I haven't seen the video or any other of her work, so I can't
speak to that. But questions about tarot and who can read tarot and what it
falls into, or what the implications of reading it are come up frequently.
Sometimes people wonder if they can read tarot because they
don't think of themselves as a witch, or if they should consider themselves a
witch because they read tarot. Sometimes people wonder if its ok to be a
Christian and read tarot. I think these kinds of questions tie into the
questions of whether or not tarot is spirituality, or magic, or works with
spirits.
The first thing to address then is the idea of spirituality
or being spiritual.
A lot of people think of magic as a type of spirituality.
Many people look at religion as distinct from spirituality. The associations
people have here are frequently messy.
Spiritual means that it relates to the human soul and isn't a
materialist concern. It doesn't have to do with working with spirits. So the
distinction in that tarot quote is a little messy.
Religion is by default spiritual. Your spirituality includes
your religion, so when people say that spirituality is for certain types of
people and religion is for other types of people, it's generally nonsense.
Spirituality is a broader category into which religion fits. It is possible to
be spiritual but not religious. If you have a focus on spiritual matters, and
spiritual experiences and activities but they're not organized and formal then
you are spiritual, but not religious. If you're religious and your religion has
meaning for you beyond just being a social network then religion is part of how
you are a spiritual person.
No ghosties required.
Tarot, in all cases, involves faculties beyond the material
world and our material experience. So tarot is always spiritual.
I kind of want to say "tarot isn't necessarily your
spirituality, magic isn't necessarily your spirituality," because often
people use spirituality to mean religion, and tarot and magic don't have to be
things we approach in a religious manner. But, they do have to concern the
spiritual elements of reality rather than reality as engaged by a materialist
outlook and so they are always spiritual.
So the opening assertion of the quote is wrong.
It's still important to understand that things like tarot and
magic don't have to be how we approach engaging the religious elements of life
and they can just be tools. We don't have to define our lives around being
tarot readers or doing some magic. The rules, ethics, and special seasonal
events we observe don't have to relate to engaging in those practices. Because
of the way "New age spirituality" and NeoPaganism kind of package
together a lot of things, people sometimes think they need to be part of some
bigger bundle, but they don't.
Like numerous other things, tarot, using a pendulum,
astrology, or magic can fit into any broader context of spiritual activity
without defining what the overall complex of spiritual behaviors in your life
are. I think sometimes when we try and define our spirituality as magic or
divination, or these things as our spiritual practice, it leads us to ignore
how these are the practical elements of spiritual practice. These are the ways
that spirituality allows us to know stuff and get stuff done. They aren't just
about touching the infinite and feeling feels.
So, do Tarot and Divination need spirits?
In a certain sense, yes, they do. Divination means that we
are obtaining knowledge from the divine. A lot of historical great minds in
science also explored alchemy, astrology, and magic because they felt like
there were limits to what physical science alone could teach them. Traditional
forms of education culminated in studying philosophy, and then if you were
excelling enough, theology, because things like arithmetic, geometry, logic,
rhetoric, music, and the rest were the ground work for being able to understand
these higher concepts. Exploring the truth of the divine world was how these
academic ideas blossomed into a more full understanding of reality.
In any traditional form of divination, we are working to get
knowledge from some sort of spirit or god. It might be ancestors, or spirits
between our ancestors and God, or angels, or demons, or gods, or any other
spirits with whom we can speak. They speak to us through the tools of
divination, and hopefully through direct inspiration which is guided and
interpreted through those tools.
A lot of people work with tarot or pendulums, or geomancy or
throwing bones, or various forms of divination without calling on spirits to
help them.
Who are they talking to?
In my understanding of things, you can use divination tools
to try and read the "buzz" of the world. Essentially the harmony of
energies and spiritual powers in the world and the way in which they are
moving. Exploring that collective movement can tell us things about the
particular forces at work in our lives, how they got to be in our lives in
their current manners, what their current natures and impact on our lives are,
and what direction they're trending towards.
You might think of this as part of the anima mundi - the
spirit of the world; or as the spirit of the moment. In that sense maybe you're
still working with some kind of spirit.
Some folks who look at the spirit model as the only way
anything works would argue that these tools still work through spirits if
you're actively working with the tool, you might just not realize that's what's
happening. I don't like to take that approach unless I know more about what
someone is doing. I think there are ways things can work without direct
engagement of spirits.
You're still engaging something spiritual when you're using
divination tools. You're still communicating with a living pulsing force beyond
yourself. Whether you're doing that generally through trying to read the
movements of the world's life, or whether you're asking specific spirits to
speak to you through the tool.
If you experiment with both, I think you'll get more
grounded, clearer, more actionable information when you engage the right kinds
of spirits and use your divination tools to speak with them.
If you're keeping it general and just letting the spirit of
the world speak through to you, it's still spiritual, even if it maybe doesn't
involve shooting the breeze with some disembodied entity.
If you're approaching tarot or other forms of divination in a
way which tries to avoid spirituality...say you're laying out cards and
expecting them to be fully random and they're just a guide for self
reflection...then you aren't doing divination and you aren't actually reading
tarot. You're looking at some pretty pictures and meditating. This might be
useful, but again, not really divination.
I would also imagine, divination would still be good to do on
top of this. Self-reflection is important and useful, but divination gives you
information and knowledge beyond what's already in you. Taking that
self-reflection and then exploring a broader perspective than your own, and
using what you learn from both is going to get you much further.
So the short of it...
...tarot IS spiritual
...tarot, like magic, maybe doesn't always need to involve
spirits but is probably better with them
...tarot, like magic, doesn't have to define your spiritual
life even if you use them, so you can use them in any religious context
...tarot, like magic, is spirituality for practical purposes
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