Updated October 2026
The Angelorum Tarot Philosophy
My relationship with Tarot has changed considerably over the years. The cards have remained, but my understanding of what I am doing with them has deepened.
Today, I describe my approach as Summum Bonum Tarot: a contemplative way of reading the cards that seeks Divine Wisdom and orients the reading towards the Highest Good.
Summum Bonum means “Highest Good.” Within my Christian understanding, that Highest Good is ultimately God.
This changes both the questions I ask of Tarot and what I believe a reading is for.
I am not interested in using Tarot to gain power over the future. I am interested in what happens when we bring a question into prayerful contemplation, receive a symbolic image and discern what that image might illuminate.
The card delivers a symbolic image that we can meditate on. Discernment asks what to do with it.
That distinction lies at the heart of the Angelorum Tarot philosophy.
From Divination to Discernment
For many years, I described Tarot reading simply as divination. I increasingly find that word too broad for what I actually practise.
Divination can mean many different things. It can include fortune-telling, attempts to predict future events, seeking hidden knowledge, spirit communication and practices intended to gain greater control over uncertain circumstances.
That is not what I am trying to accomplish when I read Tarot.
My approach is contemplative.
I shuffle the cards and allow an image to emerge without knowing which card I will receive. I then attend to that image through the symbolic language of Tarot, prayer, intuition, reason and, where appropriate, Scripture and the Western Mystery Tradition.
The card does not become an authority whose instructions must be obeyed. Nor do I regard the future it might suggest as fixed.
It gives me something to contemplate.
What matters is what happens next: discernment.
What Tarot Is — and Is Not
Tarot is a symbolic language.
Its images contain layers of archetypal, spiritual, psychological, astrological, numerological and esoteric meaning. A single card can therefore open several avenues of contemplation at once.
This makes Tarot exceptionally good at disrupting habitual ways of thinking.
We may approach a problem convinced that we already understand it. Then an unexpected card introduces a symbol, virtue, tension or perspective we had not considered.
That moment of interruption can be extraordinarily fruitful.
It does not require us to believe that the card has dictated our fate. The image has simply entered the conversation.
We can then ask:
- What does this symbol illuminate?
- What am I being invited to notice?
- Where might my perception be incomplete?
- What response would move me towards truth and love?
- What needs to be brought into prayer?
- What serves the Highest Good?
The cards do not remove uncertainty from our path.
They provide us with another way of contemplating our path.
Tarot and Divine Providence
There is mystery in drawing a Tarot card.
I don’t know which card I am going to receive. That is part of the practice.
As a Christian, I believe in Divine Providence. I therefore have no need to imagine randomness as a realm somehow existing beyond God.
At the same time, I don’t need to claim that every card drawn is a direct message dictated by God.
That would give the cards an authority I don’t believe they possess.
Instead, I receive the card that appears and work with it contemplatively. Like an unexpected line of Scripture, a dream, a conversation, a work of art or something encountered in nature, an image can become fruitful material for spiritual reflection.
The important question is not Why did this exact card appear?
The more useful question is:
What good can come from attending carefully to what is before me?
The Summum Bonum: God as the Highest Good
The Summum Bonum provides the orientation for the entire reading.
In classical and Christian philosophy, the Highest Good is not merely whatever happens to feel desirable in the moment. It concerns the ultimate Good towards which human life is directed.
For me, that means God.
This gives Tarot discernment a standard beyond personal preference and ego desires.
A reading may reveal something I don’t particularly want to hear. The card may challenge my assumptions, expose an attachment or ask me to consider a course of action that requires courage.
So I don’t measure a reading by whether it promises the outcome I want.
I ask whether the interpretation moves towards truth, love, wisdom, justice, mercy, courage and greater freedom to choose what is good.
The Summum Bonum therefore acts as both orientation and safeguard.
Not every possible interpretation of a card deserves to be followed.
Love as the Organising Principle
At the heart of my Tarot philosophy lies a conviction that has become increasingly important to me:
Love is the deepest organising principle of reality because God is Love.
This does not mean pretending suffering, evil, injustice or loss do not exist.
Nor does reading for the Highest Good require us to turn every difficult card into something cheerful.
Sometimes love tells the truth we would rather avoid.
Sometimes discernment reveals that something needs to end, a boundary needs to be established, responsibility needs to be accepted or grief simply needs to be grieved.
The Highest Good is not synonymous with comfort.
But neither is fear the final authority.
Fear Is Not an Oracle
Certain Tarot cards have accumulated enormous amounts of fear around them.
The Devil. The Tower. Death. The 3 of Swords. The 10 of Swords.
Yet no card has the authority to pronounce doom over a human life.
Difficult cards can reveal conflict, attachment, grief, upheaval, limitation or consequences. They deserve to be taken seriously when those themes are relevant.
What they do not justify is fatalism.
If an interpretation leaves someone believing that catastrophe is inevitable and nothing can be done except wait for fate to strike, something has gone badly wrong.
Fear narrows perception.
Discernment opens it again.
The question becomes not What terrible thing is this card predicting? but What is this image asking me to see clearly?
Personal Agency Always Remains
Tarot cards do not override free will.
Symbols do not make decisions for us.
Spreads do not dictate what we must do.
A reading can reveal possibilities, tensions, patterns and perspectives. It can help us recognise something we have been avoiding. It can even confront us with uncomfortable questions.
But the cards do not absolve us of responsibility.
This is particularly important when reading for another person.
My role as a Tarot reader is not to become an authority over somebody else’s future. I cannot know every factor shaping another person’s life, and I certainly cannot make their moral choices for them.
A good reading should return agency to the seeker rather than taking it away.
The Major Arcana
The Major Arcana describe the great movements of human experience and spiritual development.
They can represent encounters with archetypal forces, stages of initiation, transformations of consciousness and moments when our understanding of ourselves, God or the world is being challenged to grow.
I therefore resist reducing the Majors to predictions of external events.
Death is bigger than something will end.
The Hermit is bigger than you will be alone.
The Lovers are bigger than romance is coming.
Each Arcanum contains a field of symbolic meaning that can be contemplated rather than collapsed into a fortune-cookie prediction.
This is also why I increasingly enjoy studying the Tarot alongside Scripture, Christian mysticism, Hermetic philosophy and other strands of the Western Mystery Tradition.
The cards become doors into contemplation.
The Minor Arcana
The Minor Arcana bring those larger principles into ordinary human experience.
Here we encounter desire, thought, emotion, work, conflict, relationship, loss, creativity, responsibility and material life.
The Minors can certainly describe circumstances. But description is not the same thing as destiny.
A difficult card may show us where energy has become distorted or where greater awareness is required. A favourable card may reveal potential without guaranteeing that we will realise it.
The Court Cards likewise offer more than fixed personality types. They can represent people, but they can also reveal attitudes, developmental stages, elemental qualities and ways of responding to life.
The question remains:
What becomes visible through this symbol that I might not otherwise have noticed?
How I Read Tarot
My method continues to evolve, but several principles now shape every reading I give.
I favour open questions over demands for fixed predictions. Insight that preserves human dignity, freedom and responsibility is what I seek. I remain grounded in traditional Tarot symbolism while staying receptive to what emerges through the interaction between card, question and seeker.
I also test interpretations.
Does this interpretation create needless fear?
Does it encourage dependency on the cards?
Is flattery or wishful thinking showing up?
Are there claims of certainty that neither I nor the cards can possess?
Is there an element of seeking to control or manipulate another person?
Or does it lead towards greater honesty, wisdom, compassion, courage and freedom?
The goal is not to make every reading pleasant.
The goal is to orient the reading towards the Good.
Prediction and the Future
This does not mean Tarot can never indicate where circumstances appear to be heading.
Patterns have trajectories.
Human behaviour has consequences. Decisions create momentum. Sometimes a spread makes the likely development of a situation remarkably clear.
But trajectory is not destiny.
Circumstances change. People make different choices. New information appears. Other people exercise their own free will.
This is why I am extremely cautious about predictive timing and absolute statements about future events.
A reading can say, Given what is happening now, this is the direction in which things appear to be moving.
That is very different from saying, This will happen.
For me, the first can support discernment.
The second too easily becomes an attempt to possess certainty that does not belong to us.
Tarot as a Contemplative Practice
Tarot does not always require a problem to solve.
A card can simply become an object of contemplation.
For instance, you can draw a card before prayer and notice which aspect of its symbolism catches your attention. You can place a Tarot image beside a passage of Scripture and allow the two symbolic languages to enter into dialogue.
Or you can meditate on a Major Arcanum for days or weeks.
You can ask what a card teaches about a particular virtue.
You can even draw a card at random while studying Scripture and see what unexpected connections arise.
This is one of the places where Tarot becomes most alive for me.
The objective is not always to extract an answer.
Sometimes the image teaches us how to ask a better question.
Tarot, Christianity and the Western Mystery Tradition
Angelorum exists at a crossroads.
My Tarot practice draws upon Christianity, Hermeticism, astrology, angelology, Kabbalistic correspondences and the wider Western Mystery Tradition.
I don’t pretend those traditions are identical or seek to erase the tensions between them.
My own Christian faith has also changed the way I understand the esoteric practices I have worked with for decades.
I am increasingly interested in what happens when Tarot is consciously ordered towards God rather than treated simply as a means of obtaining information.
For me, this does not diminish Tarot.
It gives the practice a centre.
The purpose of spiritual knowledge is not the accumulation of secret knowledge for its own sake. Knowledge should ultimately help us become wiser, more loving and more capable of participating consciously in the Good.
Otherwise, what exactly is it for?
A Living Tarot Philosophy
I have worked with Tarot for many years, and my understanding of it has changed repeatedly.
I hope it continues to change.
A living spiritual practice should be capable of maturation. We learn. We encounter new ideas. Sometimes we discover that language which once described our experience perfectly no longer does.
That is what has happened for me with the word divination.
I haven’t rejected the mystery at the heart of Tarot. Nor have I stopped drawing cards without knowing what will appear.
I have simply become more precise about what I believe the practice is for.
Summum Bonum Tarot is the name I now give to that orientation.
The card provides the image.
Contemplation receives it.
Discernment tests what arises.
The Highest Good provides the direction.
And the final question is no longer simply:
What do the cards say?
It is:
In light of what I have seen, how can I orient myself more fully towards the Highest Good?
