People scared of tarot.

The thing that I always remember and remind people of is that the Tarot cards are tools. They're not negative or positive. They just react to energy. If the energy is negative, the result is negative. If the energy is positive, the result is positive. It's as simple as that.

Whenever I talk to someone, whether a reader or just someone who may think the cards are "evil," I use a hammer as a metaphor.

A hammer is a tool. It's a powerful tool that can be used to build a house for an impoverished family, or it can be used to bash someone's head in.

That doesn't make the hammer "good" or "bad." Just like the cards aren't "good" or "bad." They just react to the energy around them.

MistressMorrigan said:

The thing that I always remember and remind people of is that the Tarot cards are tools. They're not negative or positive. They just react to energy. If the energy is negative, the result is negative. If the energy is positive, the result is positive. It's as simple as that.

Whenever I talk to someone, whether a reader or just someone who may think the cards are "evil," I use a hammer as a metaphor.

A hammer is a tool. It's a powerful tool that can be used to build a house for an impoverished family, or it can be used to bash someone's head in.

That doesn't make the hammer "good" or "bad." Just like the cards aren't "good" or "bad." They just react to the energy around them.

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MistressMorrigan:

What a wonderful way to put it, agreed with you 100% percent I come from a catholic family and know that people have a very negative concept when it comes to the tarot cards. I grew up in a catholic school, but all my life I being attracted to the esoteric and paranormal. I believe this is a tool that tap into the subconscious of each individual and they project what's happening there or is about to happened in the near future. We "the readers" are just the ones to convey the message, nothing else.

Bless and light

It's funny because my sister as she can't he present for a reading. She's "scared" of tarot. I look at pictures in my cards and they tell me a story. I tell her every time she asks he for a reading over face time to get over herself. That her making a scrapbook page is her telling the past the way she wants it (albeit more expensively than tarot). She rewrites the past with her own flair and interpretations on the events as she'd like them immortalized, I give tips on the future and let people know it's up to them.

Basically, the doubters/haters tend to be the ones whose Christian beliefs tell them the cards are some type of evil, yet who secretly want card readings. They call or talk to me privately and feel more at ease when I mention how I pray before readings and use crystals to help my energies during readings. The "bad" reading experiences I personally had were more in my earlier reading days, and i would get over it by reviewing the "bad" reading months later to see where I was off.

Cacia said:

I grew up in a catholic school, but all my life I being attracted to the esoteric and paranormal.

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If the Catholic Bible and associated teachings are to be believed, Jesus is esoteric and paranormal.

Not only that, but we wouldn't have Tarot to use as a tool had it not been for the Christian belief that led others to create the game.

And many branches of Christianity (especially Catholics and Orthodox) know and use the power of images. I teach medieval and renaissance art and I deal with images of the divine, with symbols and the relationship between viewer and image all the time.

Illuminated hand written books - church frescoes - paintings of Last Supper or Annunciation - sculptures of saints - they are more than pieces of parchment, pigments, oil, wood or marble because of the meaning the viewer invests in them and the skill of the artist who makes this meaning visible. It's communication by visual means - a visual language, and only with secularism after the renaissance modern art developed. Modern in the sense of - art no longer as tool for conveying church-approved messages but as tool for personal expression, social criticism, aesthetic experiment or whatever.

Tarot cards for me are a branch of communicating art. Each artist interprets the tarot archetypes and scenes in a different way, but they are still recognisable. If you put the Star from many different decks next to each other, they will look very differently and convey different aspects of the card, but you will be able to recognize a core meaning. (If it's a real tarot deck and not an oracle.)

The images of the tarot, especially the major arcana, reflect values of Christian, Western society. The image of temperance or justice were as well known until recently as today logos of Adidas and Nike. If you look at Cesare Ripa's Iconographia or other collections of symbols and emblems, you will recognize the tarot archetypes.

The church probably didn't like losing their monopoly of interpreting these images. But that doesn't change the fact that modern tarot cards have strong roots in Western culture.

And as such, I'm not a bit afraid of them. I feel my own roots in this culture, the bad and the good, very strongly, and I can connect to them on many levels. Emotional, artistic, historical, psychological, divinatory, autobiographical....

I'm afraid of many things, but not of tarot cards. I feel that many prejudices against the cards are based on ignorance or superstition which I cannot remove or fight against.

The human heart and mind are dangerous. Tarot, that helps us clear up our aggression, fear, shame and pride, is a good thing, just like meditation, an open conversation, a good therapy session, a walk by the sea side... and it has the added advantage of precision and clarity, the better you get to know the images.

Can you use tarot to manipulate others? Yes of course. But you can also use love to manipulate others.

WOW! You guys bring wonderful illustrations and input. I can not thank you enough for presenting your point of views.
Loved the hammer illustration. I have actually used a tool illustration for someone as well, but I use a wrench, not a hammer.

Yes, it's a tool and so on; yes, I can't quite GRASP some people's fear of tarot - but I do always wonder with threads like this why we here think people HAVE to get over that fear.

What are you all going to do about my totally irrational fear of daddy-long-legses ? and why does it matter to anyone but me ? (well, OK and my SO who sometimes has to remove them...)

We are all afraid of things and fear as such isn't a bad thing in general.

I don't think anyone wants to try to change other people. I think they just need to be able to vent about it and discuss it because, especially for new people, they get upset by the reactions of people who think it's evil and sharing the experience makes it feel a little less stressful.

Hi Holland

Just a question, are we asking about irrational fear of the cards themselves? Or are we asking about fear that is developed through use of the cards overtime?

Taking a pragmatic approach, most would say that it is irrational to fear pieces of cardboard. Is it irrational to fear pieces of artwork? That one is a little more subjective. Art intends to evoke emotion and meaning. I think it is a stretch to say it is wholly irrational to fear the cards or the artworks imprinted on them...although my own tastes are given to appreciate various types of artwork including the unconventional (depending on the artwork).

The hammer metaphor assumes the cards hold a power. Again, we can be pragmatic and say this is true-'the cards hold a power,' even if not in an esoteric sense. Perhaps we are using the cards as meditative exercise. However, once we use that hammer to shape our thinking and predict behavior or occurrence, we are also making a change to our mental processes or shaping our thinking in a different manner. Why else use it?

In psychology and psychiatry, there is a concept called "Magical Thinking" (believing in patterns of inexplicable phenomena) that is generally discouraged within the mental health community. Cognitive-behavioral therapy targets the same processes used in magical thinking (including reading of cards), that says we either know what will happen next or see connections that we believe to be meaningful... and replaces this fatalism with realism (realism-"using reality-tests on existing patterns of thinking"). So in short, it is generally known in psychological domain that fatalism can lead to depression (or anxiety) in some individuals. Tarot oracle would then be a risk in regards to health for some individuals that are using the cards for prediction and counsel, as opposed to those who are just collecting. This is if we are speaking of whether or not it is clinically possible to develop anxiety through use of the cards in the way they were intended to be used.