Tarot, the Psyche and the Holy Spirit: Preparing the Ground for Discernment

I practise Christian Tarot as a form of seeing: seeking God’s wisdom through symbolic interpretation. This is divination undertaken in reverence for God, with the desire to know and follow His will, rather than fortune-telling. Such divination has a clear biblical foundation. My allegiance is to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. That allegiance shapes whom I address, what I seek and how I practise.

The relationship between Tarot and the Holy Spirit deserves a fuller explanation than either blanket condemnation or the claim that the cards are merely psychological. The psyche belongs within our spiritual life. God can work through imagination, memory, feeling and symbolic perception.

My understanding centres on a distinction: the cards belong to the twilight of the psyche; the Holy Spirit brings illumination. Tarot can till the soil of our interior life, uncovering what conscious awareness has missed and where metanoia and surrendered action are needed. The Spirit illuminates that material and guides our response. Valentin Tomberg offers a particularly useful way into this relationship.

Tomberg and the twilight of symbolism

In Letter III, “The Empress,” of Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, Tomberg writes: “Symbolism is a twilight for arcana” (p. 65). An arcanum occupies the middle ground between a secret and a mystery; symbolism simultaneously reveals and conceals it. His context is sacred magic and the integrity of sacred action, including sacramental practice.

This gives us a more interesting account of symbolic perception than treating a card as a coded instruction. A symbol has depth. We return to it because further meaning becomes accessible through attention, experience and contemplation. Familiarity with an image does not exhaust what it can disclose.

For Tomberg, contemplating a Tarot symbol can awaken a capacity for spiritual understanding. In Letter I, he compares an arcanum to a ferment working within the soul, stimulating both psychic and spiritual life. His twilight metaphor describes how a symbol discloses meaning while continuing to hold more than we have understood. Contemplation deepens our capacity to receive what it carries.

An image gives form to something we have yet to understand: a neglected desire, an unrecognised fear, a longing for God. Bringing that material into prayer opens it to the Holy Spirit’s illumination. The Spirit works through our human faculties, helping us recognise what these discoveries mean and how to respond.

Tilling the soil of the psyche

The psyche holds more than the story we currently tell about ourselves. Desire, grief, intuition, memory and unfinished questions continue to influence us while our conscious attention is occupied elsewhere. A Tarot image can disturb that familiar story enough for something overlooked to emerge.

A figure turning away catches our attention. An enclosed garden evokes safety, then confinement. A burden we initially admire begins to look exhausting. The image gives an interior reality a form we can encounter and bring before God.

This is why the soil metaphor matters. Tilling brings buried material to the surface and makes room for new growth. Some of what emerges needs tending; some needs removing. Recognising resentment, for example, opens a question about its roots and the response love requires.

Psychological recognition has spiritual significance because this is the actual person God is addressing. Prayer includes the parts of ourselves we would prefer to leave off the parish newsletter. The image helps us notice what needs to enter that conversation.

For my practice, this is one of Tarot’s particular gifts: it gives neglected interior material enough shape for honest engagement.

From spiritual encounter to conscious understanding

In Letter II, “The High Priestess,” Tomberg describes gnosis as mystical experience becoming conscious knowledge. He traces its passage through reflection, memory, thought and feeling towards communicable expression (p. 41).

For me, this makes room for spiritual understanding that involves our human faculties. The Holy Spirit can illuminate the mind through a remembered phrase, an image, a conversation or a sudden recognition. Grace reaches us in our humanity. Our faculties can participate in receiving what God gives.

When I speak of illumination, I mean God’s active gift of understanding: seeing a situation in the light of Christ and recognising how to respond. It carries us towards lived obedience, sometimes through a difficult truth we have been skilfully avoiding.

In Letter XI, “Force,” Tomberg applies the commandment against graven images to spiritual understanding. Our mental pictures of God can become substitutes for an encounter with the living God. He therefore distinguishes imagery produced by the mind or drawn from nature from “divine intuition”: the direct spiritual apprehension of what God reveals. Gnosis is the conscious understanding of that encounter. His warning concerns confusing our representations of spiritual reality with the reality itself (pp. 296–297).

Visio Divina and sacred images

Sacred imagery already has an established place in Christian prayer. Catholic teaching grounds the use of sacred images in the Incarnation: God has made Himself visible in Christ, and images can direct our attention towards Him (CCC 2131–2132). The Catechism also names holy icons as aids to meditation and describes thought, imagination, emotion and desire as participants in prayer (CCC 2705, 2708).

In Visio Divina, we contemplate sacred art, attend to what it brings into awareness and carry that response into prayer. Looking becomes a way of listening to God. This gives us a concrete example of imagery serving a living spiritual encounter.

I draw on that understanding in my Christian Hermetic approach to Tarot. The image engages the psyche, giving shape to something that needs our attention. The Holy Spirit can work through that symbolic encounter, illuminating its significance and guiding our response. Tomberg’s warning helps us keep the relationship clear: the image serves our encounter with God, and our interpretation remains open to the truth He reveals.

Symbols need interpretation

A symbol can carry several meanings. Its significance depends on the question, the imagery around it and the circumstances of the person reading.

Consider the Hermit in the Rider–Waite–Smith deck. His raised lamp, solitary stance and elevated position can bring study, guidance, withdrawal or loneliness into view. Relief at seeing him deserves attention. The circumstances help establish whether solitude would nourish us or provide a convenient escape from a necessary conversation.

Human interpretation is fallible. We can mistake a preference for guidance or make a persuasive story from insufficient material. I therefore distinguish what I see, what I associate with it and what I conclude, and remain willing to revise the conclusion. That is the proportionate humility symbolic work requires.

Ambiguity gives us something to investigate. Attending closely to an image, its traditional meanings and our response allows a richer understanding to develop than simply reaching for the first keyword that fits.

Sacred inquiry has material forms

Scripture gives sacred inquiry a material dimension. Exodus 28:30 places the Urim and Thummim in Aaron’s breastpiece of decision. In Numbers 27:21, Joshua is directed to consult Eleazar, who seeks the decision of the Urim in the Lord’s presence. Material objects serve an authorised priestly inquiry into God’s will.

The same broad concern appears in Acts 1:23–26. The community proposes two candidates to replace Judas, prays for God to reveal His choice and casts lots. The lot falls to Matthias. Prayer and a material means of selection belong together in the narrative.

These passages establish that seeking divine guidance through outward means has a place within biblical faith. They also direct attention towards the relationship in which inquiry occurs: God is sought, His decision matters and the answer concerns a responsibility to be fulfilled.

That is the biblical ground on which I stand. My account of reading Tarot as a Christian mystic develops the wider Christian Hermetic setting of this practice.

Joseph’s cup and Gideon’s fleece

Genesis 44:5 explicitly describes Joseph’s cup as something he “uses for divination.” In verse 15, Joseph himself claims the ability to discern through divination.

In Judges 6:36–40, Gideon asks God to confirm His promise through the fleece: first wet while the ground remains dry, then dry while the ground is wet. God answers both requests.

A priestly oracle, a requested sign, casting lots and interpreting Tarot symbols have different workings. My account of Tarot emphasises bringing the psyche into awareness and receiving illumination through the Spirit. The biblical examples establish a broader theological point: material mediation and reverence for God can belong within the same act of inquiry.

Reading the prohibitions through allegiance

Deuteronomy 18:9–14 explicitly prohibits divination alongside other practices, including consulting spirits and seeking oracles from the dead. It places these prohibitions within Israel’s separation from neighbouring religious practices and its obligation of wholehearted loyalty to God.

My theological reading distinguishes practices by their spiritual allegiance, purpose and character. Seeking the God revealed in Christ, in prayerful submission to His will, is legitimate divination. Seeking guidance from pagan gods or spirits belongs to a different spiritual relationship.

This is my Christian Hermetic position. The reasoning rests on reading the prohibitions together with the biblical practices of sacred inquiry, then asking whom a practice serves and what it actually does.

Intention must take form in the practice itself: prayer addressed to God, honesty about what we seek and a willingness to take surrendered action upon wisdom that challenges our preferred answer. Essentially, every reading becomes an opportunity to examine our conscience.

A royal priesthood in Christ

First Peter 2:5–9 describes Christians as a holy and royal priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices through Jesus Christ and proclaiming God’s goodness. This is a shared vocation, lived as a people gathered around Christ.

I connect that vocation with the responsibility to seek God, pray, discern and bring our lives into His service. The priestly character of biblical inquiry helps me understand symbolic inquiry as something Christians can undertake reverently within our life in Christ.

Sensitivity, dreams and symbolic perception deserve a serious place in Christian conversation. We should be able to speak about them without being immediately filed under “spooky,” “demonic” or “sinful” and referred elsewhere. A faith community capable of listening gives these experiences somewhere to become intelligible and fruitful. Had I not been dismissed when trying to bring these topics up, I might not have ventured into witchcraft.

Bringing the distinction into practice

Begin with prayer addressed to God through Christ. Ask the Holy Spirit for truth and understanding, then bring a question about your own participation in a situation: “What needs my attention as I seek to respond with love through surrendered action?”

Draw one card. Look before interpreting. Record a visible detail, the response it evokes and the connection you recognise in your present life. Bring that material into prayer, allowing Scripture, relevant facts and trusted conversation to deepen your understanding.

Suppose the Hermit’s lamp draws your attention to a neglected need for quiet. Prayer brings a particular recognition: constant availability has displaced your time with God. A practical response follows—protect fifteen minutes each morning for prayer. The image helped uncover the issue; spiritual illumination clarified its significance and gave direction to your response.

Genesis 41:16–36 offers a biblical pattern of imagery, God-given understanding and action. Joseph attributes the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams to God, then proposes preparations for famine as the surrendered action. Understanding becomes provision for others.

For a fuller exercise, see Symbolic Listening to God with the Help of Tarot.

Room to listen, freedom to respond

My concern for intuitive Christian women and men belongs within a commitment to Christian unity. So many of us, whether raised in a Christian home or not, grew up already seeing in the Spirit. I write as a Christ-centred, ecumenical Christian. Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, Charismatic and other Christian voices have something to contribute to this conversation. Learning from a tradition leaves room for honest theological judgement and disagreement.

First Thessalonians 5:19–22 holds openness to the Spirit together with testing and retaining what is good. James 3:17 describes heavenly wisdom through qualities including peace, gentleness and mercy. These give discernment a recognisable direction in our relationships.

Through working with the cards for decades, I have concluded that they can prepare the ground for a more honest encounter with God. The Holy Spirit brings the illumination through which what we have uncovered becomes understanding, prayer and surrendered action.