What Is The Tarot?

Well, it depends who you ask. The Tarot has evolved out of the most esoteric mysteries and the most banal trivialities that history has to offer. Some revere it as an oracle, some revile it as a meaningless tool of con-artists preying on the superstitious and naïve. It has symbolically infiltrated American and European culture, a many-headed monster that turns up no matter where you look. It's a blasphemy. It's a game. It’s art. It’s a Rorschach test, a mirror. It’s New Age babble. It's a map of human evolution beginning with the first unicellular life-form. It’s a picture-book of the soul’s journey to enlightenment. A tool of psychoanalysts, of alchemists, of skeptics, seekers, and cheaters. Surely they can't all be correct?

I say they can. In fact, in order for Tarot cards to be used and interpreted meaningfully, they must. Picking one point of view and never stirring from it doesn’t get one very far in life, and it won't get you very far with the Tarot. In fact it’s the vast, cluttered history, the overwhelming array of contradictions and ideas clinging to the Tarot that make it an ideal source of inspiration and wisdom in our post-post-modern times. And in the hands of someone who can draw deeply from this effluvium and offer interpretations and observations sensitively, discreetly, and with a sense of humor, the cards may transcend the weight of their tired and tarnished background and provide you with a memorable revelation. A new course of action, a new philosophy, a challenging argument, a sympathetic tale, permission to dream of a new life, and the insights that may light the way to it.

The cards are an ideal vehicle for this experience, because like us, they are ridiculous, they are incomplete, and they are inscrutable. They are made of us, our traditions, our symbols, our visions and ambitions. They are a little too human. Perhaps this is why we haven’t outgrown them even after several centuries — they have grown and changed, failed and flourished, just like we have. What is the Tarot? It’s our story.