":1},"title":"Tarot Thoughts — And Eden Gray’s Surprising Story","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I decided to get more serious about Tarot after all these years. Maybe some day people will see me as a wise old man, but I will need some props \u2013\u00a078 of them, to be precise. I actually learned to use the I Ching in a superficial bohemian way before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Tarot\"","block_context":{"text":"Tarot","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=tarot"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/eden-gray-doctor-x.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11873,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11873","url_meta":{"origin":5867,"position":2},"title":"How Makers and Creators Might Price Their Work","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 6, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"When I graduated from college, I owned three Tarot decks: the Rider-Waite\/Pamela Coleman Smith deck (of course), the Marseilles deck (for history), and David Palladini's Aquarian Tarot (well, it fit my personal aesthetic at the time). This is fun, I thought, I should collect more Tarot decks. And then the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"King of Cups Tarot Card","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Palladini-King-of-Cups.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9627,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9627","url_meta":{"origin":5867,"position":3},"title":"There Was More to “Pixie” than Tarot Cards","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 26, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"At Spiral Nature you can read a long review of a new book about Pamela Coleman Smith (Pixie to her friends), best known for designing probably the most popular Tarot deck of the twentieth century. Corinne Pamela Colman Smith, who went by the nickname \u201cPixie,\u201d\u00a0defied so many social norms, it\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"history\"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Pamela_Colman_Smith_circa_1912.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10222,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10222","url_meta":{"origin":5867,"position":4},"title":"A North American Tarot Deck","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"This would make a nice bookend to the American Renaissance Tarot \u2014 Emi Brady's North American Tarot. For more than a decade, Denver artist and printmaker Emi Brady toyed with the idea of her own tarot card deck. She \u201cwasn\u2019t ready\u201d until more recently. \u201cTechnically, I wasn\u2019t ready and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/cpr-swolf_brady-tarot_dsc6869.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/cpr-swolf_brady-tarot_dsc6869.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/cpr-swolf_brady-tarot_dsc6869.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/cpr-swolf_brady-tarot_dsc6869.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9784,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9784","url_meta":{"origin":5867,"position":5},"title":"Emily Dickson is the High Priestess of a new Tarot Deck","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Read this interview at Reality Sandwich with Thea Wirsching, who together with artist Celeste Pille has created the American Renaissance Tarot deck,, based on leading writers, artists, and activists of the 19th century such as Emily Dickinson, \u00a0 \"I\u2019ve seen the American Renaissance period described as the literature that appeared\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Emily Dickinson as the High Priestess in the American Renaissance Tarot.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/PRIESTESS-IMAGE%402x.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5867"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5869,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5867\/revisions\/5869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}