The Thin Line Between Occultism and Aesthetics: An Exploration into the Individuality of the Phenomenon of Tarot

December 16, 2022

Depending on one’s location, there are many stories of how and where the mystical practice of Tarot began. Most historical references point to Bologna, Italy, where the first set of Tarot cards, a pack of Tarocco Bolognese cards, where found, dating “back to 1442.” During this time period, however, the cards were used as a complex three-player card game, referred to as ‘tarocchi.’ Tristana Rorandelli, professor of Italian literature at Sarah Lawrence College, stated, “Italians invented what is now the Tarot card, the tarocchi, but they used it how we would play cards today. There was no spiritual connection, I don’t think, to these cards, at least when they were first playing.” In English-speaking countries that had not yet been introduced to these cards, they were not used for the aforementioned gambling and games, but instead were marketed to these new places as a vessel for divinatory practices.

The earliest usage of Tarot cards for the occult was pinpointed in Bologna, Italy from “1650-1750” according to a report from Franco Pratesi, stating, “La preuve en est fournie par une liste de la seconde moitié du XVIII0 siècle qui énumère pour chaque carte les significations attribuées” which can be translated as ‘The proof is provided by a list from the second half of the 18th century which lists the assigned meanings for each card.” Pratesi came across this sheet at the library at the University of Bologna which listed thirty-five separate cards and their individual meanings. Regarding occult usage, he writes, “La situation de la cartomancie dans les années 1760-1780 n’est pas bien claire, même si l’on doit admettre, en général, que c’était une pratique peu répandue,” which can be translated as ‘The situation of cartomancy in the years 1760-1780 is not very clear, even if we must admit, in general, that this was a rare practice.’

In a critique of Sir Michael Dummett’s theories of Tarot, fellow philosopher Carlo Penco revisits Dummett’s hypotheses on the origins of its usage as a spiritual object. Penco writes, “To connect the traditional Tarot pack with the occult, something new was needed: the novelty came from… Jean Baptiste Pitois (called ‘Paul Christian’ 1811-1877) who invented the term ‘Arcana’, using it in place of the more usual ‘Triumphs’.” By swapping the name, the sellers of these cards were able to adapt a brand new way to market their card sets, as well as use the mysticism behind them to sell to English-language countries that had never encountered such a concept before. Further, he writes that Dummett’s book on the history of Tarot, A Wicked Pack of Cards, “opposes the hypothesis of an occult origin of the game of Tarot in two ways: firstly, cards from a regular pack (not a Tarot pack) are used here for fortune telling; secondly, fortune telling is presented as a ‘randomising device’, with no relation to the occult.” In addition, he writes, “The evaluation [from card game to usage in the occult] is drastically negative, tending to show that they invented a tradition from nothing.” While the use of Tarot or tarocchini started as an unassuming strategy game, they are now used to predict one’s future or derive insights about their past, while its original utilization is near-extinct due to a lack of manuscripts providing instructions, which also differed from place to place.

I know nothing about Tarot. I’ve seen the practice recently making a rise into the mainstream, with people my age doing readings on TikTok or getting tattoos of the original Rider-Waite Tarot Deck. In order to understand this lifeworld of Tarot, I have set out on a semester-long journey in an attempt to find what Tarot means to those who believe in its power and what the resurgence of the popularity of the practice means in the twenty-first century. What follows is my personal attempt to learn about Tarot, both ethnographically and phenomenologically. For the purpose of my research, I have separated the technique of reading Tarot into three separate modalities – daily orientations of the present, prediction of the future, and a third catch-all mode combining readings of spiritual, communicative, and past methods.

Kate Sherman, an anthropology major at Sarah Lawrence College, has been reading Tarot for about a year and a half. “Tarot is a practice of divining meaning from cards. Every card has a different meaning, traditionally,” they tell me. “So, if you’re reading for someone, they will ask you a question, they will pick cards, and you figure out how their cards can be used to answer the question.” 

Sherman tells me that the most popular deck today is referred to as the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, which is known for its bright yellow backgrounds and allegorical imagery. Every Tarot deck contains seventy-eight cards and can be broken down into two groups – “there are the major arcana, which are like the face cards, then the minor arcana, which are the four suits,” says Keely Jordan, a Sarah Lawrence freshman who has been reading since she was twelve years old. The suits in the Rider Tarot deck are Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles, and there are fourteen different pairings for each of the four suits. Just like with a common pack of playing cards, a Tarot set has cards numbered ace through ten as well as four court cards that could be paired with each suit. Like playing cards, Tarot has a ‘King’ and ‘Queen’ court card, but adds ‘Knight’ and ‘Page’ cards in place of the ‘jack’. “Each of the suits represents a different thing,” Jordan continues, “so Cups are emotions and sexuality, Wands are passions and energy and anger, Swords are intellect, knowledge, and communication, and Pentacles are money, finances, and stability.” The major arcana features twenty-two “trump cards” which are the uniquely named cards, such as ‘Justice,’ ‘The Sun,’ and ‘The High Priestess.’ Now that I have gained at least some basic knowledge of Tarot, let us move on to addressing and exploring the modalities of its usage.

Present:

One of the most intriguing concepts to me about Tarot was that of the ‘daily pull,’ the practice of pulling a single card out of a full and shuffled Tarot deck in order to “get psyched for the day's possibilities & avoid possible pitfalls” as Astrology.com phrases it. I wondered how one card, and its individualized meaning, could hold so much value for someone in their everyday life. 

I first became familiar with this tactic after seeing poet Jessica Dore’s daily Tarot card reading pop up on my Twitter timeline. On Twitter, she posts a picture of a Tarot card along with a related prompt for individual reflection. She also breaks down each day’s card meaning on her Substack page, taking the current weather, world news, and more into account. According to an article in The Guardian, “On Twitter, more than 130,000 people (along with 52,000 on Instagram) follow Dore’s daily draw of a card, which she then connects to psychological concepts, legends, myths and miscellanea as a prompt for introspection.” 

I asked Sherman what sort of situations call for a single-card draw in their experiences. “If there’s something going on on a certain day that I’m anxious about or I just wanna see, I might just pull a card and see,” they say. “If I was gonna go on a date, I would pull a card and [ask] ‘how is this date gonna go?’ Sometimes it’s not helpful, sometimes you pull a card that doesn’t have anything to do with what you asked. One time I asked the cards what was gonna happen when I was about to go on a date and it was one of the Cups cards, which means wish fulfillment, and I was like ‘okay!’” Having a single Tarot card pull may seem like a nice decision-making tool to guide you through your day, but Jordan says that she does not do a daily pull anymore because she “was getting a little bit paranoid because of it.” Regarding daily practices, she says that she uses her cards for dream interpretation. However, she still does “at least a spread for myself every two weeks. Personally, I do it on the full moon and the new moon.” While I am aware of the role that the moon and its phases play in the practice of astrology and star signs, I had no idea that it could influence a Tarot reading. Jordan tells me that the moon phase of the day that one receives their reading can enhance or diminish the clarity of their reading, with a full moon granting the most comprehensible reading and the new moon “stunting” your reading. Upon doing my own research, I found many accounts stating that moon phases can affect your reading. According to an article on Tarot.com, “Every phase of the Moon is connected to a Tarot card of the Major Arcana.” 

For some hardcore Tarot readers, or heavily experienced ones like Jordan, there are many small rules of Tarot etiquette. However, in the collection of Tarot-themed essays entitled Tarot Tangents, or Little Essays Toward Thoth, author Emmie McKellen refers to these superstitions as “myths.” Lilly Rushe, an education major at Sarah Lawrence, tells me that there are several customs involved with Tarot that she has learned in her five years of reading: such as that no one besides the owner of the set is allowed to touch the cards or that some intense Tarot readers believe that one cannot purchase a new set, that it instead must be gifted to them. Additionally, Sherman tells me about left-side pulling, saying “There also is stuff about how you’re supposed to pull [the card] with your left hand because the left side of your body is more connected to the universe.” “In a lot of mysticism,” Sherman continues, “you can't buy your own hand of hamsa or like the evil eye, it has to be given to you. Some people see Tarot the same way.”

Another one of these so-called myths is that asking a reader ‘yes or no’ questions during a session is forbidden. Due to the large number of cards in a Tarot set and the individualized meanings depending on the reader, constructing a spread that can interpret and/or create a comprehensible yes or no answer would vary depending on the reader themselves.

Keely Jordan, the most experienced out of the three readers that I talked to, does in fact do yes or no spreads. “I do [yes or nos] for myself, I don't do it for other people,” she explains. “The way that I do ‘yes or no’ is that [pulling] Cups are an enthusiastic yes, Wands are a yes, but you’ll have to work hard for them, Pentacles are kinda or maybe, then Swords is a no. Major arcana is based on the significance of each of the cards, so everyone has their own meaning for a yes or no but those are the ones that I go for.” In Tarot, there is no clear-cut yes or no answer that can be solely derived from the cards, and so, as is the case with most Tarot readings, the determination of meaning is entirely up to the reader. 

Another question I had was that of a personal bias when reading close friends or family. Does your knowledge of a friend’s personal life and crises interrupt a ‘true’ Tarot reading? “For me, I feel like if I’m reading for someone I’m really close to I’ll know what they want the answer to be,” Kate Sherman says. “I feel like in personal relationships, it’s hard to try to stay away from what they want to hear rather than what you can actually divine from what the cards are actually saying.” Jordan, who reads often for large events and parties, says that it is harder to read for people she does not know. When reading her friends, Jordan says, “I take insight based on what I know from their lives – so if someone [I know] just went through a breakup and I draw a love card, I could say ‘Okay, that might mean a new start for you.’ But if I don’t know them, I’d say ‘Romance is in existence.’” Knowing the currents and pathways of the client is helpful, but not necessary. When reading a close friend or family member, one may feel more inclined to delve deeper into the divination, but often, a more broad reading is better so that the reader is not forcing their own beliefs and biases onto the client, Rushe says. “I feel awkward reading for other people [that I don’t know] in case it’s news that would be awkward to hear,” she continues, laughing.

Tarot readings of the present help assist the divination seekers in their practical and everyday concerns. Typically, these services include dream interpretation, current guidance (such as ‘what do I do in this situation?’), and daily pulls to help inspire.

Future:

In twenty-first century Tarot, its usage is almost entirely as a divination practice rather than the card game that it originated from. When I inquired about whether Tarot could be actually used for telling fortunes or predicting things that have not yet happened, as the practice is so commonly perceived as, I received mixed responses. When giving me her opening definition of Tarot, Jordan said that the practice is strictly “fortune telling, seeing the future,” whereas Rushe said that it is “not predicting the future, but moreso allowing to open yourself up to the possibilities of the future, more getting yourself in tune with the future than predicting it.”

When a practice, such as Tarot, is now so heavily associated with divination when it was not originally meant for that purpose, it leaves us to wonder how it became the occult device that it is seen as today. Going back to the studies of Penco, he writes: 

The fame of Etteila was due to his invention in 1783 of a method of cartomancy with the Tarot pack, referred to as ‘the book of Toth’, which later expanded into richer versions. Here lies the basis for the diffusion of the occult origin of Tarot: Etteilla himself claimed that the Tarot pack had been distorted from its original Egyptian form by the mistakes of the card makers, and suggested a new and ‘correct’ cartomantic Tarot pack…. It was, however, impossible to find an actual connection between the traditional Tarot, introduced in Southern France after the French conquest of Milan and Piedmont in 1499, and an Egyptian occult origin.

This passage, rather than clearing up the origins of the practice, brought me back to wondering how it become known as a tool for the occult. Sherman responds, “I think [Tarot] is part of spiritualism because a lot of it is using yourself as a vessel, as a conduit basically, so you’re using the universe, and using your intuition that you believe comes from the universe, to pull certain cards, and that's how you know that they’re true.” During readings, Sherman says “A lot of times people ask about the future, so ‘how is the school year gonna go?’ Or a lot of times people wanna know about relationships, so like ‘am I gonna be in a relationship?’ or like ‘how is my relationship gonna be?’” Determining meaning from a single card, or a spread of cards, is wholly individual-based.

The meaning of the reading depends on the specific reader, Rushe tells me, saying, “Again, there’s a basic meaning for each card, but it veers based on the individual.” There are many different variables within even a single reading that can affect your set and its meaning. She says that a reading “depends on the question, depends on the different spread that you pull, if its a past, present, future set. You can ask questions, You can just pull cards. Also, the reading of the card will depend on if it's facing forward or backward when you pull it.” A typical Tarot deck comes with an instruction manual as well, so that the reader can learn the meaning of each individual card. Each card has a broad meaning so that it can be applied to answer any question. Sometimes, Sherman says, divining meaning from a card is pretty straightforward, giving me the example of a Three of Swords, a card that is usually drawn as a heart with three swords stabbed into it. “If you’re asking about a relationship, and I pull that card, you kinda get the idea. Sometimes it’s more difficult, because the traditional meaning of the card doesn’t fit with the question that you asked. Even if it doesn’t work, I would still try to determine meaning, it would just be a bit broader of an answer.”

From the 1990s trend of using Tarot for fortune-telling came the concept of the oracle card. Oracle cards are a very similar idea to Tarot cards, but they lack the history, and possibly even the divine strength, that Tarot possesses. Oracle sets often feature the message right on the card rather than knowing the card’s meaning by heart as it is with Tarot. They also usually have a fun categorization, such as ‘The Literary Witches Oracle’ that features writers like Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson, each card emblazoned with a different message and noting of the history of the individual.

The first set that Lilly Rushe used was her mother’s desk from when she read in high school. She says that finding her mother’s Tarot journal from her high school years encouraged her to begin reading herself, “I wanted to learn more and she taught me how to read Tarot, and it was a love deck that she had.” A love deck, she says, “you read for the purpose of like learning abt in depth with your experience with love and relationships.” Even though one can still ask questions about love with a regular Tarot set, a love deck, or another specialized oracle deck, can offer more in-depth answers about a specific topic. Oracles are also not limited to a specific number of cards as Tarot is with its seventy-eight card set. In addition, they do not necessarily have to be based in the traditional Tarot suits. For example, Jordan tells me about her moonology oracle deck: “It’s based on the phases of the moon, and so it has nothing to do with the traditional suits of Tarot. [In the moonology deck,] the suits are also based on the elements so Cups are water, Pentacles are earth, Swords are earth and Wands are fire. So if you know anything about astrology and signs based in that, they’re very similar and the themes of each sign group.”  Oracle decks, which have no specific rules to pulling or divining meaning as proper Tarot does, are typically used specifically for fortune-telling. 

Communicative:

When I first began my journey into exploring the Tarot phenomenon, I was completely oblivious to the concept of the contact of the otherworldly realm – those who use Tarot as a device to speak to deities or to receive a message from a dead loved one. Intrigued, Jordan, who “come[s] from a family of psychics,” was eager to tell me about her journey into deity contact.

Her mother taught her how to read when she was twelve years old after learning about the practice from readers at her church. “I started really young,” she tells me, “but it’s just kinda in my blood.”

When she was fifteen, she says, “I started working with different deities, and so I can contact them through different Tarots that I have. But not everyone does that, and not everyone’s Tarot is connected specifically to a deity.” On this subject, I did more research on my own. How does one find which deity they should connect with? Who is and is not allowed to contact a deity? On her weekly blog Dalliances with Deities, Pagan scholar Aine Llewellyn writes in a piece called ‘Stop Using the Deity Identification Spread, “not all of us will have deities we are ‘meant’ to work with or worship. Not everyone will get signs…. It is very clear in the [layout of your spread] that they are meant to be used when you have already received signs or communication from an entity. They aren’t meant to assign you a deity or anything like that.” The reader will be able to tell if they have received signs from a specific deity, and if they have not, Llewellyn urges them to stop their attempts. Deity contact with Tarot cards typically consists of an eleven-card pull, and each card has a different question for your personal relationship with the specified deity. The questions that are usually marked on these spreads include, for example, ‘status of current relationship with deity’ and ‘how can I best honor this deity?’ Rather than the one-on-one conversation with a god that I originally thought it was, the reader “works” with the deity,  “reveal[ing] various traits and associations a deity has” and finding how the deity’s sphere of influence can affect the reader’s life and life path.

“I have a crow Tarot which I use to talk to Apollo,” Jordan says, “and I’ve been working with him since I was fifteen. My family also does Hellenistic Paganism, so we have been working with deities for a while.” She also includes that her mother uses Tarot to work with the goddess Diana/Artemis. “It’s a very religious practice for me, so I would [contact a deity] if I want to pray to God or check in on my intentions that I set for myself.” 

Similar to deity contact, some readers also practice the contact of a dead loved one. No one that I spoke with does this practice – Jordan told me that she is strongly against it – so I again went to the Internet to look for guidance. Dead loved one contact is similar to deity contact in the way that the reader is asking general questions such as ‘what do you think is important?’ or ‘how has your journey been since your passing?’ rather than establishing a direct line of communication such as a séance would.

These otherworldly readings are practiced seemingly only by expert readers and are obviously not as common as the future divination or readings of the present. While Tarot can be a religious practice for some, that does not restrict casual readers from seeing it only as a game or a device. “I would say that those who read Tarot or read Tarot seriously as a profession are more in tune with and believe more in the spiritual side of it, but I think it can also be nonreligious,” Sherman says. “I think of Tarot as a tool. It’s kind of like when you’re indecisive about something so you flip a coin.... I think you can decide what you want it to mean for you.” Tarot is a way for a reader to connect with and navigate the greater craziness that the world has come to be, and while there are rules for how to conduct a reading, there are no rules for what your relationship to the practice should be.

The divination practice of Tarot has experienced a great resurgence in the twenty-first century. After the first Coronavirus lockdown, many spiritual practices, such as manifestation, deriving power from crystals, and reading Tarot, became a niche trend on the social media app TikTok, which began to be referred to as WitchTok. This wave of virality, coupled with the rise in the usage of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, has created a completely new way to receive a Tarot reading. In an interview with USA Today, social media creator Adam Werthington says of the trend, “WitchTok content is so relevant right now because we learned last year we can't control (things). All you can control is what you do, all you can control is what you think is truth in the world.” Keely Jordan also performs readings on TikTok. “I’ll go live on TikTok, and then have people in the chat saying ‘Can you read for me?’,” she says, “I’ll ask their name or something that I can call them that they feel connected to. and I’ll pull a couple cards for them. They’re usually just random people.”

In addition, clients can also seek out readings simply just on a website, without any human contact. These online services are easily accessible for those who either cannot afford to pay for a proper reading or want an on-the-go divination. However, these online devices erase the calming atmosphere that is so consistently associated with a Tarot reading. With an online reading, it is extremely hard to have full control over the space.

A possible solution to tackle the lack of a comfortable atmosphere in a reading over the internet, phone, or social media is that of the VR reading. A VR (virtual reality) reading allows the client to pick cards in real time, but the reading is still done by a robot or online third party. If one owns VR gaming equipment at home, there are many different Tarot reading programs available to purchase on the video game buying platform Steam. One can even get a reading similar to Tarot done within the popular horror game Phasmophobia. Additionally, there are multiple sets currently in operation in Japan where the public is “able to experience the world of your selected card.” For $10 USD, one is able to explore a single virtual room of the Tarot card of their choice. Further, the presence of Tarot has also rocked the Metasphere, cryptocurrency, and NFT worlds alike. The cryptocurrency exchange website Crypto.com lists a set of more than three thousand Tarot-themed NFTs, all of which have already been sold. “MetaTarot, (or Tarot of the Metaverse) is bringing into the world of NFTs and cryptos the traditional Rider-Waite Tarot deck, recreated in 3D art.,” states the MetaTarot description. “All the cards of the original deck have been carefully handcrafted in the 3D world. And while maintaining the traditional elements and meanings, now they are also enriched with elements of Cryptocurrencies.” Because these NFTs solely exist online, they have no actual purpose in real life, only existing as a picture trapped in the Internet.

So what is next for the Tarot world? Will Artificial Intelligence soon learn how to actually read tarot and give a meaningful reading that learns from the client and their intentions? As AI has started to take over the coding and art worlds, as well as taking the jobs of many factory workers, will Tarot reading suffer the same fate? 

Throughout this project and my various interviews, I have learned where and what today’s Tarot originated from, how to properly read Tarot, how to (badly) interpret it, and what reading is like in the present day. Gaining a new skill, especially one that was completely unknown and incomprehensible to me just months ago, is very tricky. But learning one that requires the depth and engagement with the world that Tarot does is arguably much more difficult than, say, figuring out the rules of basketball or how to cook a certain recipe. Once learned, however, the process of divination is quite rewarding. The practice of Tarot has gained a lot of traction and popularity with youth in recent years. Tarot, as a phenomenon, is a truly individualized experience. Each reader has a different background in the practice, different beliefs surrounding its spiritual power, and offers a different interpretation of the cards. Whether the reader is a social media user who learned to read Tarot off of the Internet or a professional psychic who follows every single tedious rule of the practice, Tarot will continue to be used by all who seek answers, whether those answers are based in divination and universal truth or are just a product of randomization and shuffling.